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The 5 bands that Eddie Van Halen said he liked in the 90s
One of the most influential guitarists of all time, Eddie Van Halen changed the course of guitar playing after the release of Van Halen’s self-titled debut album in 1978. In the following years he shocked guitar players all over the world even more as the new albums were coming out. Countless guitarists tried to emulate his playing especially during the 80s and to this day he is a huge inspiration for musicians.
Although he played Rock and Hard Rock music, Eddie had a really broad taste for music and showed that back in the 90s, when he revealed which were groups that he liked back then.
The 5 bands that Eddie Van Halen said he liked in the 90s
Soundgarden
Back in 1995, Van Halen was promoting “Balance”, their final album with Sammy Hagar. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Eddie Van Halen was asked about the current state of music and he mentioned a few groups he liked. The first one was Soundgarden, the group which had Chris Cornell on vocals.
“I don’t write like any of them (the bands mentioned), either. And I don’t know where my shit comes from. I almost get into a meditative trance. But wherever it comes from, it does not sound like Pearl Jam or Soundgarden or anyone else,” Eddie Van Halen said.
Eddie and Cornell became really good friends around the 00s and early 2000s. They wanted to record something together and that finally happened in 2009 on Cornell’s solo album “Scream”. Eddie recorded some parts for a song but the Soundgarden frontman never recorded the vocals for it.
In 2024, his brother Alex Van Halen revealed that they jammed with Cornell a couple of times. He couldn’t precise when it was but it was shortly before Cornell’s death.
“Chris was in a very fragile part of his life, so to speak. I got behind the drums, and he started playing bass. We played for 45 minutes. This motherfucker got so into it he started bleeding. I said, ‘This is the man you want.’ And then he died,” Alex Van Halen said.
Peter Gabriel
Another artist mentioned by Eddie was the original Genesis vocalist Peter Gabriel. The musician praised many times over the decades Gabriel’s solo album “So”, released in 1986. He particularly loved the track “Red Rain”, which he presented to his son Wolgang Van Halen when he was still young.
“This is one of my favourite albums, because it was one of my father’s favourite albums of all time. I’ll never forget him coming up to me one night with these huge headphones and going, ‘Wolf, put these one.’ And he put the headphones on my head and cranked the first song ‘Red Rain’.”
“The soundscape of it is incredible. Everybody should do that at least once in their life. Put an amazing pair of headphones on and crank Red Rain. It’s very hard to listen to now my father is gone. But that album front to back is Peter Gabriel at his finest,” Wolfgang Van Halen told Classic Rock.
Eddie mentioned “So” in an interview with Guitar Tricks Insider magazine as one of the 6 albums that were some of his favorites. Other famous tracks of the record are: “Sledgehammer”, “Don’t Give Up”, “Mercy Street”, “Big Time” and “In Your Eyes”.
Pearl Jam
The late guitarist also mentioned the Grunge band Pearl Jam but he was not aware about who were the members of the group at the time. When asked by Rolling Stone about Stone Gossard, he said: “I like them, but the guitar playing in particular never really hit me. I like Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, but I don’t even know who are the guitarists”.
Gossard was a big fan of Van Halen and even told Classic Rock once that he believed they were the greatest live Rock band of all time. “I knew Eddie Van Halen had been battling cancer for a long time, so I was shocked. But I wasn’t totally shocked that he had passed away.”
“I don’t think there was a better live music experience (Than Van Halen). Just in terms of hitting all the marks of bringing people together, totally joyous, groovy, light-hearted, whimsical. Van Halen were the greatest live rock band of all time,” Stone Gossard said.
At the time Pearl Jam had released only three studio albums: “Ten” (1991), “Vs. (1993) and “Vitalogy” (1994).
Tori Amos
Besides Peter Gabriel, the singer Tori Amos was one of the artists that Eddie told Steve Baltin in 2009 that blew him away. “I love Tori Amos, not everything she does,” he said.
The American singer, keyboardist and pianist started her career in 1978, the same year Van Halen released their debut album. However, she only had the chance to release her first album in 1992. Since then she has released 15 studio albums and some of her most famous songs are “Silent All These Years”, “God” and “Cornflake Girl”. Her most successful track is “A Sorta Fairytale”, which was released in 2002 on her album “Scarlet’s Walk”.
Live
The final band mentioned by Eddie Van Halen was Live, which at the time had released three studio albums, including “Throwi ng Copper” (1994), their most successful record. The album sold an estimated amount of more than 8 million copies worldwide. It had famous tracks like “Selling the Drama”, “I Alone”, “Lightning Crashes” and “All Over You”.</p>
In the past three decades the group released six more studio albums, the most recent one being “The T urn” in 2014. However, the only original and classic member of the group nowadays is the guitarist Ed Kowalczyk.
