RIP Edward Lodewijk Van Halen

Rest Easy

 

I'm about to write a short piece on this for the next newscast.

I'm a bit shaken. His music was, truly, the anthem of my teenage years when I was trying to be better -- losing weight, working out in open gyms. Even 30+ years later, I can dig up "5150" on my Spotify and be good to run. I remember ranking my all-time VH songs not that long ago. It's a long-ass list.

 

2020 just keeps on keeping on.

 

Sad day. One of the all-time greatest guitar players. So many great Van Halen songs come to mind right now.

 

Fuck. I was never really a hardcore VH fan, but I enjoyed a lot of their stuff.

And Ed seemed like a fairly cool guy, on the basis of some of his relatively recent interviews.

Although obviously he was a little hard to get along with in a band at times.

 

I figured that more and more famous people from our age would start dying off. But 2020 is like a giant death bong.

 

Ah shit.
RIP

 

Dammit.

Knew this was coming -- had seen a variety of 'spare a thought for Eddie' posts from musicians over the past few months -- but this really sucks.

 

Divorced for years.

 

He changed everything in rock and metal. Any male of a certain age has a memory with Van Halen as the soundtrack, either real or imagined.

Fuck.*

*Poundcake and Judgement Day were terrific openers from that album

 

I was in Houston in 1978 visiting a friend. We went to a flea market and he bought a bootleg 8 track of VH I. Went back to his house and listened to it and was just blown away. Hard to think of many (any?) other instances where I can recall the first time I heard a certain song or album. But that one sticks to this day.

The man made sounds with his guitar that I had never heard before and seldom heard since. The GOAT rock and roll guitarist in my view.

A sad, sad day.