During a new interview on the Zak Kuhn Show, Gene Simmons talked about his failed try to play like Eddie Van Halen.
During a Van Halen show at Nassau Coliseum, Simmons asked Eddie if he could try the guitar. However, Simmons quickly realized it wasn’t as easy as it seemed. The bassist recalled, “And so, when I put it around my neck and tried playing a chord, it was completely out of tune.”
He continued, “And I’m not exaggerating. I said, ‘Hey, you better go and tune this up before you hit the stage.’ And he goes, ‘Oh no, no, man, don’t worry.'”
“He put the guitar on his shoulders and then played a chord and bent the neck in tune so that neck had some movement on it, and anybody else playing that instrument would sound horrible on it. And yet, when Eddie played on it, it sounded perfectly in tune,” Gene revealed.
Simmons is a long-time fan of Van Halen. “You would have been surprised. Of course, genius is the right word, but when you think ‘geniuses’ you also think of big personalities and people that are perhaps full of themselves,” he shared with Guitar World about Eddie in 2021.
The rocker went on to talk about the late guitarist, “You couldn’t have met a nicer person than Edward. He didn’t like Eddie. A lot of people don’t know that he started off on drums and that he was an accomplished pianist and it actually his brother Alex who was the guitar player.”
“They decided to switch quite early on. Imagine the musical talent in that family? When I heard he had passed, the image that immediately came into my mind after the shock, was him smiling. He always smiled. He smiled on stage when they did videos. He was just enjoying life,” Simmons added.
He concluded his words, “He’d do these astonishing things with his guitar and look up at you as if to say, ‘Aren’t we having fun?’ as opposed to ‘See what I just did there?!’ There was never any of that ‘I know I’m great’ side to his personality.”
Simmons saw potential in Van Halen back in the day and helped them with their first demo. However, the record label rejected it, and Warner Bros later signed them.
