Eddie Van Halen Passed Away

The cancer finally won. :(

Damn, yeah, was just coming to post that. RIP, EVH. Here’s to hoping there’s no actual Runnin’ With the Devil in your future!

Shit. RIP my dude.

Hope he at least made peace with Michael and Sammy before the end. There is a great interview with Eddie from a couple years ago at the Smithsonian museum that people should watch.

https://youtu.be/i5txwFv-zYM

https://youtu.be/SwYN7mTi6HM

https://youtu.be/ojNrj-sWfpk

I could post bits of music for hours, but that riff in unchained probably has always been my favorite.

Fuck you 2020. You better fucking leave Jerry Cantrell alone.

FUCK! Fucking 2020, man. I’m a gigantic Van Halen fan. They got me through high school and military service and I don’t care what front man it was, they rocked and they were iconic. This absolutely sucks. I had no idea he even had cancer.

Such a loss. He not only had an original style and flair that were entirely his own, but it was imitated enough to became one of the dominant sounds of rock in the 80s. I’ll always associate those first two albums with having an absolute blast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llfjDUB66Z4

There was so much drama in this band, with giant egos and cruel in-fighting, culminating in an incredibly dark period in the mid-2000s where he seemed to go off the rails due to his heavy drinking, but he turned a corner and was back on form in recent tours despite battling major health woes. A legit guitar hero gone too soon. :(

Wow, this blows my mind. I mean it also blows my mind that he was 65 years old, I guess I’ll always think of him as the iconic shredder from the 80s. I haven’t even gotten to being bummed yet.

When I was a beginner keyboard player, playing Jump made me feel so cool and powerful. Probably the way guitar players feel when they play Stairway to Heaven.

RIP Van Halen.

Unfortunately that dark period is the one time I managed to see him live, when they did that tour with Sammy in 2004 or so.

I was on the road crew for some of their 1993 tour. That was an experience.

I also played his guitar/

Nice, that was when he was using the Ernie Ball guitar?

Yeah. Although I had to think about it. They look so similar to his EVH-brand.

It’s funny looking back on it. Valerie was very friendly, and now the little kid running around is bass player. Vince Neil opened and Steve Stevens – in heels – barely cleared my elbow it seemed.

I almost made it to the F.U.C.K. tour. They were playing in Santa Cruz, and I had just arrived at the Presidio in Monterey to study Russian at the Defense Language Institute. All of us who had just arrived from basic though were restricted to base for the 1st 30 days, so I couldn’t make it.

Somewhere around that same time, they played in a semi-random bar in the Bay Area as part of their practice, run-up to a tour. I missed them by only about an hour but the venue was so, so small. I wish I’d caught them when they did that. This would have been early in '91. Other than that, as huge of a fan as I was, I never got to see them live at all.

I also missed them a few years ago when they played in Madison Square Garden, reunited with David Lee Roth around the 2012 time frame. I had been working on a two week install up in Jersey and my coworker and I took an afternoon trip on a train into NYC. As we pull into the station the concert had started and they were blaring. It hit me then I could have seen them YET AGAIN and missed it.

So sad he’s gone. Such an iconic rock guitarist of our generation.

Yeah, the Santa Cruz concert was August/September 1991

RIP. Just played Eruption a few days ago for my kid. Sad.

Uh, Alice In Chains’ Jerry Cantrell? Is he sick?