Music Banter - View Single Post - Do you get such a big hype around Eddie Van Halen?
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Old 12-26-2016, 09:49 AM   #7 (permalink)
Chula Vista
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Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: SoCal by way of Boston
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First off, Steve Hackett didn't invent tapping. It's been around in one form or another for centuries. It's been used on the electric guitar as early as the 50s.

Secondly, the evolution of electric guitar can be thought off as a chain with many links. With rock guitar there's only a handful of players that can claim one of the links. Guys who came along and changed the game for anyone else that followed. An example would be:

Chuck Berry > Eric Clapton > Jimi Hendrix > Tommy Bolin > Eddie Van Halen > Randy Rhoads > Yngwie Malmsteen > The Edge > Joe Satriani > Steve Vai > etc.

I was 17 when the first Van Halen record was released and had been playing for about 4 years, and at that time the world revolved around Hendrix, Page, Blackmore, Iommi, Santana, Holdsworth, McLaughlin, DiMeola, Nugent, Montrose, and a bunch of others.

I can tell you that for anyone that considered themselves an electric rock guitarist (pro and amateur) the earth stopped spinning for a couple of minutes the first time you heard Eruption. It really was like a nuclear explosion going off in the guitar community. The game changed overnight for A LOT of players.

It's not EVH's fault that so many dudes just went with the tapping gimmick and kinda ruined the whole deal via the ridiculousness that was 80s hair metal. But there's absolutely no denying the guy's place in the history of rock guitar.

Unless, of course, you are a pretentious twat who thinks that abusing an acoustic guitar with a knitting needle constitutes "music".
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