For me, this guy, along with Neil Peart (the drummer for Rush, the greatest band ever) represent two musical rock & roll giants that have fallen this year. Allow me some personal ramblings in a moment...[Chicago Sun Times] - Eddie Van Halen, the guitar virtuoso whose blinding speed, control and innovation propelled his band Van Halen into one of hard rock’s biggest groups, fueled the unmistakable fiery solo in Michael Jackson’s hit "Beat It" and became elevated to the status of rock god, has died. He was 65.
His son, Wolfgang, confirmed the news via Twitter that the rocker died Tuesday due to cancer.
With his distinct solos, Eddie Van Halen fueled the ultimate California party band and helped knock disco off the charts starting in the late 1970s with his band’s self-titled debut album and then with the blockbuster record "1984," which contains the classics "Jump," "Panama" and "Hot for Teacher."
Killing disco may have been his greatest contribution to mankind.
Van Halen is among the top 20 best-selling artists of all time, and the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. Rolling Stone magazine put Eddie Van Halen at No. 8 in its list of the 100 greatest guitarists.
OK, two Raj stories here.
My first one is this one. My first concert ever was at the old Boston Garden back in 1981, during the Fair Warning tour (fourth album). My ears rang for three days afterwards, and I loved every minute of it. I was a young punk from Manchester, NH with my buddies J.P., Ernie and Mattu, who was driving this slant six Chevy Nova thing. We get out of the show and we're on Causeway Street. I'm riding shotgun (playing navigator) and I told him to pull a U-Turn, go east for a few blocks and then he'd be on that massive ramp up I-93 on the old Upper Deck (it's at least a 20 degree incline) and we'd be home free. But no - Mattu's gotta take this convoluted route that left us in Leominster (he grabbed U.S. Route 20 from Kenmore Square and off we went) and it took us 3 1/2 hours to get back to Manch Vegas. What a putz!
Second one - I was driving from Sarasota, FL back to Boston back in 1994 and I'm approaching DC on I-95 North. At some point late night (I was in VA at the time), I picked up a live Van Halen show that lasted for about three hours. I'm driving a POS Olds Cutlass with no A/C (big mistake when I was in FL) and I had a solid FM signal the whole time. I think I had a Kenwood or Blaupunkt car radio receiver, which made perfect sense for me at the time - shit car, great radio. The last four hours of that drive was pure adrenaline and I covered 1,013 miles by the time I got north of Baltimore at 3 AM.
Oh - and the DOA reference in the title refers to my favorite Van Halen song.
