Eddie Van Halen Laughs At His Critics

EDDIE VAN HALEN LAUGHS AT HIS CRITICS

June 11, 2009

Despite being in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and hailed as one of the most influential guitarists of his generation, Eddie Van Halen and the band that bears his surname have taken their share of abuse along with praise from music critics over the years. But Eddie takes that negativity directed at Van Halen with a grain of salt. “There’s no such thing as bad music; it’s just music you don’t like,” he tells Spinner. “That’s why the critics are hilarious. Wow, wish I had a gig like that,” he adds, laughing. “Just sitting around saying, ‘I don’t like that, I don’t like that.'”

Eddie could find plenty of willing readers and publishers if he wanted to try his own hand at rock criticism. And if he ever did share his opinions with the world? “I wouldn’t use the word critiquing. I would just say, ‘Hey, I like this,'” he says. “And why sometimes, I don’t even know. I love Tori Amos, not everything she does; I love Peter Gabriel, not everything he does.”

Van Halen offers the same unbiased opinion on his own work. “I don’t even like everything I do,” he says. “Sometimes I’ll write something — for instance, a song called ‘Top of the World’ — everyone else liked it, I didn’t. I got outvoted — and I wrote the damn song. It ended up on the record.”

One song of his he did like, even if no one else did, is ‘Jump.’ “Everyone hated it. [I was told] verbatim, “‘You’re a guitar hero; nobody wants to see you playing keyboards,” he says. “Well, I don’t mean to ram it up their poop chute, so to speak, but it’s our only No. 1 single.”

Courtesy of www.sleazeroxx.com and www.spinner.com