Eddie Van Halen on his favourite album by The Beatles: “Those monster riffs seem to go on forever”
The significance of The Beatles is nearly impossible to grasp for those who weren’t around during their heyday. They represented the arrival of the future in tangible form, and their influence continues to echo throughout culture to this day. From Pink Floyd to Eddie Van Halen and even extending to contemporary artists like Billie Eilish, the impact of The Beatles can be traced across much of modern popular music.
While rock ‘n’ roll existed in its rudimentary form before the arrival of the Fab Four, they took the formula and drove it to its absolute limits. Then, as they moved into the middle of the 1960s when other pioneers of culture had impressed their influence upon them, they started to merge genres in a way that had never been done. With 1965’s Rubber Soul, they began to shed the skin of the straight-up rock of their early years and embark on a journey of pure experimentalism, kicking back against tradition and symbolising the tremendous innovative spirit of the time.
Delineating just how far their influence stretched is that Eddie Van Halen, a man famed for being one of the most essential metal guitar players, cited The Beatles as a formative force in his journey. Born in Amsterdam, it was after his family moved to California in the early 1960s that he would delve into the musical developments of the time and move away from a life as a classically trained musician as his parents had wished. This split typified the general spirit of the era, as people of the younger generation sought to write their own stories and have a life removed from one dictated by the humdrum careers that their parents had.
It was the music of the British invasion, and particularly the sonics of The Beatles, that introduced Van Halen and his brother and future bandmate, Alex, to the world of rock. They would quickly take to it, too, delving into their crafts and forming their first group while still in elementary school.
As we know, Van Halen’s final product was quite distinct from that of the Liverpool band. Still, their spirit coursed throughout all of his efforts, with him continuing to push back against boundaries and refine his art, which was more bombastic than anything anyone could have imagined when The Beatles started to really unlock the manacles of the past.
While the early efforts of The Beatles opened up the mind’s eye for Van Halen, like many people, he preferred their later efforts, with his tastes maturing alongside their development. He named 1969’s penultimate offering, Abbey Road, as his favourite album by the group and described the John Lennon-penned ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ as an embodiment of the “ride” that the record offered.
Perhaps more importantly, and providing insight into how his resounding approach to the guitar formed, he celebrated the “monster riffs” that comprise the winding song. This fusion of complexity and force is an idea Van Halen ran off into the sunset with when his time finally came.
The late guitarist once explained to Lava Magazine: “That whole [Abbey Road] album takes you for a ride. And ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ takes you for a ride within that ride. Those monster riffs seem to go on forever and then suddenly drop you off a cliff. Lennon’s vocals are just so passionate. He hated his voice, as Hendrix hated his. I think the fact that they weren’t typical singers made them even more expressive. A lot of trained singers have less impact than someone who’s just flying by the seat of his or her pants.”
For those wanting to know what The Beatles would have sounded like through the prism of Van Halen, he was known to cover them from time to time. The band Van Halen’s rendition of ‘Drive My Car’ is undoubtedly a much better take than their hit cover of another British Invasion staple, The Kinks’ ‘You Really Got Me’.