AT 23, EDDIE VAN HALEN 

SET THE BAR FOR ROCK GUITAR WITH “ERUPTION,” HIS MASTERPIECE OF FRETBOARD TAPPING AND PYROTECHNIC MELODIC FLASH. GUITAR WORLD HELPS YOU RISE TO HIS CHALLENGE WITH THIS IN-DEPTH LESSON

By JIMMY BROWN

EVER SINCE EDDIE Van Halen shook the world of rock with his explosive guitar extravaganza “Eruption” (Van Halen, 1978), the guitarist’s mostly unaccompanied cadenza-style performance has stood as the genre’s most celebrated expression of technical innovation and stylistic flair. In the course of one minute and 42 seconds, Van Halen — armed with his custombuilt ax, cranked-up tube amp and subtly applied electronic effects — elevated rock lead guitar playing from a folk tradition to a fine art. With his bigger-than-life tone and unorthodox, virtuoso playing techniques, some of which were completely alien to most guitarists at the time, the brilliant young Californian created a musical masterpiece marked by breathtaking, vibrant soundscapes and sophisticated, classical-flavored melodic inventions. With “Eruption,” Van Halen inspired and influenced an entire generation of high-tech guitarists and raised the proverbial bar in terms of what constitutes “flash” guitar playing and great tone.

In this lesson, we’ll give some background on how Eddie created this sonic masterpiece and point out some of the highlights of our allnew transcription of “Eruption” that begins on page 82 and cover the various techniques Van Halen used to perform each section of the piece. Before we get into the music, however, we’ll delineate the relevant gear the guitarist employed to achieve the sublime and seemingly elusive tone featured on this classic recording. This interesting information will hopefully give you some ideas about how you might be able to closely replicate Van Halen’s “Eruption” sound with the equipment available to you.

DR. VAN HALEN’S MONSTER

EDWARD RECORDED “ERUPTION” on his homemade “Frankenstein” (a.k.a., Frankenstrat) guitar, a lean, mean fighting machine he assembled himself in 1975 from what were then relatively cheap and readily available parts. The ax — which was Ed’s main guitar during the Van Halen period — sported a Charvel Stratocaster–style ash body and an extrawide maple neck that was crafted by Linn Ellsworth of Boogie Body Guitars and outfitted with Gibson jumbo frets and Schaller tuners. Onto the guitar’s body Van Halen mounted, in the bridge position, a single P.A.F. humbucking pickup from a 1961 Gibson ES-335, the coils of which he rewound himself and dipped in paraffin wax to help insulate the pickup from the microphonic feedback that can occur when playing with distortion at high volume.

Because the guitar’s body was pre-routed to house three Strat-style single-coil pickups, Edward had to remove additional wood from the angled bridge pickup slot in order for it to accommodate the much wider P.A.F. pickup. The guitar sported a single volume control from an old Gibson Les Paul Jr. and did not have a tone control. Although Edward would later pioneer the use of the now-popular Floyd Rose tremolo bridge system in his whammyinflected guitar solos, the Frankenstrat was equipped during the period that he recorded Van Halen with a traditional Fender tremolo bridge cannibalized from a ’57 Strat. To help stabilize the bridge and keep the strings in tune, Eddie cleverly wedged a quarter under it.