Eddie Van Halen died yesterday of Throat Cancer at St Johns Hospital in Santa Monica, USA.
The famous guitarist and Band leader of Van Halen was born in Amsterdam and moved to the US in 1962 and became famous in 1984 with the single “Jump” from his 6th album.
Michael Jackson fans will know Eddie for his guitar solo on Michael’s single “Beat It” from 1983.
Before Eddie Van Halen agreed to add a guitar break to Michael Jackson’s Beat It, he had to be sure the phone call from producer Quincy Jones wasn’t a practical joke.
“I went off on him. I went, ‘What do you want, you f***ing so-and-so!'” Van Halen told CNN in 2012, 30 years after he worked on the song.
“And he goes, ‘Is this Eddie?’ I said, ‘Yeah, what the hell do you want?’ ‘This is Quincy.’ I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t know anyone named Quincy.’ He goes, ‘Quincy Jones, man.’ I went, ‘Oh, sorry!'”
Van Halen listened to Beat It, asked if he could rearrange the song and added a pair of solos during which, engineers would long swear, a speaker caught on fire.
Van Halen didn’t know how the King of Pop would react.
“So I warned him before he listened. I said, ‘Look, I changed the middle section of your song,'”.
“Now, in my mind, he’s either going to have his bodyguards kick me out for butchering his song, or he’s going to like it.
“And so he gave it a listen, and he turned to me and went, ‘Wow, thank you so much for having the passion to not just come in and blaze a solo, but to actually care about the song, and make it better.'”
Rest in peace Eddie!
Thank you Eddie Van Halen – you reinvented what it was to be a guitar hero. My sincere condolences to his family.