Spitfire asked me if I had a problem talking about Van Halen or Extreme. I really don't. There are people who are just going to want to know what it was like to play with Eddie.
These days I don't look to other people with the objective of trying to steal their licks, although I've got no objections to stealing them if that seems like a good idea. I'm sure that I'm still influenced by Mark Knopfler and Eddie Van Halen as well......I can't play like Eddie Van Halen. I wish I could. I sat down to try some of those ideas and can't do it. I don't know if I could ever get any of that stuff together. Sometimes I think I should work at the guitar more.
Greg Ginn was certainly a huge influence on my guitar playing. I put him up there with people like Eddie Van Halen. Eddie Van Halen changed everything; I don't necessarily like everything he did, but he definitely changed everything.
My heroes were Eddie Van Halen - especially after Van Halen I, II, III, and IV - Randy Rhoads, Ace Frehley and dudes like that. My brother played drums and we jammed in the garage and started writing our own stuff.
At some point I decided I didn't want to learn any more guitar technique. I was at that level where the next mountain there was to climb was Van Halen and I didn't really like Van Halen.
When I was 13, I was just figuring out how to play 'Eruption,' poorly, by Eddie Van Halen.
So everybody is trying to play like Eddie Van Halen. I think it's rubbish. I think Eddie's great, but everyone's trying to do what he does and it doesn't make for a lot of interesting music.
It's hard to say this about a guy like Eddie Van Halen, one of the greatest guitar players who ever lived, but he's really limited to a style and they're locked into it.
To me, the secret of Eddie Van Halen was Alex Van Halen, because the way Alex played was so loose and the way the two of them locked together... Those two are connected so thoroughly they might as well be one person.
If you really stop to think about it, the last really big guitar hero was Eddie Van Halen, and that was back in the '80s - early '80s, you know what I mean? That's a long time ago.
Classic Van Halen made people want to dance and f**k. Modern Van Halen makes you want to drink milk and drive foreign cars.
Van Halen was a huge influence on me, and 'Eruption' was the song that really leaped off that first Van Halen album.
I had a solo career before Van Halen. My fan base filtered through Van Halen with me and came right on out the other side with me.
In death metal, a lot of guys are Eddie Van Halen disciples, but they take his style to really expressionistic places. It's a real pleasure for me to hear people pushing their craft.
That song ["Don't Tell Me"] didn't take us anywhere, and I know why now. It wasn't what Van Halen fans wanted. It showed the darkness of Van Halen, and basically the end of the band.
However you feel about Dimebag, this is one of the most influential metal guitar players of the '90s. I was just talking to someone that I am hiring to bring on the tour who said that, when he was at the funeral, that Eddie Van Halen came and put his striped guitar in the coffin. That's a pretty big deal.
In my world, before I knew about Eddie Van Halen, I was playing piano, and at that point in my teenage life, I thought he was just a guitar player.