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As for the first guitar I actually bought, I believe it was a Cherry Red Kramer! I think I bought it because Eddie Van Halen played Kramer, and I remember it had a Rockinger tremolo on it.
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.
For a long time, when I was very young, I went to go see arena rock bands. I was 16, and it was all I could get in to see, legally. And I saw Led Zeppelin and Ted Nugent and Van Halen and all that.
If I would have ever dreamed that I wouldn't be in Van Halen anymore and was going to have resume my solo career again, I would have never contributed anything towards my own greatest hits package.
I was lucky to start playing guitar in the Eighties when so many great players were around to inspire me, like Yngwie Malmsteen, Van Halen and especially Dave Murray and Adrian Smith of Iron Maiden.
It wasn't until the fourth or fifth Van Halen record that people would go, 'Wow! You're singing backgrounds on those records. That's not David Lee Roth.' And I go, 'Hell, no! That's not David Lee Roth.'
I've been playing for aeons now, but way, way back, I remember Eddie Van Halen came out ,and I loved his playing. He was amazing. But then everyone started copying his guitars with Floyds, and I didn't.
When I left Van Halen, I went in the studio and made a CD called Marching to Mars with all studio musicians. I did it immediately. With the disappointment riding on my shoulders of the breakup of the band.
When I was a kid, I was obsessed with heavy metal, Van Halen, Motley Crue. The older I got, my tastes widened. I always felt an attraction to the attitudes of punk; also punk filmmakers, like Richard Kern.
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.
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.
Nothing's changed from when I'm seven years old to now. Nothing's changed at all. I like the same stuff that I did - Kiss, Van Halen, 'Happy Days,' 'Laverne & Shirley,' 'The Brady Bunch,' monsters and all that stuff.
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.
I never imagined in my wildest dreams when I was 17 watching Van Halen at a Donington Park rock festival and seeing Sammy Hagar later on when I was in the United States playing that I would end up with a band of guys I bought albums of.
The Alanis Morissette tour, everybody thinks that was all sitting around, lighting candles and talking intelligently about synergy and big words. That band was so gnarly. We were such scumbags. Alanis had no idea. We were like Van Halen.
Just about every rock band and every guitar player from 1964 to 1984. To me, that's the golden period of rock. From the first Beatles album hitting America to the last Van Halen album with David Lee Roth. That's where all my favorite rock exists.
It comes back to the same old question people are always asking me: 'When are you going to do a solo record?' Well, if I did, it would probably be similar to 'Baluchitherium,' meaning it would be Van Halen music - which I write anyway - but without singing.
I have gotten nothing but love since I was diagnosed from the whole metal community. I guess that is true about both David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen. David was very kind to me especially when I was limping and falling and when my hands started getting weak.
On 'Van Halen,' I was a young punk, and everything revolved around the fastest kid in town, gunslinger attitude. But I'd say that at the time of 'Fair Warning,' I started concentrating more on songwriting. But I guess in most people's minds I'm just a gunslinger.
David Lee Roth had the idea that if you covered a successful song, you were half way home. C'mon - Van Halen doing 'Dancing in the Streets'? It was stupid. I started feeling like I would rather bomb playing my own songs than be successful playing someone else's music.
Flying Colors is more alternative pop with a prog edge. Think the Beatles meets U2 meets Muse and Foo Fighters. It is the opposite of Adrenaline Mob, which has more classic metal influences like Black Sabbath, Van Halen, Pantera, or Disturbed. They are completely different ends of spectrum.
More and more, I enjoy hearing people who are good at their instruments and who've found a distinctive voice. 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.
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.
I love players like Thurston Moore. I mean, you can put notes down on a sheet of paper, and if you practice and get your chops up, you can play like an Eddie Van Halen or a Steve Vai. But nobody can do what Thurston Moore does; he's his own guy. He talks through his instrument in a language that's all his own.
I was in school with Dweezil Zappa, Frank Zappa's son, and we had a band. Only in L.A. could stuff like that happen. We would hang out in Frank Zappa's studio, and we released a single in 1982 on his label. I was 12, and that was the first recording experience I had. To top it off, Eddie Van Halen produced it.