Eddie Van Halen Born: Guitar's Great Innovator
He played "Eruption" in front of audiences who had no idea what they were hearing. The two-minute guitar solo on Van Halen's debut album in 1978 redefined what the electric guitar could do. Eddie Van Halen had practiced eight hours a day since he was a child. He invented techniques — two-handed tapping, the way he used the whammy bar — that guitarists were still studying decades later. He built his own guitars because he couldn't find ones that worked the way he needed. He was battling cancer for fourteen years before he died in October 2020 at 65.
January 26, 1955
71 years ago
What Else Happened on January 26
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