Eddie Van Halen had strong feelings about musicians who mimicked his style. As Alex Van Halen shared in a recent interview with Ariel Levy, “Ed used to go crazy about people imitating him. And imitation is the first step in being inspired because what you really want to do is inspire them to go… The first is the imitation and after that, you got to take it further.”
Alex continued, emphasizing the importance of progression in music: “To imitate, yeah, it’s wonderful but that’s not really the purpose of why you’re doing it. Everything is built on something from before and if you can go a step further, do that.”
He added, “You’re never going to figure out how far you can go until you take that step. That was part of this with ‘Jump.’ Take the leap, do it you know… screw everything else. Just jump motherf*cker [laughs]. But that was the general feeling of all of us and that’s what made the band stick together.”
While Eddie didn’t mind others employing his techniques, he was frustrated when musicians completely imitated his sound. This frustration was particularly poignant when one of his childhood idols, Rick Derringer, performed one of his solos. Eddie recalled, “Rick Derringer opened for us last year, and he did my exact solo. After the show, we’re sitting in the bar, and I just said, ‘Hey, Rick. I grew up on your a**. How can you do this? I don’t care if you use the technique – don’t play my melody.’”
He continued, sharing how Derringer responded, “And he’s drunk and stupid and going, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ The next night, he does my solo again, and he ends the set with ‘You Really Got Me,’ which is exactly what we do. So I hate to say it, but I just told him, ‘Hey, if you’re going to continue doing that, you ain’t opening for us.’ So I kicked him off.”
Eddie also faced accusations of his style being copied by other musicians, including Johnny Winter and Tom Scholtz from Boston. After Van Halen performed his solo at a show, Scholtz imitated it, leaving the audience confused. This led to Eddie criticizing Scholtz for being unfriendly and acting superior.
