By Chris Gill
[Originally written in 2020 for Guitar World. Part 1 is here. Here is Part 2, below:]
My favorite interview with Ed was a cover story for Guitar Aficionado, where he invited me to his 5150 studio to view about 40 guitars from his collection. Ed told illuminating stories about each guitar, and I quickly realized he could find the songs lurking in any instrument he touched, whether it was the Gretsch 6120 he played on “Once” or the trio of Airline guitars, each tuned to separate open chords, that he used for “Learning to See.”
I had interviewed Ed 15 times, starting in 1995 when I spoke with him about the recording of Balance for Guitar Player magazine and ending in early 2016 when he discussed details of his 2015 tour rig. However, the interview for Guitar Aficionado gave me more insight into his musical genius than any other. Ed was most comfortable discussing his instruments and innovations rather than interpersonal relations with former band members. Hearing him talk about his creative pursuits, I realized he had become frustrated with a world that wanted him to constantly retread his former glories, while his musical talents and ambitions had moved well beyond that.
This was particularly evident when he talked about the guitars he used on Van Halen III. “It’s too bad that
the album didn’t sell really well,” Van Halen said. “I probably did some of my best playing on that album. Some of the riffs are really great, like on ‘Fire in the Hole.’ I played all kinds of different guitars on ‘Ballot or the Bullet,’ from a Coral electric sitar on the intro (‘Primary’) to a National resonator guitar for acoustic slide parts.”
Considering that Van Halen III is the closest thing to a true Van Halen solo album that he ever released — Ed played most of the bass parts and even recorded some drum tracks in addition to laying down the widest variety of guitar tones ever heard from him — I believe he was crushed and even offended by his fans’ reluctance to embrace his new, more mature and progressive direction. Ed could have taken the easy way out and blamed Gary Cherone, providing more fodder for gossip rags, but instead, he became private and withdrawn, letting personal demons get the best of him.
Ultimately, Ed’s son Wolfgang became his saving grace. Ed valued family more than anything else in his life, probably because family was all he really had during his formative years after he emigrated to the United States with his father, mother, and brother in 1962. The band had become Ed’s family as well, and when other members strayed and no longer viewed it as a priority the same way he did, he felt betrayed and abandoned.
When Wolfgang was born on March 16, 1991, Ed expressed hopes that his son would become a musician too, following in his footsteps and maintaining the family’s musical legacy that stretched back to Ed’s father, Jan. Like Jan had done when christening Ed with the middle name “Lodewijk” after Ludwig van Beethoven (Lodewijk is the Dutch version of Ludwig), Ed named his son Wolfgang after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Ed never pressured Wolfgang into playing music, but he was elated when, at age 9, Wolfgang gravitated toward the drums after watching his father and uncle rehearse at 5150. Wolfgang started playing the guitar shortly afterwards, and by the time he was 13, he was good enough to accompany his father on stage during several shows on Van Halen’s 2004 tour.
Impressed by his son’s rapid musical development, Ed encouraged Wolfgang to play bass so he could jam with him and Alex. In late 2006, Ed revealed to Guitar World that Wolfgang had become Van Halen’s new bass player. Many were uncertain that Wolfgang deserved the role considering that he was only 15 at the time, but his performances on Van Halen’s subsequent 2007-08 tour — the band’s first with David Lee Roth since 1984 — proved the skeptics wrong. Hearing how good Wolfgang actually was, no one other than the most hateful curmudgeon or troll could fault Ed for wanting to play on stage with his son. The bond between the two was as musical as it was familial.
“I don’t even know how to explain how it feels to have Wolfgang follow in the footsteps of my father and me,” Ed told me in 2015. “He’s a third-generation Van Halen. When people ask me what it’s like to play with my son, all I can say is that it’s the greatest feeling you can imagine.”
While many Roth-era fans longed for a reunion of the original four members of the band, without Wolfgang, the band would very likely not have undertaken three tours and recorded A Different Kind of Truth, not to mention Tokyo Dome Live in Concert, its only official live album featuring David Lee Roth on vocals. The positive effect that Wolfgang had on Ed was particularly evident on the 2012 and 2015 tours, where the guitarist was playing better than he ever had before. Ed’s solo segment on the 2015 tour consistently showcased his playing in peak form, particularly during the band’s final concert on October 4, 2015, at the Hollywood Bowl.
Van Halen may have released only three songs in 2004 (“It’s About Time,” “Learning to See,” and “Up for Breakfast”) and one album of new material in 2012, but Ed remained creative and productive during the new millennium years in an entirely different way. After collaborating with Ernie Ball Music Man and Peavey on the design of his signature guitars and with Peavey on his 5150 amp, Ed devoted his creative energy to his own EVH brand products. EVH went well beyond the usual artist endorsement agreements and signature models by giving Ed full creative control of an entire line of musical instruments — an industry first.
With EVH, Ed approached product development with the same dedication, passion, and attention to detail that he devoted to playing and recording music. Perhaps the greatest example of this was the EVH Wolfgang guitar. Although Ed had played prototypes of the EVH Wolfgang on Van Halen’s 2007-08 tour, he did not approve the model for production until 2009. Over the two-year course of the Wolfgang’s refinement, Ed spent nine months trying out more than 80 new pickup designs until he found the right ones. Ed even had specially designed potentiometers made for the guitar — a low-friction pot for the volume control to facilitate the swells he performed on “Cathedral” and a high-friction pot for the tone control to keep it solidly in place. Every detail of the Wolfgang was painstakingly examined and refined, whether it involved moving a pickup’s mounting 1/32nd of an inch or finding the best clearcoat finish.
That attention to detail is simply unheard of among any other artist’s model guitars. And Ed’s elevated standards for quality control applied to every product that EVH offered. The proof of that was Ed’s use of an EVH Wolfgang Standard — the most affordable EVH guitar model with prices that currently start at $600 — to play “I’ll Wait” on Van Halen’s 2015 tour. Further proof lies in the 5150 III amp’s status as a standard recording studio fixture and its presence in the touring backlines of numerous bands of genres ranging from metal to country.
So-called fans and casual observers who called Ed’s EVH endeavor a “cash grab” have no idea how offensive and incorrect that characterization is. Ed could easily have put his name on just about any guitar, amp or musical product with very little effort and made millions, but he truly cared about fellow musicians as much as he cared about his own reputation. Those same standards applied across the board to everything from albums to the licensing of Van Halen’s music for films and commercials. Only two Roth-era songs have been licensed for commercials — “Runnin’ with the Devil” for the Acura NSX in 2016 and “You Really Got Me” for the Nissan 300ZX Turbo in 1996 — and both ads are undeniably cool. Ed constantly received very generous offers for money-making endeavors, but he turned down everything that he didn’t believe in 100 percent, which was likely 999,999 out of a million offers.
This is probably as good a moment as any to bring up Ed’s relationship with Guitar World. For the last 14 years, I was very privileged to work closely with Ed on all of the interviews he did with the magazine. I’ve interviewed more than 1,000 different artists over the span of 30 years, but I’ve never encountered another subject who was as dedicated to the process as he was. Most artists’ involvement with an interview starts and ends with the interview itself, but with Ed, the interview was just the beginning, as he and Matt Bruck (who started as Ed’s tech and became his EVH business partner) would work with me through various drafts like editors.
This was not because Ed was a control freak. It was because he truly cared about other guitarists, and he wanted to make sure that every detail of an article was as correct as the details were on his guitars and amps. The fact-checking process started with the 2007 feature about the gear that he used on Van Halen’s first album. Ed and Matt made numerous corrections, changes, and clarifications to that article, and it stands as the definitive account, despite the claims of self-proclaimed internet experts who never met Ed, let alone visited 5150 and saw his original Marshall head or held the original “Frankenstein” guitars in their hands.
I will admit that Ed sometimes cut information or quotes from articles, but he had good reasons for doing that. Sometimes this was done when Ed realized that his words could easily be misinterpreted and that he could potentially upset or offend fans or people he knew. More often, it was something that he either thought wasn’t all that important or that he decided not to share so he could preserve some mystique and motivate guitarists to figure some things out on their own, the way he did when he stumbled across many of his best ideas.
His desire to preserve some element of mystique is why Ed refused to participate in social media and reveal every minute detail of his personal life. In casual conversations after our interviews, he often talked about how he loved that he knew very little about bands like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath during the Seventies and how those bands left so much to fans’ imaginations. But I also think that Ed never really cared all that much for being the center of attention when he didn’t have a guitar in his hands. Ed was never comfortable with the term “rock star,” and he preferred to be described as a guitarist or — even better — as an inventor and innovator.
That mystique often led fans and the mainstream press to characterize Ed as some sort of Howard Hughes-style eccentric hermit, holed up in private within the confines of 5150, safely sealed off from the outside world by his home’s security gates. The truth is that Ed was down-to-earth and more of a regular guy than anyone could imagine. One of my favorite stories that Ed told me was about him driving his rather massive and unmissable 1947 Dodge cab-over stake-bed truck (painted bright red — what else?) to buy groceries near his home one day, only to have it break down just as he was pulling out of the parking lot, blocking both the parking lot entrance and a lane of a major avenue. I know many rock stars, nowhere near as famous as Ed, who would never go out in public like that, let alone buy their own groceries, but Ed was never a prima donna or snob.
My biggest regret of Ed’s passing is that I knew he had so much more to offer guitarists and the band’s fans, but the complications of his cancer affliction prevented that. In April of 2018, I was thrilled to be one of the first people to find out (after swearing to keep the news secret) that plans were being made for the long-awaited reunion of Ed, Al, David Lee Roth, and Michael Anthony for a massive stadium tour. Ed had lived out his dream of playing music on stage with his son for more than a decade, and now he was looking forward to finally giving fans what many of them had wanted more than anything.
About a year later, we reached out to Ed about doing an in-depth interview about the recording of Van Halen II in celebration of the album’s 40th anniversary. Matt Bruck asked me to prepare some questions in advance so Ed could refresh his memory, but before I was able to do that, Ed’s wife and publicist, Janie, notified us that Ed wouldn’t be able to do the interview. I respected Ed too much to ask for an explanation, and I knew he would contact us when he was ready to go, as he had done a few times in the past when an interview was postponed.
Unfortunately, that interview never happened. I had heard the rumors about Ed’s cancer, and I realized that, if they were true, Ed had more important matters to tend to than talking to a guitar magazine. The news that arrived on the afternoon of October 6 hit me like a ton of bricks as I realized the guitar community had lost its best friend and biggest champion, and that I would never have another opportunity to seek out his wisdom and share his insights with our readers.
I can’t speak for Ed, but I think he would like to be remembered mainly for his guitar playing, instrument inventions, and innovations. Of all the musicians he met and knew, he respected Les Paul most of all, and I believe that Ed would like history to remember him playing a comparable role to Les in the evolution of the electric guitar.
After the Smithsonian National Museum of American History honored Ed as a musical innovator and inventor on February 13, 2015, when he donated some of his guitars to the museum and participated in a conversation hosted by the museum and Zocalo Public Square, I asked Ed how he felt about the event. “To be acknowledged by the Smithsonian for my contributions to American music and pop culture is much bigger and more of an honor than any award I could think of,” he said. “It’s way beyond a Grammy or the usual music-industry awards. It’s amazing to think that I’ve contributed something to the history of this country, especially since I came here from a different country. I think it’s the highest honor you can get.”
Thank you, Ed, for all that you gave us. We love you, and we miss you.
Author Chris Gill:
Chris is the co-author of Eruption – Conversations with Eddie Van Halen., the best-selling book on Edward. He is a 40-year music industry veteran who started at Boardwalk Entertainment (Joan Jett, Night Ranger) and Roland US before becoming a guitar journalist in 1991. He has interviewed more than 600 artists, written more than 1,400 product reviews, and contributed to Jeff Beck’s Beck 01: Hot Rods and Rock & Roll and Eric Clapton’s Six String Stories.
This article, “A FAREWELL TO THE KING,” is from the highly sought-after special issue of Guitar World dedicated to Eddie Van Halen, which was published right after he passed. This issue is now only available at VanHalenStore.com.