Van Halen wants you to Jump for a bad guitar
October 22nd, 2007 - by Eddie
This was from a performance at Greensboro, NC on Sept. 29, 2007 and features the great Eddie Van Halen on a not-so-great guitar.
No one really knows what happens. Was it the amp? Was it the synth? Or did someone hand Eddie the wrong guitar (Gary Cherone, I’m looking in your general direction….and I KNOW you got time on your hands if you’re spending it celebrating a high school’s 150th birthday).
Or was it the scorned and original bassist Michael Anthony (he was replaced by Wolfgang, the 16-year-old spawn of Eddie)?
But here’s what’s impressive about this concert misstep. They keep going. They’re freak’n Van Halen and instead of saying “Whoa, that sounds weird” they continue the song possibly hoping that the horrible, irritable sound would right itself eventually (insert your Cherone joke here).
Instead, they plowed through it and embraced the bad situation. Because that’s what Van Halen does when something is wrong. They run the problem into the ground until everyone feels their pain.
Seriously, how did David Lee Roth not lose it on stage? Or is the problem worse? Can Van Halen not hear anymore?
Even more distressing than that is the giant, inflatable mic that Roth humps towards the end of the song and brings up on stage (and if you’re gonna do that, shouldn’t you change the chorus to “might as well hump!” at least once?).
After the band bows, the massive mic is left on the stage and, after a while, starts to look like a penis without a party to go to. Which, if you want to be a little poetic on a Monday morning, could be a nice description of the reunited Van Halen.
At the very least, the video brightened my Monday morning. Rock on friends.
October 22nd, 2007 at 5:24 pm
That made my ears bleed.
October 23rd, 2007 at 4:08 am
LOOK, things happen in live rock n roll. It is obvious that EVH can still play…His guitar was just 1/2 step flat from the rest of the music… The un-informed don’t understand the complexities of lock-down tuning, so he could not just tune it up a half on the fly…in the middle of the ENCORE? Maybe he could have grabbed another guitar…but when? What? Stop the encore and start over with a new axe? WOW! This performance will go down as one of “ROCKS BLOOPERS” on some VH1 special…I’m sure they are laughing about it now…but this was pretty ear-wrenching and dissonant…However, once again: THE CROWD DID NOT MIND OR KNOW THE DIFFERENCE, AND LOVED THE PERFORMANCE!
Hey, I’m not a huge VH fan, but I’ll give EVH his props…He’s a masterful innovater of the electric 6 string–Others that followed just emulated or expanded on his style.But EVH brought the electric guitar back into the forefront of rock; that is until GRUNGE took over and ruined it for everybody!I’m just glad to see them performing again…Even if this was a bit out of tune!