Danny, for each era of music and entertainment, there are people that are credited for defining style, technique, talent, etc.

I am with Joe V here, being a teen in the 80's, EVH was THE guy. Just as giants before him, he built on foundations from before, and brought new techniques to the masses. Quite honestly, he wasn't the most distorted sound of his era (weird talking about him in past tense), and the basically 3 piece with a singer/gymnast that they were, cranked out some huge sounds that did define a generation of hard rock. So many different hard rock guitar techniques that are still employed today were brought to the forefront by this guy.

I'm not an admirer of the lifestyles portrayed by these guys, but if you go back and listen to any of their recordings they were pretty dang influential. Alex Van Halen's double kick drum techniques are used almost ubiquitiously by today's hard rock drummers. Many bands have to have two electric players to cover the territory that EVH covered on his own.

I can dig Charlie Christian, Les Paul, Link Wray, Duane Eddy, Jimmy Page, Jimi, Eddie, Paul Gilbert, Nuno, and my new favorite, Dimitar Nalbantov (who has built on melodic instrumental rock and does some great stuff at his home studio www.nalbantov.com - that's mainly for Joe V's benefit). Hey since I've mentioned him again - here's one where Dimitar has stood on EVH's shoulders (as do all the greats), and composed something that sounds hopeful to my ear and it's just fun to watch how he does it. I'm guessing I'm 20 years older than this guy, but I keep buying his self-made CDs (it's fun to get them in the mail with the cyrillic stuff on the padded envelopes). I don't listen to this constantly - I've got everything from bluegrass to gregorian chant to Holst to Dimitar on my mp3 player.

I think Joe is also right, in that music plays such an important role with memory, go visit musicandmemory.org for some really cool evidence, that the thing that is actually universal is the tie to visuals, smells, friends, etc. of YOUR era.

I can understand not liking it. I never really appreciated EVH until I started trying to mimic exactly what it is that he did/does. I can play everything from Panama except the bit between 2:05-2:18 or so. Partly because I've never had a functional whammy bar guitar ( I blocked the tailpiece on my Strat the 8 or 9 years that I had it). But it would take lots of practice to pull off the intermingling of string bends and whammy bar action with the panache of him (or Dimitar even more so for that matter).

Some of the things I do use quite regularly for other styles from trying to play this one song way back in the day: Palm muting, pinch harmonics using both the fleshy part of my thumb as well as palm depending on where my right hand is picking, moving away from barre chords to the bare essentials, and connecting rhythm parts with little leads in between chords. Doesn't matter which style is at hand - I use these techniques in every style that I'm required to play. One can draw similarities to things that other players have done through the various eras of amplified guitar, or any type of music for that matter.

On Runnin with the Devil - the thing that impresses me on that song are two fold:

1. On the main rhythm riff, the chord inversion choices were very fresh for the day. There is a sort of Bach-ness to these chords - Triumphant sounding.

2. In the verses, the laid back simple groove that he settles into after the 'triumphant' stuff from point 1 is quite interesting. By itself it doesn't sound very impressive, but coupled with David Lee Roth's greasy vocals in the verses and the solid beat provided by his brother Alex, and Michael Anthony's bass, it's just right.

Listening to these in isolation does make one realize how much that band really was a BAND making big sound (not noise IMO) as a unit.

My Songs, photos, writing,etc.
My Sound Cloud