During a recent appearance on the Talk Is Jericho podcast Dream Theater guitarist John Petrucci and singer James LaBrie reflected on the impact of Eddie Van Halen’s music.
“We’ll never get to see that magic [again],” said Petrucci. “There’ll never be anyone that’s the same as him that had that level. I don’t know, I probably can’t even name five guys that had that level of influence. I can’t think of any guitar player that I know that wasn’t either influenced by him or blown away by what he did, just his creative spirit and innovation; the sound that he had, the tone he had, everything like that.”
LaBrie said he too was hit hard by the news of Eddie’s death on October 6th and recently took to YouTube in search of as much Eddie Van Halen footage as he could find.
“The last couple of weeks, as I’m having my coffee and my laptop in front of me, I’m just watching these videos,” said LaBrie. “And just the other day I did this; there was this video with Eddie and he’s walking through his house, and I was just experiencing this whole thing.”
“You were seeing more who the guy was, what he was into, what were his interests,” Labrie continued. “I think that’s my therapy trying to come to terms with, ‘Wow man, we lost some of the greatest people in music, so influential.’ But yeah, it was so sad.”
Petrucci later said although he didn’t know Eddie personally he was fortunate enough to meet him.
“I met him once at NAMM actually, and that was it,” said Petrucci. “I wish I had more of an opportunity to meet Eddie, to get to know him, but unfortunately, just that one time and at NAMM. He was at Peavey booth, I went up these stairs and we had a little private conversation up there. His son Wolfie is actually a Dream Theater fan.”
You can listen to the entire Petrucci and LaBrie interview on Talk Is Jericho below: