Eddie Van Halen died a couple of weeks ago. What follows is, I suppose, something of a tribute to him – though that is not why I wrote it. I had actually written this more than a year ago and it has been waiting for me to make space to do something with it. It seems like the time has come.
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I started teaching myself to play guitar in the early 1990’s. …That is not entirely accurate. I had lots of teachers: Eddie, Vernon Reid, Mick Mars, Satch, SRV, Brian Setzer, Steve Via, Billy Joe Armstrong… But none of them was actually there giving me lessons. Not physically anyway. Ms. Schmidt had been. But that was nearly a decade earlier (and only for about one year). So I suppose what I really mean, is that I was on my own when I was learning to play the guitar nearly 3 decades ago. By then, tabulature was a thing. So, while I had learned to read music in Jr. High band, I didn’t need to (also, I only read bass clef – and only semi-fluently). The tabs mapped where to put my fingers on the fretboard, I got rhythm and phrasing from listening to the recorded songs, and that is how I learned.
The first guitar tabulature book I purchased was for Living Colour’s album, Vivid. I learned the introduction of Open Letter to a Landlord (also the technique of arpeggiating chords – though it would be years later that I would learn the name for this); the bassline and guitar solo for Glamour Boys (also the concept of barre chords); and the rhythm guitar part for Desperate People (also, the sound of a chord played with a 5th in the bass). And I learned it all verbatim. (Interestingly, I still remember the Glamour Boys bassline, but none of those other parts.) I worked on those parts for untold hours to get them to sound exactly like Vernon’s and Muzz’s tracks on the album (or, as close as the modified car-radio I was using as an amp would allow me to get). I struggled with The Cult of Personality though. My fingers wouldn’t get out of each other’s way, tripping themselves up as I labored to play the iconic riff as it was tabbed. I never seemed to be able to get it right. So I gave up. And I only played the songs I could get to sound right. And I got pretty good at them.
I also got really good at fast-forwarding the cassette tape to skip past the songs I couldn’t play.
I don’t remember exactly when, or why, I first got a copy of For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. It must have been within a year of learning to play parts of Vivid. And there was a dalliance with Motley Crue in there somewhere, during which I developed a predilection for power chords (and also bass-note walk up/down transitions). But I started reading interviews of Eddie Van Halen around the same time I started working through the tabs for F.U.C.K. And my approach to learning to play guitar changed radically. And the diffusion of that change continues.
It was a time of musical fertility for me. Over a year of consistent practice had developed muscular coordination in my hands and it was beginning to yield a good deal automaticity. I was developing the broader perspective that comes from exposure to diverse examples of guitar playing, style, tone, etc – and starting to figure out what I liked and wanted to sound like. I had accumulated a store of technical know-how that enabled me to learn from talking with more accomplished musicians about conceptual aspects of guitar-playing (rather than about specific techniques, chords, songs, etc.). And the burgeoning researcher in me was devouring literature: reading articles in guitar magazines, like the GW survey of guitarists re: whether learning music theory was help or hindrance (Kim Thayil’s response made him sound like a moron, but Vernon Reid’s insightful response was my first exposure to the importance of paradox). I was primed. (Also, I was nerdy and introverted – so I had time on my hands.) But the crystallizing moment was reading an EVH interview in which he talked about getting frustrated that, no matter how much he tried, he just could not get something he was practicing to come out the way it sounded when some other guitarist – Clapton probably – played it. He finally came to the realization that it was because his fingers were not Clapton’s. (insert sound of glass shattering)
Eddie talked about Clapton, Holdsworth, Kagey, and other guitarists with genuine respect – even reverence – calling out nuances only another musician would appreciate (e.g., how Clapton played one note where others would diminish the phrasing by squeezing in a dozen). I’ve seen and read a lot of EVH interviews and am always struck by the way he could name the people and specific contexts from which he learned techniques he adapted and innovated (e.g., in his Smithsonian interview, he discusses and plays the specific Jimmy Page lick that was the starting point for the right-handed fretting technique he pioneered). He spoke about those other guitarists as mentors from whom he’d learned. But it was not with envy or insecurity. He clearly no longer idolized or sought to mimic them. In essence, he talked about the effort he put into learning from them as a quest to become more Ed.
He described writing/playing music as telling a story. And he spoke of that story as though it were, itself, an entity trapped inside him, yearning to get out. The techniques he learned from other guitarists became tools for storytelling – but he adapted and innovated them in service of better telling, nay liberating, HIS story. He recognized and appreciated the skill with which those other guitarists had been telling their own stories, but he was responsible to tell a different story. In that light, it should be no surprise that, despite the marked differences, he could be genuinely impressed with, and complimentary of, other guitarists AND self-assured in his own guitarwork: their fingers told their stories while his fingers told his.
That commitment to the idea we all have our own story to tell was further evidenced in the offense he took with other guitarists who copied him. Eddie said that, while he was trying to tell a story, it sounded like they were just telling a joke. I’m not sure this is the right analogy. A well-told joke requires its own set of skills and expertise. But I think the point he was making was that he approached music with a sense of responsibility, while the folks that merely copied him seemed to be just goofing off – very much akin to the way Pirsig described garage monkeys. Ultimately, Eddie’s point here has become my philosophy for not only learning/playing guitar, but also for writing – and life in general. I am hungry to learn from other people who tell their stories well – so that I can become more Nate and get my fingers to better articulate the stories yearning to come out of me.
At the moment, the stories with which I feel like I have been entrusted – the ones I feel the greatest sense of responsibility for telling – are theoretical and philosophical. And I think they need to be written. So I am working to develop as a writer so I can better render those ideas.
I aspire to write with the clarity, fearlessness, and love of bell hooks. I want to exude the authenticity of a long time friend like Brene Brown does, provoke multi-dimensional meaning making like Jerome Bruner, and cohere complex and disparate threads like James Gleick. And I aspire to write with the wit to illustrate the profound in the mundane as Douglas Adams and John Steinbeck did so masterfully. I don’t want to merely imitate any of these writers: I don’t want to reduce their brilliance to mechanical mimicry. I want to learn and adapt from them to be as much Nate in my writing as Ed was Ed in his playing. I suppose I am chasing my textual parallel of jape.
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Writing and reflecting on this piece has prompted me to return to The Cult of Personality. My fingers are more competent than they were 30 years ago, so it is not as much of a struggle as it first was. Neither is it easy though. My fingers have developed competence at playing like Nate. And Nate is not Vernon Reid. So it is going to take a lot of work to figure out how Nate plays that song – but I’m pretty sure I am going to like that version too.
Thanks Ed.
