Introductions to Music Part Two - SeanGeek

During the year 1983 something was happening. This guitar player named Eddie Van Halen had been making headlines all over the world with his band Van Halen. However, in our neck of the woods, stuck with AM radio, we’d never heard of Van Halen. Glen Campbell, Anne Murray, and Gordon Lightfoot were all the radio would give us.

When Van Halen’s 1984 came out, it revolutionized the music industry. Seriously. In our neck of the woods, the album broke open what we could listen to the radio. I mean Kiss never got radio play. But Van Halen was getting a lot of radio airplay. And a lot of other bands were getting airplay too. All of a sudden, hard rock was now being made available to the masses. Music with searing guitars, monster drums, pounding bass, and wailing vocals was now on the radio and I couldn’t be happier. Kiss had been my only island amidst all that AOR (Adult Oriented Rock) that saturated the airwaves. Now I could take my pick.

It was my brother who glomed on Van Halen first. He had heard a song or two and went out and picked up their album. And it played incessantly. I could hear it through our walls in our home. Todd was playing guitar and trying and trying to figure out what Eddie Van Halen was playing. He would play and pause rewind and play again, until he would learn the parts.

The music was alien and different. While Kiss had served up everything I could ever want in a band at that tender age, Van Halen was about growing up musically for me. This music was technical, complicated, yet still catchy as heck. This was technical ability and songwriting all in one. My brother really went to school when he heard 1984, and I was worshipping my brother’s emergence as the most influential guitarist in my life.

He picked up Van Halen I and Van Halen II, and then slowly he had all of their music. I would steal the music from his room when he wasn’t home and play these albums to death, imitating David Lee Roth’s gruff and growl, air drumming to Alex Van Halen, and prancing around like the frontman I wish I could be.

Todd eventually mastered all of Van Halen’s songs. He would rip on Eruption from Van Halen’s debut, pluck around on Spanish Fly Instrumental from Van Halen II, smooth through the knob effect of Cathedral… Todd could do it all. He was as good as Eddie in my book.

~SeanGeek