It’s not hard to guess that many rockers who are huge fans of Eddie Van Halen would completely lose it if they had actually met him. Bon Jovi’s Phil X is one of those who had the chance. In an interview with Final Resonance TV, the guitarist talked about how he met Eddie Van Halen and how he couldn’t find any words other than ‘You are the king’ at that moment.
“So I’m looking around. I’m looking around,” said the musician, remembering the time he first met Eddie Van Halen. “And my buddy Ross [Hogarth], who mixed ‘A Different Kind of Truth,’ came up to the red rope and said, ‘Phil, I’m sitting with Ed. Come say hi,’ [makes a surprised face]. And it was the first time, right?”
He continued, “Because the being Hanson thing wasn’t in my brain. It was just Ed [in front of me] at the Roxy watching Wolfie play bass for Tremonti. And I go, ‘Let me come when the show is over so I can really talk.’ I didn’t want to be…Hey, he’s watching his son play bass, I don’t want to be the guy going, ‘Hey, so, when you do this thing, are you doing a downstroke or upstroke?’ Right?”
Then came the moment when he would meet Eddie. “I think they did two sets because it was in between. So I went over and Ross literally said, ‘Ed, this is my buddy Phil. Amazing guitar player. He came to LA. And slept on my couch, and now he plays on everybody’s record.’ And I thought, ‘Wow. You can’t beat an intro like that to the king’ [laughs]. Right?”
When he shook hands with Van Halen, he couldn’t even find a word to say because of his excitement. “So I put my hand out. He gave me the giant Eddie Van Halen smile, and his hand was bigger than mine. Like, I’m 6ft, and his hands belong on a 6’4 person, big hands. He put me his big, warm hand, and I took my hand in his big, warm hand, and I was like, I was shocked. I didn’t know what to say. I just said, ‘You’re the king’ [says with a fascinated face]. That’s what I really said. And he laughed.”
Phil X, who picked up the guitar at age five, has been playing ever since and is still on stage. Eddie Van Halen was one of the three names that influenced him during his formative years, alongside Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix. So, Phil X is one of the rare people who got the chance to meet his guitar hero.
During the conversation, the guitarist also shared that one of the hardest things was having Eddie pass away without ever getting a chance to play with him. However, just meeting him was one of those life-changing moments for him. According to him, Van Halen was such a person that he had the energy to captivate those around him.
