Dutch-American guitarist Eddie Van Halen has passed away at the age of 65. His son Wolfgang reports this on Twitter. The co-founder of hard rock band Van Halen had been suffering from throat cancer for years.
“He was the best father I could have wished for,” his son writes. “Every moment I shared with him was a gift. My heart is broken and I don’t think I’ll ever get over this loss.”
Edward Lodewijk van Halen, as his full name is, was born in Amsterdam. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Nijmegen. When he was 8 years old, they left for California. There he developed into a hard rock guitarist and started a rock group together with his brother Alex among others. With Van Halen, with singer David Lee Roth, he became known to the general public with hits like Jump and Runnin ‘with the Devil.
Innovator
Van Halen is seen as an innovator in rock music, partly because of his inventive application of ‘two-hand-tapping’, in which the neck of the guitar is played with both hands.
Apart from his band, Van Halen also gained great fame with his guitar solo in Beat It from Michael Jackson. He did that job voluntarily and did not save a penny.
Van Halen played a self-assembled electric guitar, the Frankenstrat. For lack of money, he combined rejected parts at the start of his career, which he continued to rebuild and improve.
The guitarist is one of the best-selling artists in the world and has been ranked eighth in the top 100 of best guitarists by music magazine Rolling Stone.
Although Van Halen had lived in the United States from a young age, he continued to speak Dutch. In an interview with Harry Vermeegen in the early 1990s, he called the Netherlands a “beautiful country”, with “delicious herring”.