National Review Gives Me Excuse To Write Blog Entry About Eddie Van Halen

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National Review Gives Me Excuse To Write Blog Entry About Eddie Van Halen

Published: Saturday, October 17th, 2020 @ 7:55 am
By: John Locke Foundation ( More Entries )

Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the John Locke Foundation. The author of this post is Mitch Kokai.

Dan McLaughlin of National Review Online eulogizes one of rock and roll's greatest talents, the inspiration for many aspiring guitarists worldwide.

As if 2020 didn't have enough news, rock legend Eddie Van Halen has died of throat cancer, at age 65. For those of us who grew up on 1980s rock, this one really hurts.

I lack the musical vocabulary to quite capture what a transcendent, mind-blowing guitarist Eddie was, one of the very best there has ever been. He was the heart and soul of Van Halen, a band so solid that it kept on chugging after the departure of its charismatic frontman, David Lee Roth, at the peak of the band's mid '80s success. They plugged in the workmanlike but unremarkable Sammy Hagar, and kept churning out hits - indeed, some of the band's fans will still insist that the music was better once the focus was off Diamond Dave. I would not go quite that far, but the "Van Hagar" years dispelled any doubt about who the band's creative force was.

Maybe the most important thing about Van Halen was quite how much fun the band was. Bands built around the "guitar god" culture could be gritty, bluesy, or pretentious, but nobody before Van Halen (even early Aerosmith) had quite managed to rock so hard while having so much fun, whether on the records or onstage. Yet, unlike some of their sillier "hair-band" progeny, nobody could seriously question the rock cred of a band with Eddie Van Halen's guitar at its center. Van Halen's combination of musical virtuosity, panache, and longevity richly earned them a place on the very short list of the greatest American bands. It all started with their debut album, one of those rare rock records that grabs you right from the incendiary opening guitar solo and never lets up.

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