Eddie Van Halen Born: Guitar's Great Innovator

Eddie Van Halen 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. Born on January 26, 1955, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, he emigrated with his family to Pasadena, California, in 1962. His father was a working musician, and both Eddie and his brother Alex took classical piano lessons before switching to guitar and drums, respectively. Eddie practiced obsessively, reportedly eight hours a day throughout his teenage years. He developed techniques that guitarists were still studying decades later, most notably two-handed tapping, a method of playing notes with both hands on the fretboard that produced rapid, fluid passages impossible to achieve with conventional picking. He also pioneered the use of the whammy bar as a melodic tool rather than a special effect and built his own guitars because no commercially available instrument produced the sound he heard in his head. The "Frankenstrat," his most famous creation, was assembled from parts of different guitars and became one of the most recognizable instruments in rock history. Van Halen's debut album, produced by Ted Templeman, sold over 10 million copies. The band went on to sell over 80 million albums worldwide, with hits spanning two eras: the David Lee Roth years and the Sammy Hagar years. Eddie's guitar tone, achieved through modified amplifiers and home-built equipment, was so distinctive that it spawned an entire generation of imitators. He battled tongue cancer beginning in 2000 and was in treatment for various cancers for two decades. He died on October 6, 2020, in Santa Monica, California, at age 65.