TALKIN' 'BOUT LOVE

AN AWESOME ASSEMBLAGE OF EDDIE VAN HALEN’S FRIENDS, CONTEMPORARIES AND ADMIRERS PEN THEIR OWN HEARTFELT TRIBUTES AND PICK THEIR FAVORITE “EDDIE MOMENTS”

- RICHARD BIENSTOCK and AMIT SHARMA, with BRAD TOLINSKI and GREGORY ADAMS

STEVE LUKATHER: “THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED TO EDDIE WOULD HAVE BEEN GUITAR LESSONS”

I FIRST MET Eddie at the CaliFFornia World Music Festival in 1979. Van Halen was headlining one night after their first album. Toto’s first album was out and we had a hit with “Hold the Line.” I loved him from the moment we met. It was like I’d known the guy my whole life.

I was close with Ed for 40-plus years. And he was more than my guitar buddy. Of course, we played each other whatever we were working on, just showing off our shit and going, “Look what I’m doing!” But we didn’t speak about guitars a whole lot.

With Ed, he always showed me love, and I had the deepest respect for him. And there’s no doubt he was one of the greatest of all fucking time. Who could ever dispute that — how he changed everything? But he was just a humble little guy who just loved to mess with shit and do things different. Like, the worst thing that could have happened to Eddie Van Halen would have been guitar lessons. When it came down to details about equipment and how he liked to do things, he always had an “adventure” mentality. He knew what he wanted. And he wanted really weird shit.

We co-wrote a song for my first solo record [“Twist the Knife,” from 1989’s Lukather]. He said, “Yeah… I have this riff, I want you to learn it.” So I got to get inside his head for a minute. And what he did was he gave me a guitar and he said, “Tune it up a whole step and take an A bass string and tune it to B.” And I go, “What? The neck’s gonna bend in half.

What the fuck?” He goes, “Trust me.” I did it and I got a good take out of it, and that’s the record.