I think what some of you guys are missing out on, because of your age.. is the reaction we had the first time we heard Van Halen.
Think of it this way... the best guitarists we'd heard before Van Halen's first album were guys like Ritchie Blackmore, Ted Nugent, the very first Rush albums. The only songs a lot of us knew were Smoke on the Water, Tush, Wang Dang Sweet Poontang... and that was it. The fastest guitar player around was either Richie Blackmore or Ted Nugent and the only famous guys were Hendrix or maybe BB King. All other guitar players were average guys who did leads for Bowie or Pink Floyd.
Suddenly, you're at a friends house and he throws on the first Van Halen album for the very first time and plays Eruption.
Like..... my jaw literally dropped and the bunch of us were stunned...cause we'd never heard anything like that before. Not only the fast tapping (which we had no idea how he was doing it), but how clean his tone and playing was, how exact he was in playing chords and how smooth his leads sounded.
There was absolutely nobody else like him and the first thing all of us did was buy the first album and spend hours playing it at 16rpm trying to figure out how he did it. Some of us spend years learning that first album and learning the techniques he used... all without the benefit of tabs or music books.
Just a little history to explain why some of us will always consider Eddie to be the best. He totally turned guitar playing around and was the major influence to a lot of people after that.
