Classical Composer Reacts to Eruption & You Really Got Me (VAN HALEN) | The Daily Doug Episode 567 

At Smithsonian Ed said 15

Eddie was blues based and couldn't read music. I think your thinking of Randy....... HE BROUGHT THE CLASSICAL. BARELY USED A TREMOLO AND WAS CLASSICALLY TRAINED AND NEVER MISSED A NOTE. now go watch Van Halen at the US festival. They sounded like SHITE😮😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Good point!!!!!

ABSOLUTELY......his backing vocals are as much of the sound of Van Halen as is Eddie's guitar and Dave's squeal.

Michael Anthony is Van Halen's best singer

Truth. Crazy shit like Eddie’s playing needs to be grounded in something or it’s just noise.

Sure did. Well said

Agreed

Live version is good, but the studio version is still king 😊

Absolutely

Absolutely, especially when he started to combine it later on with the Mean Street intro. And the most iconic thing is that Eddie always ENJOYED himself so very much. Always a broad smile on stage, like he was a kid in a toyshop. He looked and made it look so effortless, yet totally impossible to reach... When he died, it really hurted.

The thing that is amazing is that Eddie never played Eruption the same way twice in concert. The version from Live Without a Net has riffs from many different songs, which shows how amazing he really was when you consider the version on the debut is under 2 mins and he would expand it in concert.

Listened to it every day in 9th grade,and still on my playlist at 58...🎛🎸🥁🎙🎶😜

​@Maryann Turton 54 yrs old here and started really listening to them in 1982. Heard songs from this album, but really didn't listen to if from front to back till somewhere in 1984 in

​@Maryann Turton 54 yrs old here and started really listening to them in 1982. Heard songs from this album, but really didn't listen to if from front to back till somewhere in 1984 in

​@Maryann Turton 54 yrs old here and started really listening to them in 1982. Heard songs from this album, but really didn't listen to if from front to back till somewhere in 1984 in

I would love to see Doug’s response to the car horn intro to ‘Runnin’ With the Devil’. He would probably be able to pitch identify it.

Well said my friend

Facts. Eddie is hands down the most influential guitar player, if not overall musician in history.

@quix99 .....WOW, that is a huge statement, hands down??? I don't know about that, and this is from me, an 80's kid who played in a high school/college cover band, and had a flying V red guitar with strips of electrical tape on it!! (red for Sammy Hagar, pre-van halen, and the tape to pay homage to Eddie). I mean if you were to say from 80's moving forward until today, I probably would be on board, but lets look at all time......... First and foremost you have to start with Robert Johnson, the greatest blues guitarist of all time and one of rock’s founding fathers from the pre-World War II Delta blues era. Then not long after in the same era you got Charlie Christian, pretty much the father of electric guitar, I mean he wasn't the first to plug in, but his style of increased volume and sustain and amplification that is more familiar with todays rock, than classic blues, put the guitar on a level playing field with customary soloing instruments like the trumpet and saxophone. Those two became huge influences for the likes of B.B. King and Chuck Berry, who were both huge influences on the likes of both Jimmys, Hendrix and Page along with Eric Clapton. Eddie had never even heard rock music in his life, only classical, until his family moved from Netherlands to Pasadena CA in 1967 when he was 12yrs old, and he was introduced to his first rock song ever, a track by Cream, featuring Eric Clapton. After that though, I have a hard time thinking of any single guitarist that more kids wanted to be like, every young guitar prodigy wanted to emulate. I mean Eddie's self-described “brown” sound, over-the-top techniques, including two-handed tapping, , and revolutionary trem-bar effects inspired a generation of aspiring guitarists who bought the one-pickup, one-volume-knob, Floyd Rose-equipped Strat-style guitars that Van Halen made famous!! No doubt he will have GOAT status well into our great grandkids lifetime, but I don't think that could be possible without mentioning those others, just my two cents though. ✌️💚

then why are people saying rhoads did it better

It’s gone in phases. Link Wray brought the power chord back in the 50’s

He was actually 22 when he recorded VH I

Yes it’s an incredible song and astonishing performance done in a single take too. Unbelievable playing and talent. EVH is King

Super under rated song. My favorite on the album

I'm the One and the solo in Ice Cream Man are up there with Eruption, totally original, unprecedented playing, game-changing album

One of the best guitar intros ever. The D.O.A. intro is right up there too.

It was an intended FILLER on the album created by Edward in '74. So he was 19 when he made that. And YES he was tapping in '74. He said so himself.

Eddie also had a smile on all the time!

Hehe😅

That’s totally true. I’m a huge Kinks fan and saw them at least 10 times starting in 1982 and most of the times Ray introduced the song as a Van Halen cover. Always got a laugh.

The reason Ray did that was tongue in cheek He was asked once why they played a Van Halen song in the Kinks shows . He had to explain he wrote it 14 years before the VH version was recorded.

Reminds me of when The Zutons played Valerie with Mark Ronson on rhythm guitar and introducing him as the guy who wrote this song

So THATS how Alex gets his snare sound. Most impressive.

I saw them in Corpus Christi with Black Sabbath but only from the 5th row. Eddie and the band were amazing. Saw them on the Van Halen 2 tour in '79 also.

It was so cool to see them step up from the bar-sized and backyard venues but before they became arena sized. They out on a hell of a show no matter where and what size.

Boston

The Doors and The Pretenders debuts are barn burners too.

Appetite for Destruction was a pretty big opening record. But VH I especially at the time of the release was mind-blowing. Plus, every song is good, which is rare for an opening album where they focused so hard on trying to get that one banger out for the radio.

Yea! They even did it live when standing around sometimes or for the cameras to show off in four part harmony lol. "Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello.....HELLO!"

Yea. This.

Love the Kinks too, but VH really just owned Your Really Got Me - the Kinks never recovered their song as people now only really know this version…

I’ll never forget it, it was the paradigm shifting moment of my life

100% agree

Cathedral is the real mind blowing solo for me. I play guitar since 1985, and even though I've never tried playing Eruption on its own I can hear it and know exactly what he's doing and know with practice I could pull it off. Cathedral is just..... different. The syncopation of delay, fingers and volume knob is like learning a whole other instrument.

But its all his instrumentals thrown together. All the hacks on YT always title it as Eruption

US Festival live solo is way better .

​@@akfreed6949 Agreed! That's the ultimate version.

That is a precious nugget. Wow! I never knew.

They didn't "tune" to any specific note. From song to song, the tuning varies. Eddie detuned the b string on Running with the devil such that the major triads would be tuned to the natural third as opposed to the equal tempered third. Eddie truly understood music

Also, many of the early acdc albums had varying tuning

@@joex9865 Eddie was an outspoken critic of traditional guitar tuning. He thought it was dumb.

@@joex9865 Yes I know that, Night Stalker in particular comes to mind.

Boogie body and neck, they made the bodies and necks for Charvel back then.

The body and neck were both Charvel seconds.

@@kmoecub Lin Ellsworth sold the body for $50 (had a knot in it) and the neck for $80. Charvel were making bodies for Boogie Bodies and Dimarzio at the time.

You remind me of a co-worker many years ago. Loved the Kinks, hated Van Halen (referred to them as Van Headache lol), only because they covered his beloved band's hit song.

The great thing about Eddie, Michael and Alex was that they all had fantastic timing … Michael’s work on Running With the Devil is almost robotic that he is so steady on his timing…

Alex's snare is also pretty much unique. Rick Beato has a great video about it

I saw them in 2012 with Roth. It was disappointing. Roth talked through the songs more than he sang. If William Shatner snorted a truckload of coke and then did a cheesy Las Vegas lounge act cover show of Van Halen songs, I imagine the results would be similar. Never got to see them with Hagar, but I imagine Hagar would put on a far superior show.

By the time I was old enough to go to concerts, Dave had left the building as far as Van Halen went, but I did see him during his solo Skyscraper tour. What a showman. Just born to be an entertainer.

@@wm-nu1yf You must be a milennial or Gen Z-er. Roth is a fucking God. Go listen to their first 6 albums with him. Even their worst one, Diver Down, is superior to anything they put out with Hagar. They became a pop band with Hagar. They were the biggest band on the planet with Roth from 1978 to 1984 and had two albums that sold over 10 million copies with him (Their debut album and 1984). Go back to your parents' basement.

Early on they labeled DLR a "cheap, generic copy of Jim Dandy" the singer from Black Oak Arkansas because he behaved in a very similar way!

I also saw them on the 84 tour. When they were in Chicago. Our seats were blocked by a wall of amps, so we couldn’t even see the stage. They gave us new seats, but way in the back. Sucked, but still was able to see the show.

How is it Vivaldi-esque? Genuinely curious. I wanted Doug to expand on that.

Both Eddie and Alex were pianists

@@Jay-iq5zu For me, the hammer on/pull off part reminds me of the fast violin part towards the end of "Spring". A sequential pattern that ascends and then goes back down and the end.

@@EddieReischl Ahhh. Thank you! I never would've made that connection but the progression is very similar!

Stop, some RStars are in the 27 club. EvH was in hs 60s!

Thanks for that tip--it explains the looseness of the guitar sound. Van Halen and Eddie NEVER sounded tense.

Oh, I have a pretty good idea! It was the same for me and my friends. We were all trying to learn guitar by ourselves and the first VH album was an absolute earthquake! I’ll never forget being frozen in awe while listening to that record for the first time. At the end of Side 1, we all just sat there, dumbfounded, like, “WTF just happened?!!” It was repeated after Side 2. I’m sure there are thousands upon thousands who had that same experience, many of whom were inspired to learn guitar and probably an equal number who threw theirs into a wood chipper! 😆 R.I.P. EVH. So sorely missed…

If he reacts to "Little Guitars", I wonder if he'll hear the same Debussy influence that I do at the beginning and at the end of the acoustic intro.

was he like randy