Grow­ing up around met­al­heads gave me an appre­ci­a­tion for the gui­tar hero­ics of bands like Metal­li­ca, Iron Maid­en, Judas Priest, etc. But one band every­one loved, I didn’t get. David Lee Roth, Sam­my Hagar (let’s not speak of the Cherone era)… it didn’t mat­ter to me. Van Halen seemed to be hav­ing way too much sleazy fun to fit my nar­row ideas of met­al. No spikes, no skulls, no black mass­es. “Run­nin’ with the Dev­il” sounds like a camp­fire song, I said….

Sit down, they said, shut up, and lis­ten to “Erup­tion.” So I did. And I said, Oh. Then I lis­tened care­ful­ly to all the rest. I didn’t become a fan of Van Halen, the band. But it was obvi­ous that Eddie Van Halen him­self, who passed away yes­ter­day from can­cer at the age of 65, deserves the rep­u­ta­tion as the most inno­v­a­tive gui­tarist since Hen­drix. His end­less cre­ativ­i­ty pow­ered the band through its tumul­tuous line­up changes; his play­ing com­plete­ly changed the design of met­al gui­tars, not to men­tion the met­al solo; his DIY gui­tar designs turned him into a builder of his own line of gui­tars and ampli­fiers.

There didn’t seem to be any­thing he couldn’t do with the instru­ment, but unlike many a gui­tar vir­tu­oso, Van Halen was entire­ly self-taught. “Nine­ty per­cent of the things that I do on gui­tar, if I had tak­en lessons and learned to play by the book,” he once said, “I would not play at all the way I do… Cross­ing a Gib­son with a Fend­er was out of neces­si­ty, because there was no gui­tar on the mar­ket that did what I want­ed.” He’s refer­ring to the “Franken­stein” guitar—a heav­i­ly mod­i­fied Fend­er Strat—one of many such gui­tars he built, rewired, and paint­ed to suit his needs.

Van Halen first showed off his pio­neer­ing two-hand tap­ping and vibra­to dive bombs on the first of many “Franken­strats” in “Erup­tion,” record­ed as a short instru­men­tal inter­lude between “Run­nin’ with the Dev­il” and “Jamie’s Cryin’” on the 1978 debut Van Halen. He had innu­mer­able moments of bril­liance, in the stu­dio and onstage, in decades after­ward, includ­ing his unfor­get­table gui­tar work on “Thriller” and “Beat It,” clas­sic solos that “will nev­er be matched,” as Quin­cy Jones tweet­ed in trib­ute yes­ter­day. (See “Beat It” live in a very low-qual­i­ty video above.)

But gui­tarists still turn to “Erup­tion”, again and again, as “the peak of gui­tar per­for­mance,” Esquire’s cul­ture edi­tor Matt Miller writes. “It’s true,” Miller con­cedes, “there were no short­ages of self-indul­gent gui­tar solos in the ‘70s, but this one changed the game of how they would sound and what they would mean, head­ing in to the ‘80s. Every solo that fol­lowed would try to emu­late the sound of Eddie’s mind-melt­ing ‘Erup­tion.’” Van Halen insist­ed the solo wasn’t as com­pli­cat­ed as fans made it out to be. There remains an “entire YouTube sub­cul­ture ded­i­cat­ed to kids try­ing to play” the solo, to mas­ter the tone and tech­nique of the man who may have been the most met­al gui­tarist of them all.

We’ve bare­ly touched on Van Halen’s lega­cy as a soloist and inven­tor of weird gui­tars, sounds and effects, and not at all on his equal­ly impor­tant roles as a show­man, song­writer, key­board play­er, and rhythm gui­tarist. No mat­ter how ridicu­lous­ly fast and tech­ni­cal met­al becomes, or how many extra strings play­ers add to Eddie’s six, no one has ever matched his lev­el of style and inven­tion. It is no less the case in 2020 as it was in the late 70s that one can point to his solos and say, “with no hyper­bole,” writes Miller, “this is shred­ding.” Tru­ly, shred­ding was Eddie Van Halen’s very essence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

15-Year-Old French Gui­tar Prodi­gy Flaw­less­ly Rips Through Solos by Eddie Van Halen, David Gilmour, Yng­wie Malm­steen & Steve Vai

Musi­cal Come­di­an Reg­gie Watts Rein­vents Van Halen’s Clas­sic, “Pana­ma”

The Evo­lu­tion of the Rock Gui­tar Solo: 28 Solos, Span­ning 50 Years, Played in 6 Fun Min­utes

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

A too-pre­cious genre of inter­net meme has depart­ed pub­lic fig­ures who did not know each oth­er in life meet­ing in heav­en with hugs, high-fives, and winc­ing­ly earnest exchanges. These sen­ti­men­tal vignettes are almost too easy to par­o­dy, a kitschy ver­sion of the “what if” game, as in: what if two cre­ative genius­es could col­lab­o­rate in ways they nev­er did before they died?

What if John Lennon had formed a band with Eric Clap­ton—as Lennon him­self had once pro­posed? Or what if a Jimi Hendrix/Miles Davis col­lab­o­ra­tion had come off, as Hen­drix envi­sioned the year before his death? More than just fan­ta­sy base­ball, the exer­cise lets us spec­u­late about how musi­cians who influ­enced each oth­er might evolve if giv­en the chance to jam indef­i­nite­ly.

When it comes to Miles, there are few who haven’t been influ­enced by the jazz great, whether they know it or not. Prince Rogers Nel­son knew it well. The son of a jazz pianist, Prince grew up with Miles’ music. Although he “grav­i­tat­ed to the worlds of rock, pop, and R&B,” writes pianist Ron Dro­tos, Prince “seems to have seen jazz as a way to express him­self in a broad­er way than he could through more com­mer­cial styles alone.”

Prince was so inter­est­ed in explor­ing jazz—and Davis’ par­tic­u­lar form of jazz—in the 80s that he formed a band anony­mous­ly, called Mad­house (actu­al­ly just him and horn play­er Eric Leeds), and released two albums of fusion instru­men­tals. The influ­ence went both ways. “Miles con­sid­ered Prince to have the poten­tial to become anoth­er Duke Elling­ton and even mod­eled his own 1980’s music part­ly on Prince’s style,” with 1986’s Tutu stand­ing out as an exam­ple. What if the two musi­cians had worked togeth­er? Can you imag­ine it?

They did not—to our knowl­edge, although Prince’s vault is vast—collaborate on an album, but they did cre­ate one stu­dio track togeth­er, “Can I Play With U?” And the two vir­tu­oso com­posers and musi­cians jammed togeth­er onstage, once, at Pais­ley Park, on New Year’s Eve, 1987. The con­cert was a ben­e­fit for the Min­neso­ta Coali­tion for the Home­less and the last time Prince per­formed the Sign O’ the Times stage show. At the tail end of the con­cert, Davis steps onstage for “an ice-cold appear­ance,” Okay­play­er notes. “As a com­pan­ion to the release of a deluxe edi­tion” of the album, “the late icon’s estate has relin­quished the full two-hour-plus set.”

Watch the con­cert at the top (trust me, don’t just skip ahead to see Davis at 1:43:50). Just above, you can see an hour­long “pre-show” taped with Maya Rudolph, “life­long Prince devo­tee,” Emmy-win­ning come­di­an, and daugh­ter of Min­nie Rip­per­ton. Oth­er guests include Prince’s long­time side­man and col­lab­o­ra­tor on his jazz project, Eric Leeds. “If you’re here, then you’re cool, like me,” Rudolph jokes, “and you know a lot about Prince.” Or maybe you don’t. Let Rudolph and her guests fill you in, and imag­ine Prince and Davis mak­ing celes­tial jazz-funk for­ev­er, between high-fives, in the Great Beyond.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aca­d­e­m­ic Jour­nal Devotes an Entire Issue to Prince’s Life & Music: Read and Down­load It for Free

When Miles Davis Dis­cov­ered and Then Chan­neled the Musi­cal Spir­it of Jimi Hen­drix

In 1969 Telegram, Jimi Hen­drix Invites Paul McCart­ney to Join a Super Group with Miles Davis

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Are great artists born, or are they made? Prob­a­bly a lit­tle of both, but I sus­pect that deep down, even if we don’t like to admit it, we know it’s prob­a­bly a lit­tle more the for­mer. We can become skilled at most any­thing with ded­i­ca­tion and hard work. Tal­ent is anoth­er matter—a mys­te­ri­ous com­bi­na­tion of qual­i­ties we know when we hear but can’t always define. Ella Fitzger­ald had it when she first stepped on stage on ama­teur night at Harlem’s Apol­lo The­ater as a teenag­er, intend­ing to do a tap dance rou­tine.

She’d only done the per­for­mance on a dare, had no for­mal train­ing out­side of singing in church, her bed­room, and the Harlem streets, and she only chose to sing that night because the act before her did a tap dance and stole her thun­der.

She blew the audi­ence away—a tough New York crowd not known for being forgiving—and ren­dered even the bois­ter­ous teenagers in the bal­cony speech­less. “Three encores lat­er,” she wrote, “the $25 prize was mine.” Fitzgerald’s gold­en, three-octave voice, impec­ca­ble tim­ing, and impro­vi­sa­tion­al bril­liance are not exact­ly the kinds of things that can be taught.

She didn’t look the part of the typ­i­cal female jazz singer, at least accord­ing to pop­u­lar per­cep­tion, writes Hol­ly Glea­son at NPR. “A large woman who’d grown up rough,” includ­ing time spent in a New York State refor­ma­to­ry, she was reject­ed by band­lead­ers even after that first, rev­e­la­to­ry per­for­mance, and the press fre­quent­ly referred to her in terms that dis­par­aged her appear­ance. “Fitzger­ald rec­og­nized she didn’t pos­sess Bil­lie Holiday’s torchy allure,” Hol­ly Glea­son writes, or “Eartha Kitt’s fer­al sen­su­al­i­ty or Car­men McRae’s sex appeal. But that would not stop the woman who took her vocal cues from the horns, as well as from jazz singer Con­nee Boswell.”

It did­n’t stop her from win­ning a Gram­my in the Gram­my’s first year, or hav­ing a record label, Verve, found­ed just to put out her music. Ella’s range and pitch-per­fect ear meant she could imi­tate not only the horn sec­tion or her favorite singer Boswell but just about any­one else as well, from pop­u­lar jazz singer Rose Mur­phy, with her high, car­toon­ish voice, “chee chee” affec­ta­tions, and “brrrp” tele­phone sound effects, to the low, grav­el­ly rasp of Fitzgerald’s long­time duet part­ner Louis Arm­strong. See her do exact­ly that in the clip at the top, mov­ing effort­less­ly in “I Can’t Give You Any­thing but Love, Baby” from her own voice, to Murphy’s, to Armstrong’s in the space of just a few min­utes.

What­ev­er obsta­cles Fitzger­ald faced, her voice seemed to soar above it all. In becom­ing a glob­al jazz star and “The First Lady of Song,” says jazz writer Will Fried­wald, “she showed peo­ple that this is music Amer­i­cans should be proud of.”

via Ben Phillips

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Ella Fitzgerald’s Lost Inter­view about Racism & Seg­re­ga­tion: Record­ed in 1963, It’s Nev­er Been Heard Until Now

Ella Fitzger­ald Sings ‘Sum­mer­time’ by George Gersh­win, Berlin 1968

How Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Helped Break Ella Fitzger­ald Into the Big Time (1955)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness