So George Lynch, the dude from Dokken, was recently jawing with Tommy Colletti from The Music Zoo, and apparently Lynch used to watch Eddie Van Halen absolutely destroy bands back in the day. Like, remember UFO? Yeah, those guys got their butts handed to them when they opened for Van Halen at the Golden West Ballroom. Lynch was like, “UFO didn’t know what they were in for. I love UFO, but they got their asses kicked.”
And get this—Eddie basically rewrote the rulebook for rock guitar in the late ’70s. Lynch said it was like “a paradigm shift in the music universe.” He’d see Eddie in his pre-Van Halen band Mammoth and just go home and practice his guitar for eight straight hours, thinking, “I gotta step up. This is insane.”
What’s wild is that even before Eddie had his signature tapping technique and all that jazz, when he was still playing a Les Paul through a Bandmaster or Bassman, he was already mind-blowing. Lynch said, “It was a little more meat and potatoes, but it was still, I think, even cooler because we’re so used to Eddie and what he does.”
And here’s some gossip for you—Eddie apparently borrowed a bunch of tricks from his friend Terry Kilgore from REDDI KILLOWAT. Lynch claims Terry was maybe even better than Eddie at one point. Classic rock and roll: you’re buddies, you steal each other’s licks, and suddenly one of you becomes a legend while the other… well, doesn’t.
When Eddie passed away in 2020, Lynch said it hit him hard. Like, really hard. He mentioned how all guitar players felt it personally because they were all kind of on the same journey. Lynch even said, “As we get older, obviously, we’re seeing people go away and pass. And that’s just normal, of course. But Eddie was on another level.”
Apparently, Eddie was super shy and introverted—the guy just wanted to sit in his room, play guitar, drink beers, and smoke cigarettes. Lynch said people thought Eddie wasn’t nice, but he was just quiet and a little scared. Typical tortured artist stuff, right?
Here’s where it gets juicy: during the Monsters of Rock tour in 1988, Lynch had some gear problems, and Eddie was like, “Hey, man, take anything you want of mine.” So Lynch used Eddie’s rig for half the tour! Headliners usually don’t do that—they’re usually like, “That’s your problem, figure it out.” But not Eddie. He was sweet like that.
And get this—Eddie once gave Lynch’s son a guitar lesson! The kid was at GIT (Guitar Institute of Technology for you non-musos) and wanted to be a guitar player like his dad. So Eddie took him to the warmup room and showed him some stuff. Who does that? Eddie Van Halen, that’s who.
Lynch previously admitted he was jealous of Van Halen’s success when they first blew up. He said, “We were jealous and we were all trying to play catch up. We thought, ‘Oh boy, we better get on board. This guy’s going to change the world.'” After seeing them live, he went back to their band room and played guitar until the sun came up, thinking, “Man, how can I get that tone?”
But here’s the thing—Lynch never really copied Eddie. He said, “What I really did was sort of bounce off his stuff rather than emulate it.” He takes that approach with all the big influences: Clapton, Hendrix, Schenker, Holdsworth. Can’t play their stuff note-for-note to save his life, but he can capture the essence. Smart move, George. No one wants to be the guy who’s just copying Eddie Van Halen—that’s a losing battle.
Anyway, Eddie’s gone now, but man, what a legacy. Changed the guitar world forever, was apparently a really nice guy when the cameras weren’t rolling, and even helped out his fellow guitarists when they were in a bind. Not bad for a dude who just wanted to sit in his room and play guitar all day.
Chord F. Discord, the Beethoven of Buffoonery, is a self-taught expert in music who once claimed he could “play the kazoo in four languages.”
Born in Crescendo, Indiana, Chord’s first brush with fame came when he accidentally entered a yodeling contest thinking it was a pie-eating competition—and won both categories.
Chord F. Discord: proving that laughter, much like a poorly tuned ukulele, is truly universal.
