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Eddie Van Halen’s 20 Greatest Solos

“Eruption,” “Panama,” “Right Now” and more — the quintessential modern guitar god’s most memorable six-string feats

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It’s hard to imagine what rock & roll would sound like without Eddie Van Halen. Like Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, and Eric Clapton before him, he single-handedly (or perhaps, in his case, double-handedly) changed the vocabulary of guitar for a generation. His pyrotechnic finger-tapping, elastic dive-bombs, and bursts of melody redefined the guitar solo and inspired legions of copycats in the process. But no matter what he was playing, he did it with heart. To honor the late guitar hero, who died Tuesday at age 65, we’ve selected 20 of his greatest solos — from unforgettable licks to genuine “how’d he do that?” head-scratchers — that show off his brilliance.

From Rolling Stone US

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“Dreams” (1986)

Emboldened by the success of 1984’s “Jump,” Eddie Van Halen doubled down on the keyboards for 5150, the group’s first album after the departure of David Lee Roth. “Dreams” is one of these synthesizer-driven numbers, a slab of anthemic middle-of-the-road rock over which new vocalist Sammy Hagar ably demonstrates that where conventional vocal chops and range were concerned, he left his more stylized predecessor in the dust. Van Halen’s solo is also more conventional than what his fans might have been accustomed to but demonstrates a restraint and total command of melody and structure that weren’t always evident in his earlier work. “I feel like I’m much more song-oriented now,” he told BAM around the time of 5150’s release. “When you first start out, you want to do all the technique shit, but I think I’ve gotten to the point where playing guitar means more than just playing fast and being a gunslinger.” T.B.

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“Mine All Mine” (1988)

OU812, released in 1988, sees Eddie & Co. refining the more layered, keyboard-supported commercial-rock sound that would characterize most of vocalist Sammy Hagar’s tenure with the band. It also shows the group making a concerted effort to distance themselves from the scores of “hair metal” groups — largely created in the image of David Lee Roth–era Van Halen — that had taken over both MTV and the charts at the time. Just for good measure, Eddie would occasionally remind his audience that although he had chosen a different musical path, he would always remain a towering presence in the flashy solo set. To that end, Van Halen unpacks his entire bag of tricks — from whammy-bar dives and speed-picking to two-handed tapping acrobatics — for the solo of “Mine All Mine,” and you can feel the shadow that he casts grow just a little bigger with each note. T.B.

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“Right Now” (1991)

Sammy Hagar once said “Right Now” came about because “Eddie and I wanted to get serious and talk about world issues.” Which, admittedly, is just about the last thing you’d ever want to hear from Van Halen. Furthermore, all that adulting — Hagar’s overly sincere lyrics; Eddie’s similarly serious-sounding keyboard tinklings; a message-heavy video — only served to overshadow the fact that the song (which, it should be noted, hails from an album named F.U.C.K.) houses a pretty awesome solo, one that whips together flash moves (i.e., siren-like pinch harmonics) with melodic licks and phrases in a tight, pop-single–appropriate eight-bar format. It’s the kind of guitar lead you could sing — although you’d probably sound like a blubbering maniac if you tried. R.B.

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“Humans Being” (1996)

One of the last gasps of Van Hagar, “Humans Being” was written and recorded at a time when the band and its singer were at loggerheads. And make no mistake — Twister soundtrack contribution “Humans Being” is far from an A-level Van Halen song. The solo, on the other hand, is pretty stellar, kicking off with a hooky eight-bar segment chock full of trademark Eddie-isms, from tapped passages to whammy-bar squeals, before downshifting into a longer and looser instrumental section that comes off like a more languid take on the “we’re runnin’ a little bit hot tonight” breakdown in “Panama,” and that’s studded with sliding octaves and police-siren–like dissonance. What’s more, later on in the song Ed reprises the entire first part of the solo verbatim, just for the hell of it. “Humans Being” hit Number One on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Songs chart in May of 1996; roughly three weeks later, Hagar was out of the band. R.B.

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“China Town” (2012)

Similar to Women and Children First’s “Romeo Delight,” the rampaging “China Town” finds Van Halen playing it fast and heavy just ‘cause they can. Which also means that, in classic VH style, the solo is pure Eddie unleashed — and, in some spots, almost playful, from the “horse whinny” whammy-bar manipulations that crop up in his main solo and outro lead, to the loopy guitar-and-bass unison tapping phrases that kick off the tune and reappear later on. “A lot of people thought that I used a harmonizer or octave box on the intro to that song, but that is just [bassist] Wolfgang [Van Halen] and me,” Ed told Guitar World. The song is probably as much fun to play as it is to listen to, which made it one of the few A Different Kind of Truth cuts to be performed regularly on Van Halen’s 2012 and 2015 tours. T.B.