Shimagnolo

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/06/83499...ero-dies-at-65

GrainBrain

Really started to appreciate van halen both with David lee roth and Sammy hagar more and more as I got older. Great sound and the call and response between David lee and the guitar is awesome.

texaspandj

2020 continues to Suck.

ahsposo 

2cam16

Hondo Gravel

scuzzo

Eddie is gone... not cycling related... but damn IT! man 2020? really?

cb400bill

Cancer sucks.


Thread moved from Road to Foo and merged with existing thread.

scuzzo

Ok,' America is officially broken! You can just have 2020, back! This sux.. RIP EVH!

ahsposo 

Thanks!

TakingMyTime

There aren't that many guys that come along and take playing to a whole new level like he did. Such sad news. I guess I know what I'll be listening to for the rest of the week.

Hondo Gravel

Took this pic a few seconds ago. I’m thankful to have seen VH in concert several times.

ooga-booga

f.

Stadjer

I enjoyed their debut album very much when I was about 13, then I moved on and they moved in the wrong direction for me. No hard feelings, he gave me music I enjoyed, he was a good musician and a great guy. Of course he died too young but I'm oldfashioned and consider every rockstar that makes it over 50 old.

FiftySix

I got some of that in magnetic tape form.

skijor

That bites

Did Eddie ever do any collaborations with other axe masters?...SRV, Eric Johnson, Vai, Satrioni, etc?

prairiepedaler

Riff in peace, Ed

ahsposo 

We'll all get there.

Deal4Fuji

That was the only one I owned and I think their best.


Continuing on (live) -- I wish this would have gone into You Really Got Me, like the album

... here ya go

Stadjer

Yes, quite heavy, a bit seventies rough around the edges and jolly, playfull. I like the timing of DLR on that album very much too. They had much more a party animal feel to them than the tough guy pretence of so many hard rock bands. After that hard rock in general got more grim in the songs and much cleaner, polished and often thinner in the sound and I just can't take that combination seriously. Van Halen stayed more lighthearted and fun so they got a bit of a pass in the sense that they remained likeable, but not really interesting to me anymore. That's when I gave up on the 80's and started looking into the 70's and 60's. I like the cover of You really got Me because it kept the dirty sleazy sound.

Funny btw, I somehow ended up with a second viny copy of this album, exactly the same. I had a bbq with my neighbours last year and one was complaining he couldn't find this album he had so many memories of, and I just returned half a minute later and handed it to him. .

This is somewhat how I feel about Van Halen now.

FiftySix

Back in the day, I had a pair of red slip on Vans that I took some masking tape to and painted on some black and white striping to emulate EVH's guitar. Concurrently, custom painted Vans appeared in large quantities in the halls of my high school (fall of '79 to spring of '83).

I particularly remember the summer of '82 when my friends and I drove down to the Galveston beaches every weekend wearing out my Diver Down tape in my '68 VW Beetle.

Hondo Gravel

SiriusXM channel 27 is having an Eddie Van Halen tribute if y’all interested. Those who have SiriusXM... Damn depressing I have VH jamming non stop.

ahsposo 

Vintage Schwinn

Eddie Van Halen was something else. He was massively talented and a true original. I consider him the last of the true originals in rock and roll guitar that began with Chuck. Though Eddie was influenced heavily by Clapton and he built on the tapping that Alvin Lee had pioneered, Eddie was a true original in how he used the melting pot of influences. If I were asked to list the most influential rock and roll guitarists of all-time. It would be a short list. Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, Alvin Lee, Eddie Van Halen, Jimmy Page, Johnny Winter, Carlos Santana, George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Dickey Betts, Duane Allman, and Jeff Beck. Eddie Van Halen was the last link of the true originals of rock and roll that began with Chuck Berry!

I urge all Van Halen fans to go and listen to the Oct 15, 1977 PASEDENA CIVIC live recording that is Official Release Quality in its recent appearance on the web and youtube. Sadly VAN HALEN never issued a live album with the classic-line up. 10-15-77 was recorded by the group and it was a party-showcase "Thank You" to their hometown as their 1st Album had been done and set for release soon. Pasedena civic was a small place that Van Halen had packed many times previously to their growing legion of hometown fans. The performance is great. If released it would rank among the top 15 live albums of all-time as the performance and mix/sound quality is that good. The old generational bootleg tape and subsequent bootleg LP of this performance that has been floating around for 40+ years has a poor mix and tons of hiss and an overall sewage sound quality. This same exact performance has seen the same approx 45min appear with a near perfect mix and equalization and without any overdubs, or any tape speed or other sound quality defects. This recently surfaced tape-mix is obviously likely from one of the VH bandmembers or Templemann's/Warners' archives. There are about half a dozen uploads of this 10-15-77 show on YOUTUBE. I cannot remember which one is the best but most of them uploaded since the year 2015 do come from the quality tape, but may have gone one or two generations as folks may have captured in very low quality mp3 resolution and/or tried to sonically enhance/or EQ and then not know what the heck they were doing. Anyway among the recent uploads of 10-15-77, you should find one that is release quality. Avoid the old bootleg LP upload which had horrible overall sound quality and a bad mix and a hiss storm. Some Bozo idiots are misguided in thinking that oh just because it is an LP source that it must be better.

Now, there are also approximately 25 minutes of the Soundcheck and Pre-Concert rehearsals at 10-15-77 Pasedena Civic. You'll find these on a separate upload. The Quality of these songs is borderline Poor. There are mix changes and level changes. The tape quality is listenable but not radio quality in its current state. The tape recording is okay in that it is not too muddy, but the tape is generational, and not from a 1st generation copy or master tape. Even so, you'd need to EQ individually each soundcheck song to make it enjoyable to listen to.

VAN HALEN by their tour supporting their second album in 1979 had overtaken Led Zeppelin in popularity here in the USA. The only bigger rock acts than Van Halen were THE ROLLING STONES and THE WHO. Like The Rolling Stones and The Who, Van Halen was dynamic and rocking from concert's opening notes and exciting to watch onstage, unlike Led Zeppelin which had Plant who didn't move much and got bogged down with slow songs that didn't groove and lost the energy.
The Stones, the Who, and Van Halen were like a super high energy party. Van Halen also followed the seventies era Rolling Stones and Rod-theFaces model of coming onstage lit in a party atmosphere. With that Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, and David Lee Roth were often drunk out of their minds but it was always one hell of a show. If you were lucky enough to catch them when Mick, Rod, or David Lee had consumed only enough alcohol to party hardy but not enough to impair the vocal performance, you got a concert for the ages and still had the experience of attending the party of the decade. Zeppelin couldn't do that. I remember in the Summer of 1972 at Charlotte Coliseum, the Stones sold out everywhere even at higher ticket prices than everybody else, on July 6th the Stones rocked a jam packed Charlotte Coliseum and just a couple of weeks before that in June, Led Zeppelin barely had it past half full in Charlotte at perhaps 2/3 capacity at best. Rock concerts were something that fans wanted to be an event and a massive party. The Rolling Stones, VAN HALEN , and Rod w/ Faces & later solo understood that perhaps better than any other rock and roll groups. Nobody else has come close to the fun party atmosphere that those three can deliver!

Van Halen had incredible musical talent when the alcohol consumption of David Lee Roth was just right (like Mick & Rod in the '70's). David Lee Roth is a fine singer when this "balance" is just right. With stage moves borrowed from Jim "Dandy" Mangrum of Black Oak Arkansas, and Rod Stewart of Faces, and seemingly also sharing the same clothier and costume maker as Rod Stewart, DAVID LEE ROTH is an incredible frontman. Van Halen was incredibly strong as a rock and roll outfit from the get go when the first album was issued and they were supporting others as the opening act. That 10-15-77 shows just how good they had become prior to embarking as a big-time support act. They went to the third biggest rock group in the world (behind The stones & the who) even before their 2nd album was out. They were already playing much of the 2nd album's songs in concert in 1978 while the the 1st album was barely out. The world realized instantly that Eddie Van Halen had a bag of tricks that would be impossible for Jimmy Page to match. David Lee Roth is a better frontman of a rock group than Robert Plant could ever hope to be. Like Townshend with Daltry, Page with Plant, Wood with Stewart-faces, Robertson live with Dylan, the guitar firepower from Eddie was perfect with David Lee Roth's delivery and style. Alex delivering the great oatmeal box sounding drums and the vocals of DLR and the great thunderous bass and the outta this world guitar that perfectly complimented everything. Hopefully soon, the group will officially issue LIVE RECORDINGS from the classic lineup with Roth.

There are decent quality recordings from 1975, June 13th, I think from the Hilton in Pasedena when they were still playing clubs/bars and their set was still mostly cover songs. These are just one point stereo mic ( such as for example SONY ECM-99, or REALISTIC 33-919.....something along those lines) and a cassette deck with the mic's two 1/4 phone plugs going directly into the two 1/4" mic jacks on the tape deck, with the recording levels set so the VU meters don't go too low or too high.
There is another similar such recording from about mid 1976 at the Pasedena civic, I think which features the first live performance of Running With The Devil.
You can definitely see the evolution of Eddie's high frequency guitar wizardry from that June 1975 Hilton to the Oct 1977 Pasedena civic tape. Eddie's influence will live on forever. Whether you were a Van Halen fan or not, Eddie took it to another level. In my opinion, Eddie was the last to really bring something new to how to play the electric guitar! There is another wrinkle and that is that wasn't Eddie somewhat partial to "homemade guitars" as that original striped thing that he famously played onstage when they made it big was a very simplified strat that he constructed/modified.
Many folks have fond memories of Eddie on stage and the great rock n roll party that Van Halen gave in their city!

FiftySix

Vintage Schwinn , great post and info about the Pasadena show recording. I'll have to make time to watch and listen to that.

As far as comparing Van Halen vs. Led Zep? Not really comparable, IMO. Pretty much not even the same genre of music no matter that they both got airplay on the same album oriented rock radio stations.