From Guitar World.com. Originally printed in Guitar World Magazine, April 2008
Thirty Years ago, Van Halen burst out of the Sunset Strip and set the music world on fire with their debut album. This is the story behind the group’s rise to success and the making of Van Halen, the record that changed guitar playing – and rock – forever.
Thirty years ago, Van Halen arrived when music was in desperate need of them. Belching fire and brimstone and fighting for their right to party while the Beastie Boys were still in middle school, their timing was impeccable. When Van Halen, the Pasadena, California–based group’s debut album, was released on February 10, 1978, there were hardly any stars in American music. The album not only made celebrities of the groups four members—it also gave new life to guitar-oriented rock and made virtuosity a criterion for any guitarist who hoped to follow in the group’s footsteps.
From the start, everything about Van Halen seemed to suggest grandness of scale: Their name, which, somewhat surprisingly, singer David Lee Roth had to convince Eddie Van Halen into using in place of the more directly sizecentric Mammoth (Eddie later admitted that his surname was the perfect choice: “It sounds huge, like an atomic bomb.”). Their outsized stage show, perfected at backyard keggers and wet
