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Eddie Van Halen’s opinion on The Beatles
Before Eddie Van Halen changed the course of guitar playing in the late 1970s, many other major revolutions had already happened in Rock and Roll and the biggest one was led by The Beatles.
Without the music created by John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, the genre would never have been the same. During his career, Eddie spoke about many other bands and artists, giving his opinion on them, including the Fab Four.
What was Eddie Van Halen’s opinion on The Beatles
“That whole (Abbey Road) album takes you for a ride. And ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ takes you for a ride within that ride. Those monster riffs seem to go on forever and then suddenly drop you off a cliff. Lennon’s vocals are just so passionate. He hated his voice, as Hendrix hated his. I think the fact that they weren’t typical singers made them even more expressive. A lot of trained singers have less impact than someone who’s just flying by the seat of his or her pants,” Eddie Van Halen told Lava magazine.
Although he and his brother loved The Beatles, they seemed to be even more into The Dave Clark Five, since they mentioned them much more often over the decades. Alex Van Halen mentioned both bands in his book “Brothers” while recalling their influence on him and Eddie Van Halen.
He said:
“I never really doubted I’d be in a band, and I never doubted it would be with my brother. But we didn’t know what kind of music we’d play until the British Invasion made it clear. ‘We moved to America, we saw A Hard Day’s Night,’ said Ed, ‘and I stopped playing piano.'”
“We wanted to rock ’n’ roll like our idols: the Beatles and the Dave Clark Five. (You may never have heard of that second band, but back then they were neck and neck with the Beatles, I’m telling you. Songs like “Glad All Over”—that stuff was amazing. We were hooked on that grungy saxophone, and it was an instrument we already knew how to play, so we could imitate their sound.”
He also said that at the beginning of their career, Van Halen saw their residency shows in Hollywood as their version of The Beatles’ residency at the Star-Club in Hamburg. When paying tribute to his late brother in the book, Alex quotes Paul McCartney to show the special bond they had. “We were brothers. We’re still brothers. Even death can’t change that. Paul McCartney said something else I like: ‘The Beatles were brothers arguing. That’s what families do.’ I’ll see you again, Ed. And when I do, I’m going to kick your ass,” Alex Van Halen said.
Paul McCartney and George Harrison liked Eddie
Eddie Van Halen showed the world that much more could be done with the electric guitar and amazed countless musicians over the following years with his creativity and technique. Curiously, Paul McCartney and George Harrison were big admirers of his music and praised him back in the 1980s.
“I like Eddie Van Halen as a player. He gets it right quite often. I like a lot of heavy metal guys because they wind it up. What I usually like in a heavy metal band is the guitar player. But when it’s just miles of scales, I lose interest. I like some of the hot sounds,” Paul McCartney said in an interview with Guitar Player.
Although he liked Eddie Van Halen, he still thought that Jimi Hendrix was better. “I have very fond memories of Jimi. I mean, Van Halen’s great, I love Eddie Van Halen. But I still think Jimi was the best,” Paul McCartney told Rolling Stone magazine in 1986. As for George Harrison, he mentioned Eddie Van Halen among his favorite guitar players and said he was a “pretty hot” player. “Well, there are a lot of guitar players I like.”
He continued:
“I like a guy called Eddie Lang, a guy called Django Reinhardt. These days I think, out of the contemporary players, I think Eddie Van Halen is pretty hot. I like, of course, Eric Clapton. I like a lot of the old Blues players, many of them, like Robert Johnson,” he said in a TV interview in the 1980s.
A few years later, in 1992, Eddie Van Halen and George Harrison shared the stage at Jeff Porcaro’s tribute concert. Alongside most of the guests from that show, they performed The Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends.” The legendary Toto and session drummer had passed away in the previous year.
