Top 33 Van Halen Quotes

You know, most people, they want to go to Hollywood. They want to be a star. They want to be a rock star. That thought never entered any of our minds, the Van Halen family.

More and more, I enjoy hearing people who are good at their instruments and who’ve found a distinctive voice. In death metal, a lot of guys are Eddie Van Halen disciples, but they take his style to really expressionistic places. It’s a real pleasure for me to hear people pushing their craft.

In Van Halen there were moments, like in some of the ballads, I put my heart and soul into those records. Those lyrics when I sang ’em, I gave myself goosebumps.

I wouldn’t mind meeting Eddie Van Halen. That would be great. We need to invite him to a race.

As far as people saying, ‘Do you miss Van Halen?’ or any of that kind of stuff, I’ve totally moved on.

On ‘Van Halen,’ I was a young punk, and everything revolved around the fastest kid in town, gunslinger attitude. But I’d say that at the time of ‘Fair Warning,’ I started concentrating more on songwriting. But I guess in most people’s minds I’m just a gunslinger.

Greg Ginn was certainly a huge influence on my guitar playing. I put him up there with people like Eddie Van Halen. Eddie Van Halen changed everything; I don’t necessarily like everything he did, but he definitely changed everything.

Nothing’s changed from when I’m seven years old to now. Nothing’s changed at all. I like the same stuff that I did – Kiss, Van Halen, ‘Happy Days,’ ‘Laverne & Shirley,’ ‘The Brady Bunch,’ monsters and all that stuff.

To me, the secret of Eddie Van Halen was Alex Van Halen, because the way Alex played was so loose and the way the two of them locked together… Those two are connected so thoroughly they might as well be one person.

I’ve been playing for aeons now, but way, way back, I remember Eddie Van Halen came out ,and I loved his playing. He was amazing. But then everyone started copying his guitars with Floyds, and I didn’t.

So everybody is trying to play like Eddie Van Halen. I think it’s rubbish. I think Eddie’s great, but everyone’s trying to do what he does and it doesn’t make for a lot of interesting music.

When I was in Van Halen I was hitting notes that were out of my range. I never went for those registers before until Eddie pulled it out of me.

The first Van Halen album makes Johnny Rotten out to be what he really was and still is: a hairdresser.

I’m still obsessed with Kiss. I’m still obsessed with Van Halen. I guess we don’t change that much from being kids. Either we don’t change that much, or we just have really good taste.

Spitfire asked me if I had a problem talking about Van Halen or Extreme. I really don’t. There are people who are just going to want to know what it was like to play with Eddie.

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with heavy metal, Van Halen, Motley Crue. The older I got, my tastes widened. I always felt an attraction to the attitudes of punk; also punk filmmakers, like Richard Kern.

I love players like Thurston Moore. I mean, you can put notes down on a sheet of paper, and if you practice and get your chops up, you can play like an Eddie Van Halen or a Steve Vai. But nobody can do what Thurston Moore does; he’s his own guy. He talks through his instrument in a language that’s all his own.

It wasn’t until the fourth or fifth Van Halen record that people would go, ‘Wow! You’re singing backgrounds on those records. That’s not David Lee Roth.’ And I go, ‘Hell, no! That’s not David Lee Roth.’

I think all my albums have concentrated on songs, I’ve never taken the typical Van Halen route to try and become a guitar hero.

If I would have ever dreamed that I wouldn’t be in Van Halen anymore and was going to have resume my solo career again, I would have never contributed anything towards my own greatest hits package.

For a long time, when I was very young, I went to go see arena rock bands. I was 16, and it was all I could get in to see, legally. And I saw Led Zeppelin and Ted Nugent and Van Halen and all that.

If I had had a chance to tour with Van Halen before the record, I think it would have been a different record.

Flying Colors is more alternative pop with a prog edge. Think the Beatles meets U2 meets Muse and Foo Fighters. It is the opposite of Adrenaline Mob, which has more classic metal influences like Black Sabbath, Van Halen, Pantera, or Disturbed. They are completely different ends of spectrum.

I did some research and tried to pull out some old, classic Van Halen that they had not played in 10 or 15 years. I think that was Sammy’s mistake. I he didn’t want to do the Dave stuff.

I think a lot of modern day guitarists start off playing like Eddie van Halen, and they don’t take the time to learn the basics.

People tend to forget you. I didn’t want people to go, ‘That is that guy that used to play in Van Halen. What’s his name again?’

You can never deny the immense talent, rock credibility and iconic historical contribution that Van Halen made.

When I was 13, I was just figuring out how to play ‘Eruption,’ poorly, by Eddie Van Halen.

In my world, before I knew about Eddie Van Halen, I was playing piano, and at that point in my teenage life, I thought he was just a guitar player.

I got into rock music at thirteen, listening to Van Halen, learned how to play the electric guitar.

I liked a lot of the things other people liked – Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, Van Halen, AC/DC – but if I compared it to my dad’s music, there just seemed to be elements missing.

However you feel about Dimebag, this is one of the most influential metal guitar players of the ’90s. I was just talking to someone that I am hiring to bring on the tour who said that, when he was at the funeral, that Eddie Van Halen came and put his striped guitar in the coffin. That’s a pretty big deal.

I think if there’s any one band that every member of Sons of Apollo has been influenced by, I think Van Halen is the common ground for all five of us.