Singer and guitarist Lita Ford (Ex-Runaways) recalled in an interview with Guitar World the advice the late guitarist Eddie Van Halen gave her back in the 80’s. She also talked about how she was treated back in the 80’s in the Metal scene.
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Lita Ford recalls the advice Eddie Van Halen gave her:
“Eddie Van Halen told me one time, ‘I am not a fucking rock star.’ He said, ‘But you are a rock star. What the fuck are you doing? Why are you fucking around? Just fucking do it.’ When someone tells you, ‘It’s okay. You can do it,’ it depends on who that person is and what you’re doing.”
“I think if my mother had said the same thing, it wouldn’t have had the same impact. But coming from Edward Van Halen, it was real. Nobody was taking me seriously as a guitar player because it was before our time: ‘Girls don’t play electric heavy metal guitar.'”
She continued:
“They might have played blues or they might have played bass or they were a singer. But they didn’t play heavy metal guitar, I thought, I do. I want to prove to the world that it’s me playing guitar. Because nobody believed me. So that’s why I insisted that I be the only guitar player in my first solo band.”
“I wanted to put that in people’s faces by there being no other guitar players onstage to look at. Within three months of doing that, I was out playing shows and I got signed. But let me tell you, even after that, when we did TV shows, I’d be playing the solo and the cameraman would pan over to the bass player, because he’s a guy. It was absolutely ridiculous.”
In the same interview, journalist Brad Tolinski talked about Eddie Van Halen, saying:
“Eddie Van Halen was ground zero for the modern era. If you want to pull it backwards, it was like Elvis and the Beatles . . . Everyone knew that they were the kings, and everyone else just lived their life around that.”
“Even amongst all the players, people like Reb Beach or Vito Bratta or Nuno Bettencourt, who might have actually had a better technical command of the instrument. They all acknowledged that it was really Eddie’s world, and everything revolved around that.“
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