‘Twas only a year ago I wrote these words:
There will never be another Van Halen. No player before or since will have the ingenuity and influence he did. From modifying his own guitars and amps to achieve the perfect “brown sound”, to brutalizing the strings with a drill, he was an innovator. He was the most important of all the guitar innovators. And he sheepishly grinned through the whole thing as if to say, “Who, me? I did that?”
A year later, it’s only more certain that there will never been another Eddie. You can read my full memorial here: Rest in Peace to the greatest guitar player of all time.
The week Eddie passed, we did a tribute to him on the LeBrain Train. You can watch that tribute below, starting at the 20 minute mark.
As if that wasn’t enough, we followed that with another Van Halen show: VH deep cuts! One thing for sure, Eddie certainly inspired a lot of conversation on the LeBrain Train over the past year. You can watch the deep cuts below, starting again at 20 minutes.
Let’s all take a moment to reflect, and play some Van Halen tonight. Tonight, I’m going to go with “Dirty Movies” from Fair Warning to spotlight the greatest gee-tar picker of all time. What song or album will you play for Eddie tonight?
mikeladano.com 
It’s been a year already! God, how time flies. Rest in peace Eddie
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I was in the middle of an Eddie tribute as well. I miss that dude.
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A year? Damn. Which one will I play… all of them. The only correct answer is all of them.
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Dang, has it been a year already? My goodness! What trips me out the most is that on his last show, people had no idea that it would be Eddie Van Halen’s last show. I’m not even sure if he knew it would be Eddie’s last show.
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I don’t think he did. Not like Rush, where they all knew it was over.
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Aw, that’s so sad! That makes it worse knowing that Eddie nor the band had no idea what was coming.
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I guess Lana at my age, I’ve seen deaths of friends… and it’s hard before you don’t see it coming. My friend Jamie died suddenly this year. It turns out he had cancer that went undetected. One day he’s posting stuff on FB about how he’s feeling… the next day he’s in a coma. And then he was gone. He was feeling sick for only a few weeks. He had so much to live for. I miss him. He helped us in the past. I sure could use his help today. Hard to believe he’s really gone.
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I’m sorry for your friend Jamie. I can’t believe the cancer was undetected. The doctors never found anything in him during checkups?
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By the sound of his last few posts on FB, it sounds like he was angry the doctor had misdiagnosed him with something else.
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Ah that’s messed up! My grandpa was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer so late and apparently, the doctors didn’t detect it until it was too late.
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For some reason VH3 and a certain song from it sounds like a goer
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I played VH3 yesterday. Not bad. Not great and not very classic sounding, but some cool tunes like Once
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I feel like it’s his attempt at being a bit progressive and letting his creative wings fly a little bit.
In the guitar mags I purchased EVH would mention that Alan Holdsworth (a British Jazz Fusion and Progressive rocker) as a huge influence. And if you listen to Holdsworth’s work you’ll hear a lot of stuff that influenced EVH and if you listen to VH3 you’ll hear a lot of Holdsworth.
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