Edward (Eddie) Lodewijk Van Halen, (born January 26, 1955) is a Dutch guitarist and a founding member of the hard rock band Van Halen.
Edward Van Halen was born to a Dutch father (Jan) and an Indonesian mother (Eugina) in Nijmegen, Netherlands. The Dutch Roman Catholic Van Halen family moved to Pasadena, California, from The Netherlands in 1962.
He immediately started classical piano training, and won several talent competitions as a child (although during a radio interview he stated he cannot read music notation). Upon their arrival in America, his parents immediately sought a piano tutor for him and his older brother, Van Halen drummer Alex Van Halen.
However, playing the piano did not prove sufficiently engaging - he once said in an interview, "Who wants to sit in front of the piano? That's boring. Consequently, whilst Alex began playing the guitar, Eddie bought a drumset and began studying drumming.
According to Eddie, while he was delivering newspapers (to pay for his drum kit) Alex would practice on it. After Eddie heard Alex's performance of the The Surfaris' drum solo in the song "Wipe Out", he grew annoyed that his brother had overtaken his ability and decided to switch and begin learning how to play the electric guitar.
Eddie was approximately twelve years of age when he started playing guitar - allegedly practicing during every free moment.
He once claimed that he had learned almost all of Eric Clapton's solos in the band Cream "note for note" by age 14; however in other interviews he contradicted this by stating he could never play the solos precisely, instead he would modify them somewhat to suit his style
In an April 1996 interview with Guitar World, when asked about how he went from playing his first open G chord to playing "Eruption", Eddie replied
"Practice. I used to sit on the edge of my bed with a six-pack of Schlitz Malt talls. My brother would go out at 7 P.M. to party and get laid, and when he'd come back at 3 A.M., I would still be sitting in the same place, playing guitar. I did that for years — I still do that."
He has many influences; most notably Eric Clapton, however he has also acknowledged the influence of Queen guitarist Brian May and fusion guitarist Allan Holdsworth (of whom he has said: "He's the best in my book.")
The band was formed in 1974 and was originally called Mammoth - a three-piece consisting of Eddie Van Halen on guitars and vocals, Alex Van Halen on drums, and bass player Mark Stone.
They had no P.A. system of their own, so they rented one from David Lee Roth (who had auditioned for the band, but failed - Eddie quickly became frustrated singing lead vocals, and decided they could save
money by letting Roth (and by extension the P.A. system) into the band.
Bassist Michael Anthony replaced Mark Stone as the bass player and backup vocalist for Mammoth.
They opted to change the name of the band, reportedly due to another band operating with the same name - Roth is normally attributed with suggesting the name 'Van Halen'.
A picture paints a thousand words.
"A video - a million pictures" M.de Jager 2006
Edward Van Halen's approach to the guitar involved several distinctive components. His innovative two-handed tapping techniques, use of natural and artificial harmonics, speed, melodicism, and rhythmic sensibility influenced an entire generation of guitarists.
Van Halen has claimed he developed his signature tapping approach after studying the guitar solo from the Led Zeppelin song 'Heartbreaker' (played by Jimmy Page):
" think I got the idea of tapping watching Jimmy Page do his "Heartbreaker" solo back in 1971. He was doing a pull-off to an open string, and I thought wait a minute, open string ... pull off. I can do that, but what if I use my finger as the nut and move it around ?... I just kind of took it and ran with it."
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