The Van Halen That I Knew

Per author John Stix: These are my interviews with Ed, exploring Van Halen through Balance. Plus additional conversations with Dave, Sammy, Alex and Michael.

Eddie was warm and kind and nice, and he made you feel special when you were around him. At our first meeting, during Van Halen's debut tour with Montrose and Journey, he said to me, "I'm not a rock star." And as long as I've known him, he never acted like one. I always felt that if my mom (or his mom) walked in the room with us, he would stand up.

How normal was he? Once when the band was headlining at Nassau Coliseum, we took a break from talking music because he needed me to help him build a guitar from scratch so he could play it that night!

He was also a once-in-a-generation talent. Though he would tell you he was influenced by Clapton in Cream, he was not a branch off some other root. Like Hendrix, Van Halen was his own tree, from which many branches would spring. As a music geek it was an honor to spend so much time with him over a period of years. He will be missed but his guitar playing will light up the sky for generations to come.

I like the nitty-gritty detail

I enjoyed the minutiae of Eddie’s reflections. There are also a few interviews with the other guys, which is also good. I guess the worst thing about this book is the AI narrator. But I knew that it was AI going in, so sometimes I actually got a kick out of it. If you go with the flow, I don’t think it’ll bother you too much. I think the worst thing was sometimes I had a hard time knowing who was talking since all the voices sound the same. It was an interesting book and it was something that was easy to stop and start again – – listen to in small doses.

AI audio hard to move past

Interviews in this were interesting, although the AI used to tell the story was distracting - some words mispronounced and there was no change in the voices in the interview style. It just felt like everything ran together.