Eddie Van Halen was a completely different type of guitar hero compared to the people who came before him. With enough practice, most young guitarists could learn how to play the famous riffs and solos of famous ‘70s guitarists like Jimmy Page, Pete Townshend and Tony Iommi.

Eddie Van Halen, however, set a much higher bar. If the engineers in the studio had left the tape running just a little longer, Van Halen’s track “Eruption” might have captured the sound of thousands of guitar cases closing simultaneously as would-be guitarists all over the world gave up on their dreams and started hunting for real jobs.

The crazy thing about “Eruption,” though, was that the band might have recorded a few extra takes if Eddie had been given his way. Eddie was frustrated by the fact that the released track included a mistake, which basically amounted to the tiniest of finger slips – but that’s how precise Eddie was.

What more could possibly be said about the man who might be the most famous guitarist in history? We dug up some of the weirdest Eddie Van Halen facts you can imagine, so get ready to learn a different kind of truth about your favorite dearly departed rock god.

1. His Last Album Got Pulled from Streaming Services

Speaking of Van Halen’s final album “A Different Kind of Truth,” did you know that it wasn’t available on any of the major streaming services from 2022 until 2024?

In a 2023 interview, Eddie’s son Wolfgang insinuated that singer David Lee Roth was unhappy with the album and was blocking the renewal of its streaming rights – so if ADKOT isn’t your favorite Van Halen album, you’re certainly not the only one.

An interesting thing about Van Halen’s final record is that half of the tracks weren’t even new; they were reworked versions of songs that the band had initially rejected back in the ‘70s. Maybe the band should have spent a bit more time coming up with new material.

On the other hand, it’s possible that the album mainly existed to give Eddie an excuse to record and tour with his son – and it’s hard to blame him for that. In any case, the album returned to streaming services in 2024 and is still available as of early 2025.

2. He Had Incredible Pitch Recognition

One of the common threads among really famous professional musicians is that they often have incredible pitch recognition and an innate understanding of music theory even though they’re only rarely classically trained. Eddie Van Halen illustrated the quality of his internal pitch recognition in an interview published in the magazine Guitar Player.

In the interview, he complained about the fact that there was no way to tune a guitar so that the pitches would be correct across multiple octaves; barre chords sound wrong when they’re played an octave apart.

Eddie was also an accomplished piano and keyboard player and encountered frustration with tempered tuning. In essence, tempering involves tuning a piano so that the intonation across octaves is perfect.

To accomplish that, tempered tuning slightly compromises the intonation of major thirds – but most people don’t notice that fact. Eddie could hear it, though, and it bothered him to no end.

3. He Changed the Tonality of Heavy Rock

When people think about Eddie Van Halen’s influence on rock music, the lightning-fast guitar playing is typically the first thing that comes to mind – and rightfully so. The next generation of “shredders” like Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai and Randy Rhoads all owe a mountain of debt to him.

Most guitarists can’t be shredders, though, and the real way in which Eddie transformed rock music was actually both simpler and more profound: He made the major third cool again. In that light, it isn’t surprising that tempered tuning bothered him so much.

Early rock hits by artists like Elvis Presley and the Beatles were almost always written in major keys. Everything changed, though, when the Kinks released “You Really Got Me” – a song that Van Halen later covered. Since the third was omitted from its main riff, the tonality of “You Really Got Me” wasn’t explicitly major or minor.

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of the omitted third in the world of rock guitar riffs because it basically triggered the invention of hard rock. From the late ‘60s on, many of the biggest rock hits used open fifths for their main riffs and didn’t have explicit major or minor tonality. “You Really Got Me” led to “My Generation,” which led to “Whole Lotta Love,” which led to “Paranoid” – and so on.

One of the biggest reasons why Van Halen stood out so much from other bands in the late ‘70s was the fact that Eddie Van Halen was never shy about incorporating major thirds into his songwriting. That fact made the band sound completely different from anything else that was playing on rock radio at the time.

Some of Van Halen’s hits from the ‘70s and early ‘80s that incorporated major thirds include:

• “Runnin’ with the Devil”
• “Jamie’s Cryin’”
• “Dance the Night Away”
• “Unchained”
• “Jump”

4. He Blamed His Cancer on His Guitar Pick

Eddie Van Halen passed away in 2020 after a lengthy battle with throat cancer and lung cancer. His first major health scare, however, happened when he was diagnosed with tongue cancer in 2000.

Eddie blamed the first occurrence of cancer on the fact that he habitually held a metal guitar pick in his mouth. Although people scoffed at his statement, he said that the tumor appeared in the same place where the pick would touch his tongue.

Eddie struggled with heavy drinking throughout his adult life and was a chain smoker for decades. He was already trying to give up the alcohol by the mid-‘90s, and he eventually tried to switch to vapes as well. Whether he was ever able to fully quit smoking, however, is unknown.

5. He Is the Subject of the Best Apocryphal Guitar Story Ever

Some people would argue that Eddie Van Halen’s guitar solo in the Michael Jackson song “Beat It” is the best guitar solo ever to appear in a song that topped the pop charts.

Some would even say that the song might not have hit the number one position without the solo, which Eddie performed uncredited and for free. It was an opportunity to work with the world’s biggest pop sensation, and Eddie didn’t turn it down even though he knew his bandmates would be furious about it.

The amazing story that came out of the collaboration, though, was this. Supposedly, one of the monitors in the studio caught fire just as Eddie was wrapping up his second take – obviously a sign that perfection had just been achieved.

It’s not every day that someone comes in and records a guitar solo that causes a speaker to immolate itself, so the story gained a life of its own and was passed around among music aficionados for years.

Producer Quincy Jones later confirmed that a fire had occurred in the studio but said that it happened during the mixing process and not during the recording of the “Beat It” solo. Nevertheless, the solo – and the story behind it – further added to Eddie Van Halen’s legend. That’s the good news.

The bad news, though, is that “Beat It” helped to push Michael Jackson’s album “Thriller” back to the top of the charts, ultimately preventing Van Halen’s “1984” from ever reaching number one.