Eddie Van Halen Death Finally Revealed. He died of cancer on 6 October 2020 at the age of 65. Eddie was a respected guitar virtuoso whose enormous contribution to a band named after him earned Van Halen the title of one of the greatest bands of the 1980s and the most famous rock bands in general.
Van Halen, born in 1955 in Amsterdam and raised in Pasadena, California, formed the band along with his brother Alex, bassist Michael Anthony and singer David Lee Roth in 1974 after the group met during their college days in Pasadena.
They gained their first stage experiences by playing in West Hollywood clubs before making a boom on the rock scene in 1978 with their eponymous debut album. “Van Halen” album eventually sold more than 10 million copies as part of the hard rock wave that pushed the then-popular disco from the top of the charts.
Van Halen songs, one of the 20 best-selling performers of all time, was on the rise at the time with no end in sight. In five consecutive years, they released multiple platinum albums: “Van Halen II” (1979), “Women and Children First” (1980), “Fair Warning” (1981), “Diver Down” (1982), and finally their biggest 1984 ”.
The most successful sixth album “1984” included the hits “Jump”, “Panama” and “Hot for Teacher”. Eddie Van Halen also plays a guitar solo in Michael Jackson’s 1982 hit “Beat It.”
Starting with a great solo on “Eruption” from their debut album, the iconic acrobatics that Eddie performed with the guitar was the main attraction of the band, and they gained him the reputation of one of the best guitarists of all time.
Van Halen, who grew up emulating Eric Clapton, pioneered his own dynamic style – often playing with both hands on the neck of the guitar. “I do whatever I want,” he said in an interview with Guitar Player, 1978. “I don’t really break my head too much… It’s all pretty spontaneous.”
Mike McCready of Pearl Jam told Rolling Stone that Van Halen’s playing “sounded like it was coming from another planet” and that he felt like “hearing Mozart for the first time.” In 2015, Rolling Stone ranked him the eighth-best guitarist of all time, between Chuck Berry and Duane Allman.
Interestingly, the self-taught Eddie Van Halen was skilled in playing a number of instruments, but he never learned to read music.
However, during his decades-long career, he struggled with and with a number of health problems.
Tormented by joint pain exacerbated by stage frenzy, he underwent hip replacement in 1999 and partial removal of his tongue due to cancer in 2000. Fighting drug and alcohol addiction contributed to his divorce from TV star Valerie Bertinelli in 2007. That same year, he began rehabilitation and returned to play. in Van Halen with Wolfgang, his then sixteen-year-old son on bass.
Two years later, he married Janie Liszewski, the band’s former PR agent.
Eddie Van Halen was indeed often honored with nice words, so he will always be remembered among fans and colleagues as the “god of the guitar”, “a genius comparable to Mozart” and “the good soul of rock’n’roll”.
