Slash Addresses Eddie Van Halen’s Uniqueness That Hasn’t Been Outdone Yet

During a recent appearance on a podcast on Apple Music Country, Guns N’ Roses lead guitarist Slash reflected on the late Van Halen icon Eddie Van Halen‘s authenticity as a guitar player. According to him, Eddie’s unique playing style was replicated by numerous other guitarists in the past, but none of them got close to what he had.

Eddie Van Halen is regarded as one of the all-time greatest guitar players in rock history, with a career that spanned over 46 years. He wasn’t only the legendary guitar player of Van Halen, but he was also well known for popularizing the tapping guitar solo technique with monumental tracks, including ‘Eruption.’

Slash is another guitarist listed among the best guitar players and has huge admiration for the innovative guitar icon, Eddie Van Halen. During multiple previous interviews, the GN’R icon praised the Van Halen guitarist saying he was a gifted musician who stood out among thousands of others.

During a recent interview, Slash shared his opinions about Eddie Van Halen once again. Apparently, the guitarist was deeply inspired by Van Halen’s debut album when he first heard it, which was around the same time when Slash started becoming a guitar player.

When Slash got interested in playing the guitar, almost all guitar players were trying to imitate Eddie Van Halen, especially his tapping technique. However, his technique was embedded with his personality and style, and if you ask Slash, that’s why nobody has ever come close to sounding like Van Halen.

Slash’s statement about Eddie Van Halen follows:

“By and large, I really don’t come from this sort of eighties shredding school of guitar playing at all. But when I first heard, along with everybody else, in 1978 and first heard the Van Halen debut record, it really fucked me. That was a heavy fucking record. I mean, that was the moment that the Seventies just changed, that particular record.

And as a guitar player, I was just a kid, I was just picking up the guitar at that time. I hadn’t even started at that moment. I started as the following year, but when I started getting into guitar playing, everybody was trying to emulate Eddie and they were all sort of focusing on the obvious techniques and the fucking finger tapping and the harmonics and the tremolo bar stuff and all these really fucking great techniques that Eddie had.

But the way that he did it was such a part of his personality and it was such a part of his melodic sensibility that it had this sort of musical fluidity that nobody after that really ever came close to playing that style of guitar playing. And so I always loved Eddie. And in between any of his very specific techniques, he also just had great fucking rock and roll lyrics, just really cool, bluesy, fucking rock lyrics. So, yeah, I loved Eddie.”

It appears like Slash admires Eddie Van Halen so much because he was one of the most influential and authentic guitar players of all time that had impacted rock music eternally. In every word of his, the GN’R guitarist makes sure that fans don’t forget what a special icon Eddie was and is in the rock music industry.