It’s been one month since the legendary rock guitarist Eddie Van Halen passed away at the age of 65 following a long battle with cancer. On Saturday, Van Halen was honored in a truly touching way during the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony.
Entertainment Tonight reported that the ceremony honored Van Halen during its “In Memoriam” segment, celebrating his “unique” talent and singular musical vision. The segment included messages of love from Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett, Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, and Guns N’ Roses’ Slash, who described Van Halen as a “tremendously gifted musician.”
“His style and his sound were completely unique to him. He had a massive impact on guitar playing,” Slash said. “I don’t think there’s anybody who’s picked up guitar since 1978 that hasn’t been touched in some way by Eddie Van Halen’s influence. I’m gonna miss his playing, and I’m going to miss him as a friend.’
“Not since Jimi Hendrix had there been a guitar player that had so much impact and was so inspiring to me,” added Hammett. “He just explored the most simplest thing: a harmonic on a string and brought it into this realm of technique that no one even thought was possible.”
He went on to describe Van Halen as “amazing” and to say that it felt as if he was “from a different planet.”
As for Morello, he said that Van Halen was “the Mozart of our generation.”
“He had the kind of talent that maybe comes around once a century,” Morello said. “Eddie Van Halen inspired me to practice 20,000 hours to try to get within 100 miles of his inspired mastery of the electric guitar.”
The segment also featured footage of some of Van Halen’s most iconic performances. It ended with a touching old interview of him promising in his youth that he would never stop rocking.
“If I hit 80, if I make it that far, I’ll still be doing the same thing,” Van Halen said in the throwback interview. “I might not be jumping, I might be sitting on a stool, but I’ll still be making music!”
Van Halen was first diagnosed with tongue cancer in 2000, and he managed to beat it by 2002. In 2019, however, it was revealed that Van Halen had secretly been battling throat cancer for five years.
This piece originally appeared in UpliftingToday.com and is used by permission.
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