VAN HALEN — Van Halen (review)

VAN HALEN — Van Halen album cover Album · 1978 · Hard Rock Buy this album from MMA partners
5/5 ·
Sinkadotentree
I first heard this in 1979 and i honestly had never heard the guitar played like this before.For me this is the Eddie Van Halen show as he takes the spotlight on every single track.I have this magazine interview with DOKKEN's George Lynch and he talks about seeing Eddie when he was just starting out and he talked about Eddie's fire and tone and how he was embarrassed for himself and he went home and stayed up all night practising.Man this album "sounds" so good too.Of course there's this guy named David Lee Roth the flamboyant lead singer who can't be ignored.A great voice with those frequent yells throughout all added to the appeal.I love that these guys never took themselves too seriously,i mean just about every album had one silly song on it.I love every track on here,there are no fillers.Tough to pick a fav though although "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" might be it.So serious and heavy and the lyrics are killer.And i also like how the albums back in my day were usually under 40 minutes.This one is under 36 minutes.Back to Eddie.This is an article i still have as he talks about "Eruption" a track that spawned a generation of shredders."What got me was back in the early seventies when LED ZEPPELIN was still together,Jimmy Page was doing his "Heartbreaker" solo,and he'd stand by his amps and he'd have his right hand in the air and do pull-offs with his left hand.I thought,"What happens if you move the nut?" I put my right hand over my left and used it as a movable capo.Then i said,"What if i move my finger to the other side of the fretted note?" That's where i came up with the idea.Then i started adding harmonics to it,because harmonics are all relative too.If you can hit it open,you can move it up and play 12 frets away or five or seven frets away.It's math.I didn't know it it was mathematical.I thought it was magic: "Wow it only works in E" No,it doesn't.You can move everything and it's all relative.The first time i actually did full harmonics was on "Van Halen II",on "Woman In Love".The whole intro sounds like clocks,because i tapped them all". This is one of those albums i played to death in the early eighties and there's no way it's less than 5 stars.
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