Another never-before-seen photo! Here’s Eddie Van Halen sitting at the white Yamaha grand piano of the late Marvin Hamlisch’s beach house in Malibu. Ed rented the house during the spring/summer of 1983. At one point, Eddie experimented with new sounds by trashing the piano. He threw everything he could find into the piano and raked various items across the strings, including ping-pong balls, D-cell batteries, and even silverware. “Strung Out”, one of the instrumentals from Balance, actually comes from hours of recordings Eddie made while destroying the piano.
Ed had the piano fixed and once claimed that Hamlisch might not have known about the incident until the song came out.
Eddie also wrote three instrumentals for The Seduction of Gina, a movie-of-the-week starring Valerie Bertinelli, at Hamlisch’s beach house.
“All Access” Van Halen photos is a weekly feature at VHND.com. Every weekend we will be posting a photo from a roadie, friend, or band insider. Many will be exclusives that have never been seen anywhere before, and some will be supplied with new captions from David Lee Roth. Tune in every weekend for more!