Eddie Van Halen Quotes

The hell with the rules. If it sounds right, then it is.

Fame is not so impossible for people with charisma, passion and talent. Being famous just means you have fans, and even one or two is enough to make you someone special. Ask a music fan who the best guitarist of all time is, and while one group insists that it was Jimmi Hendrix, another group swears that it was Eddie Van Halen instead. There will never be a time when everyone on this planet agrees on something like that, but luckily that's not important. All that matters is that both sides remain loyal, which they will assuming you continue to be who you are and do your thing. This is all that you need to be immortalized.

I'm always thinking music.

There is, of course, a chicken-and-egg element here: does someone gravitate to the role of Eddie van Halen because he shares similar personality traits or did portraying Eddie Van Halen give rise to those qualities?

when Roth joined, all of Mammoth’s followers “seriously thought [the Van Halen brothers] had ruined Mammoth,” telling Edward, “‘Wow. I can’t believe you did this. This guy sucks.’ Eddie was apologetic, but he’d say to us, ‘Be nice to him. He’s okay.

These are things like Michael Jackson's Thriller, an album that was (1) produced by Quincy Jones, (2) features guitar playing by Eddie Van Halen, (3) includes at least three singles that ooze awesomeness, and (4) has the single best bass line from the entire 1980s (i.e., the opening of "Billie Jean"). It is a "guilty pleasure," presumably, because 45 million people liked it, and because Jackson is quite possibly a pedophile, a d because two dancers had a really unfair knife fight in the video for "Beat It." This is akin to considering Thomas Jefferson a "guilty pleasure" among presidents because he briefly owned a pet bear. I mean, he still wrote the fucking Declaration of Independence, you know?

I knew that being funny always came in second to musicians. (In the world of music, there’s a hierarchy, too—it’s my contention that bass players tend to get laid first, because they’re stolid and cool and their fingers move in gentle yet powerful ways [except for Paul Mc-Cartney; he never got laid first]; drummers come next because they’re all power and grit; then guitarists because they get those fancy solos; then, weirdly, the lead singer, because even though he’s out there up front, he never quite looks fully sexy when he has to throw his head back and reveal his molars to hit a high note.) Whatever the correct order, I knew I was way behind Eddie Van Halen—not only was he a musician, which means he was able to get laid more easily than someone who is funny, but he was also already married to the object of my desire.

İsmi Jory Baker'dı ve daima tam vaktinde gelir, hiçbir provayı kaçırmaz ve seçmelerde tek bir hata bile yapmazdı. Göze çarpan bir yetenek, Angus Young veya Eddie Van Halen gibi iyi bir bir gitarist değildi, ama yeterince iyiydi. Barry'nin anlattığına göre Jory Baker bir zamanlar Saparx adında, çoğu kişinin o senenin en başarılı ismi olacağına inandığı bir grubun lideriydi. Creedence'ın ilk dönemlerine benzer bir tarzları vardı: sert sağlam gitar ve rock and roll. Şarkıların çoğunu Jory Baker yazıyor, kendisi seslendiriyordu. Sonra bir trafik kazası geçirmiş, kemikleri kırılmış ve hastanede tonla ilaç almıştı. Çıktığında "John Prine" adlı parçasında dediği gibi kafasında çelik bir plaka, sırtındaysa bir maymun vardı. Demerol'den eroine geçiş yapmıştı. Birkaç kez yakalanmıştı. Bir süre sonra metro istasyonlarında üç beş kuruş için gitar tıngırdatan bir müptela haline gelmişti. Ardından her nasılsa, on sekiz aylık bir dönemin ardından temizlenmeyi başarmış ve öyle kalmıştı. Kaybı büyüktü. Başarılı olması beklenen bir grup bir yana, herhangi bir grubun bile lideri değildi, ama provalara yine tam vaktinde geliyor ve hiçbir seçme sırasında hata yapmıyordu. Fazla konuşmuyordu, ama kolunun içindeki iğne izlerinin tümü yok olmuştu. Diğer tarafa ulaşmayı başardı, demişti Barry Grieg. Hepsi buydu. Bir zamanlar olunan kişiyle şu anki arasındaki geçiş döneminde neler olduğunu kimse bilemezdi. O hüzünlü yalnızlık cehennemini kimse analiz edemezdi. Değişimin haritası yoktu. Sadece... diğer tarafa ulaşılırdı. Ya da ulaşılamazdı.

He found himself thinking of something Barry Grieg had once said to him about a rhythm guitar player from L.A., a guy named Jory Baker who was always on time, never missed a practice session, or fucked up an audition. Not the kind of guitar player that caught your eye, no showboat like Angus Young or Eddie Van Halen, but competent. Once, Barry had said, Jory Baker had been the driving wheel of a group called Sparx, a group everybody seemed to think that year's Most Likely to Succeed. They had a sound something like early Creedence: hard solid guitar rock and roll. Jory Baker had done most of the writing and all of the vocals. Then a car accident, broken bones, lots of dope in the hospital. He had come out, as the John Prine song says, with a steel plate in his head and a monkey on his back. He progressed from Demerol to heroin. Got busted a couple of times. After a while he was just another street-druggie with fumble fingers, spare-changing down at the Greyhound station and hanging out on the strip. Then, somehow, over a period of eighteen months, he had gotten clean, and stayed clean. A lot of him was gone. He was no longer the driving wheel of any group, Most Likely to Succeed or otherwise, but he was always on time, never missed a practice session, or fucked up an audition. He didn't talk much, but the needle highway on his left arm had disappeared. And Barry Grieg had said: 'He's come out the other side.' That was all. No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just . . . come out the other side. Or you don't.

The frenetic guitar riffs from Eddie Van Halen's racing fingers wafted through the earth, passed through the wide cloisters of Rock ‘n’ roll and gained firm roots in the listening souls of melophiles.

fingers.” You can buy the same guitar, effects pedals, and amplifier that Eddie Van Halen uses. But when you play that rig, it’s still going to sound like you.

Jimmy Page was great, Eddie Van Halen was amazing -he re-revolutionized guitar, Randy Rhoads… I mean, from Neal Schon to Zakk Wylde, these guys are outstanding. But there’s nobody like Ritchie Blackmore -from stem to stern.

Bass is for people who can’t play guitar.

Eddie Van Halen doesn’t listen to music.