Eddie Van Halen passed away yesterday after a long battle with cancer. He is not the first celebrity to die this year, nor will he be the last…but it is a death that impacts millions of people to varying degrees.
I never knew the man. The closest I came to meeting him was seeing him in the hallway at the Sheraton hotel in downtown Spokane. The band was here to play a show, and I was at the hotel because of a Prom…or more honestly, the parties going on in various rooms. I didn’t really give it much thought other than to think it was kind of cool to see someone like that.
It wasn’t until years later that I would get to see the band live, and not even the original line-up. Van Hagar played at The Monsters of Rock show that we had gathered enough signatures to force them to appear here (that’s a whole different story). I was never a fan of Van Hagar, and to tell the truth I didn’t love any album after the first, it went way too mainstream for my tastes.
But that first album blew my damn mind when it came out in 1978. I was fifteen years old and had never heard anything quite like it. In fact, the only song I hated was Ice Cream Man, it always felt like a filler song to me.
I was in a local record store perusing what I was going to spend my hard-earned money on, when my ears were assaulted by the sounds of Eruption playing over the store sound-system. I rushed to the front and demanded to know who it was. Name of the band in hand I immediately made a bee-line to the “V” section and snagged a copy (I also picked up Boston’s first album which created a lifelong fan of their music too).
These were the first two records I had ever purchased. Only days before had I finally put down enough money to by a turn-table, speakers, and a headset, and I was eager to put it to use. In retrospect all of this was worth every penny, and I would do it all over again.
I have a fairly eclectic taste in music, although I almost always gravitate to rock/metal in spite of forays into Punk, Industrial, and other genres. It was all due to the influence that Eddie imparted to this impressionable teenager with his bands freshman effort. No one else played the guitar quite like he did, nor produced the sounds that flowed from it.
The world has lost a true icon.
