NPR

Can't get this stuff no more. 2020 just keeps on taking.

Supported Black Sabbath on a 1977 (?) tour and blew them off the stage in Liverpool.

65 is nothing.

Throat cancer, he was a pretty heavy smoker, certainly in his younger days, there's any number of photos of him playing with a fag on the go or stuck in the strings on the headstock for later use.

I think most people will still have their reference point for him from "Jump" or possibly "Beat It" (even if they didn't know it was him). Certainly Jump was the first Van Halen song I heard. Then I bought Van Halen I and from the second the car horn was cut off by the thudding bass, that was that.

I'm no musical theory expert, but it seems that his playing wasn't your classic rock pentatonic stuff.

Not really one for a RIP thread but yeah Eddie van Halen.

I wasn't a huge fan, but it's one of those occasions when it doesn't matter what anyone thinks - if there was a guitar Mount Rushmore, he'd be on it.

If someone draws a cartoon of Dime meeting him at the Pearly Gates and handing him his bumblebee frankenstrat, I may have to shed a tear or two...

He’s an absolute guitaring legend.

The hours and days I spent trying to play eruption.

A big part of why I picked up the guitar in my teens

The longer version

We just need more party rock bands.

Guys up there with a great big smile, not trying to change the world or take it all seriously, that get the room bouncing.


RIP EVH.