The most groundbreaking guitarist to emerge after Jimi Hendrix, the late Eddie Van Halen truly revolutionized guitar playing, changing the entire landscape of Hard Rock music in the 1980s. A huge number of guitarists began to copy his style and the music genre certainly wouldn’t have evolved in the same way without his influence.
When it came to inspirations, Eddie continued to improve as a musician by creating his own unique style, being often called by his peers a true innovator. However, before reaching that point in his career, he was especially influenced by one artist in particular: Eric Clapton. Eddie could play every note the British musician performed in the early days of his career and he once revealed which were his 3 favorite Eric Clapton guitar solos of all time.
The 3 Eric Clapton solos Eddie Van Halen listed as his favorites
“I’m So Glad”
“The only band I was really over into was Cream. And the only thing I really liked about them was their live stuff. ‘Cause they played two verses, then go off and jam for 20 minutes. (Then) come back and do a chorus and end. And I love the live jam stuff, the improvisation. ‘Cause it was nothing like the record, and that is why I loved Cream. ‘Cause Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce pushed Eric Clapton. I almost feel bad for Eric because half the time he probably didn’t know the one was because these guys were jazz players playing Marshall amps and loud as s**t. Listen to ‘I’m So Glad’ on Goodbye Cream. If that doesn’t blow your f**king mind I don’t know what will,” Eddie Van Halen told Steve Baltin in 2009.
His favorite Clapton guitar solos were all live versions of songs done by Cream as he told Guitar Player in 1978. The version of “I’m So Glad” which he talks about is the one from their final album “Goodbye” (1969). “My main influence was Eric Clapton. I started out playing blues-the Blues Breakers album where Clapton’s on the front reading the Beano comic book. I like phrasing; that’s why I always liked Clapton.”
Eddie Van Halen continued:
“He would just play it with feeling. It’s like someone talking, a question-and-answer trip.” I realize I don’t sound like him, but I know every solo he’s ever played, note-for-note, still to this day. (…) I learned them by slowing the records down to 16 RPM on my dad’s turntable. By taking licks off records and listening, I developed a feel for rock and roll,” Eddie told Guitar Player.
Although “I’m So Glad” is a song that became more well-known after Cream recorded their “electric” version, the track was originally written and recorded by the American musician Skip James in 1931. Van Halen covered a small part of the song usually after “Girls Gone Bad” during their 1983 tour.
“Spoonful”
Another Blues classic covered by Cream, featuring a solo that Eddie Van Halen loved, was “Spoonful.” “Actually after Cream I dug back a little bit to the Bluesbreakers stuff. But my favorite stuff was when he was in Cream. Which was only a couple, three years. It wasn’t a very long run. But what I really liked was their live stuff, like ‘Wheels of Fire’ and ‘Goodbye’, Cream and stuff like that. Because then you could really hear the three guys playing in their live element,” Eddie Van Halen said in an interview with Rolling Stone in 2011.
Written by Blues legend Willie Dixon and originally recorded by Howlin’ Wolf, the song was loosely based on “A Spoonful Blues,” recorded in 1929 by Charley Patton, which itself drew inspiration from even older songs. Cream’s live version, recorded at the Fillmore, was featured on their 1968 album “Wheels of Fire”. That record was produced by future Mountain bassist and singer Felix Pappalardi.
He often said that Eric Clapton was the only guitarist who influenced him when he was growing up. Eddie could recreate every solo Eric had done in Cream as Debby Miller recalled in her article in Rolling Stone interview in 1984. “He would rather play than talk. He asks you to name any old Cream song, and then he recreates the Eric Clapton solo, note for note. If you run out of ideas, he offers suggestions: ‘Spoonful’?’ ‘Crossroads’?’. When he was a teenager, he used to slow the turntable to sixteen so he could figure out the guitar part. Clapton is his only hero in the world. When he finally got to meet him last year, he was so nervous that he got drunk and blew the whole thing,” she said at the time.
“Sitting On Top Of The World”
The third solo mentioned by Eddie was “Sitting On Top of The World”, which he even played during an interview with Steve Rosen in the 70s. That version was part of Cream’s last album “Goodbye”, released in 1969. In 2016, he listed that record and “Wheels of Fire” (1968) among his favorite albums of all time. That song was also a cover of a track written by Walter Vinson and Lonnie Chatmon, core members of the Mississippi Sheiks, who first recorded it in 1930.
Curiously, in 1991 Van Halen released ‘Top of the World,’ whose lyrics include the line “Standing on top of the world, for a little while”. While not a direct reference to the song, the title and that phrase are remarkably similar.
“As a guitarist, Eric Clapton was my hero because he was a straight-ahead guy. (He) must plugged his guitar straight into an amp and it was very organic, so to speak. Not putting a lot of “bs” (bullshit) in between. So, yeah, I liked him during Cream. After Cream, I kind of lost interest in him. I basically stopped listening to music altogether. I didn’t listen to much of anything after that.”
“(So) I was so busy and wrapped up in my own little world that I just didn’t eat,” Eddie Van Halen said during a session of questions and answers with What It Means to Be American in 2015 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage). Although he remained a fan of Clapton’s playing during the Cream era, he didn’t enjoy much of what he did with Derek & The Dominos or as a solo artist.