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Eddie Van Halen: How The Mighty Have Fallen… Again

By James
Dick@SmartassRadio.com
January 31, 2008

Eddie, before his recent oral surgery and haircut. Apparently smoking crystal meth is good for tongue cancer... I'm not kidding.

I pride myself on very few things: I make an amazing spicy, thai peanut sauce, I have an incredible guitar collection, the contents of my hard drive will make Chris Hansen weep, and, most importantly, I am an objective reporter. When DJ informed me of his latest article inspired by a recent Van Halen video I insisted, neigh- demanded, neigh- bitched, that I was better suited to write the article. After all, Eddie and I share a lot in common. We’re both guitar players, we both survived the big C, and we both can’t achieve orgasm unless we slay a dog. Maintaining objectivity while watching a horrendous video is normally far from a challenge, but this one is different. Let me explain; I can’t recall the last video I saw that made me angry. Out of respect for a former idol, I had remained apathetic to the fucking high school drama that was “The Last 15 Years of Van Halen.” However the video in question opened up flood gates of hatred and anger that, had I not been alone in my room during the time of its playing, would have forced me to find the nearest living thing and kill it. The following is a series of time stamps that highlight specific areas of utter shittery. This is partially because I am working against DJ’s Third Reich protocol for a deadline, but mainly because I think forcing anyone to watch this video more than once violates an article of the Geneva Convention. Lock and load.

0:00 – 0:54
I am slowly convinced that this not an overdub of hack guitar playing. With the advent of Yngwie and Petrucci parodies, it seems that there was a temporary flux of videos featuring guitar heroes with fabricated 6 string mutilation in place of the actual audio. This video is sad, unadulterated reality. In addition to his terrible tone, it appears that Eddie is experimenting with “irony”- not only an abstract musical concept, but quite a difficult word to pronounce having only half a tongue.

Seen here is a young Edward making his mother and the guitar playing community proud.

1:23 – 2:00
Slamming the guitar strings with a drum stick. It’s nice to know that even though time has made him look more like Boris Karloff, Eddie can still muster some childish angst and piss off the head phone equipped technicians who try to maintain proper sound levels. There wasn’t anything of musical merit either, I wonder if the crowd would have applauded as loud if they saw a kid with ADD hooked up to an I.V. of Red Bull after a rousing session of whack-a-mole. At least he threw the drum stick into the crowd…eventually.

3:20 – 4:20
This is the time where Eddie wanks a little and takes a dramatic pause to allow the crowd to shower him with praise. I’m utterly amazed at the copious amount of cheers this guitar douchery is rewarded with. There is not one recognizable shred of anything musical, VH or otherwise. As a guitar dork, I actually take offense to his amp tone. EVH’s sound was arguably the most coveted of all tones during the past 30 something years; his setup was the Rosetta Stone of ultimate rock soundscapes. After this video, I am convinced that Eddie’s current touring rig consists of something resembling a guitar running into an old aquarium pump.

4:50 – 5:00
Eddie strokes out on his tremolo bar. I reminds me of the scene from National Geographic when the photographer gave a monkey a fax machine.

5:10 – 6:00
Holy shit. Wait! He plays “Cathedral”! No. It’s not…wait. Yes, it is! Hold on he- wait. Yeah! It is “Cathedral”, he’s play- wait. No. It’s almost like he’s trying to- NO! It’s definitely Cathed- oh. Well, maybe he’s just…wait! It almost sounds like…fuck.

6:20 – 6:35
He starts to play Eruption.

6:36 – 7:00
He fucks up Eruption.

7:30 – 8:09
DLR and the mongoloid Wolfgang come out to once again remind the thousands of idiots who was responsible for robbing them of their money in the hopes of seeing a guitar coup de gras. After this display of pathetic noodling, I’d rather pay to see an 11 year old mash green and red buttons in synchronization with a tune from the first Van Halen album. Especially if the 11 year old is hot. And Asian.