Funny that this is just him messing around, yet i'd rather listen to this than most any new band out there.

Ed became the greatest ever as soon as he struck the opening A of Eruption.

Eddie's signature..... he plays the riffs that a clarinetist would in big band music and plays it like a kid who is slipping and sliding as he walks across a lake of ice...and loving every bit of it!

The greatest guitar mind ever. Id pay to see him jam random shit

if you play guitar and you play rock or hard rock THIS is STILL the ideal sound over 20 years later. there's no comparison

This is pricelesss ! THIS is the stuff VH fans die to hear. Can you imagine the stuff they have on tape at 5150 ? Thanks for posting. A genious at work

It was February 1978 in Los Angeles, Ca. I was a nay'er do well, punk middle schooler, hanging out in a friends garage one friday night, doing the usual getting high, underage drinking and rotating jam session on various instruments to see who sucked the worst. During a break someone turned on the stereo. The DJ was talking up a new arrival to the studio and then he played it. Suddenly the sound of "Eruption" filled the garage. All talking suddenly ceased as Ed's opus magnus spilled out of the speakers like hot magma. Eruption played thru to "You Really Got Me". When it ended the stereo was turned down again. More stunned silence. Finally one of my friends said in a very low tone "What the f#ck was that?" Another replied "WHO the fuck was that?" I remember thinking to myself that it was hard enough to play songs on guitar from other bands of the time (UFO, Scorpions, Judas Priest) but how the hell could anyone make a guitar even sound like that?? The next night we were all back at the garage. Someone had a copy of Van Halen's new debut LP. No one played any of the instruments that night. We all just sat round listening to Eddie Van Halen, permanently raising the bar for all aspiring guitarists, and changing Rock and Roll forever.

His pinch harmonix were absolutely insane. Legend.

Thank you for being the one reason I picked up guitar. Your music shall live on, your spirit shall live on, forever. Rock in piece, Eddie Van Halen. #5150Forever

Wow! Man.... it just can not get any cooler than Edward Van Halen. A pair of beat up jeans. A pack of smokes. A Marshall Amp. A Frankenstrat.... and boom! 💥 Magic.

It just flows out of him.

I love this behind the scenes stuff because it’s a reminder that even the masters have a process, whether it’s warming up or searching for the groove or just goofing around. It’s easy to look at the finished product and think “man I could never do that.” But you don’t realize that that “finished product” took hours or what you’re hearing right here. It’s an inspiration to keep going. As Ed himself said, “Keep playin, man.” 🤘🏻🎸❤️

This is the stuff TRUE evh fans wanna hear!! Thanks for posting.

RIP Eddie, you'll be missed!

Eddie Van Halen,Michael Schenker, Ritchie Blackmore,Alex Lifeson,and Tommy Bolin are my favorite guitarists ever.I've seen them all,and i'll never forget seeing them for the first time.each of them blew me away,especially Eddie.When i first heard VH-1 i thought there's no way anyone can be this good,it must have been full of overdubs.When i went to see Van Halen live,Ed proved to everyone at Maple Leaf Gardens just how great he really was.

I swear in 1984, Portland OR this was all taking place in the dark for about 5 minutes, then the fog came down and Eddie went full shred into "Unchained" You could FEEL EVHs tone in your chest, it was deep and had serious presence.

Bursts of inspiration.....It's amazing how emotional his playing is...that's what makes his playing so original...and memorable, technique and heartfelt playing, every cluster sounds different..absolute genius...he is a real prodigy......

Just. loving. every. riff. Long Live Ed.

I remember hearing This tape first time in High school like 10-11 years ago. It was the time when i became a van halen fan. Today This tape came to my mind. Im still as much blown away by his playing as i did back then.

My neighbor has a picture with Van Halen (circa 1977) they grew up with the VH's in Pasadena. The pic is of VH playing there wedding. Hell Yah!

Rest In Peace Eddie love you miss ya

I jist ran this from my phone through my fullstack guitar amp in the garage with the doors closed. The neighbors are now convinced I am The Second Coming Of Edward.

No wonder it`s so easy for Ed to come up with new riffs, he just sits and jams and sees what comes out. He plays several riffs in this clip that would`ve made great tunes.

Anyone who says this is not EVH is no true fan of him I've listened to this 1000s of times I love it and learn a lot from it All the little nuances Tone Vibrato Fuckin love it

RIP EDDIE VAN HALEN 😢 you are my idol and hero who inspired me to pick up a guitar and play at the hell out of it, you will never be forgotten

Edward is a musical genius in a thousand different ways. And quite frankly, I believe he may be from another planet.

i first heard mr eddie van halen in 1985 it was the album with the angel smoking a cigaret looking to his left it was 1984 album , and that made me buy every thing i could get of van halen i worked any job and bought all on cassetts then cds and i broke up with my girlfrend at the time she took all my van halen so i had to buy everything again. and it was well worth spending any amount of money on van halen music, i did that two more times till i got older and settled down, im a life-er to van halen music allways .

Amazing. He quotes the Who "Young Man Blues" at 4:00, and earlier JUST a touch of Queen's "Stone Cold Crazy"... This tone is insane. Just impossibly insane. And what he plays, just warming up. I wanna smash all my stuff. OR play all day.

Hearing Eddie's blues sends chills. ...CHILLS I tell ya!

Thanks for the Music Eddie R.I.P

Been a VH fan for almost 30 years. If it is not him, I'd like to meet whomever it is, shake their hand and say: "You got it."

6:50 to 7:00 that came out of nowhere and it was pretty badass.

Yeah, that is DEFINITELY Ed

THIS IS AMAZING!!!!

Ty for this.

Man,this is just a testament to how awesome Eddie is in every way. Great tone,amazing phrasing and awesome feel.

@MrTristanUSA - Eddie has one of the deepest guitar "souls" that I have heard. His playing reflects emotion and man, have you seen how he smiles when he's playing? He would like to be doing nothing else. He is one of the most emotional guitarists I can think of, IMO.

King Edward!!!

JBL D120F speakers for top end mixed with Celestion Greenbacks for bottom end are one of the major and overlooked characteristics of Eddie's early sound, in case you burrito brown sound chasers want to get the idea.

I can listen this all day

Can't find words for this one!!! Thanks for posting ;)

This behind the scenes, warming up/practice/rehearsal stuff is as good as it gets. It lets you hear the creative process as he's throwing around ideas. The long pauses are him talking to somebody. "No, not that. Try it this way..." and then he does. You can hear a little from each song. God, what I would give to spend a couple days sifting thru the audio files at 5150. I would be up 24 hours a day with a boner and a smile! (well, at least a smile)

Bought VH 1 in 78, 8th grade. Really starting to get into music in middle school, getting to know what I liked. This was it. Kind of grew with them as they did. Been looking at a lot of vids like this and interviews lately. One thing that seemed to be a constant was a butt in most of them. The snl dinner skit he pulls one out with a beer! Also, at exactly 4 mins in, sounds like beginning of young man blues, live Who version. Think it was on Kids are alright album which was 2 disc, 1 live. Yes I said album. Wish I still had them but got destroyed. Best to all.

All hail the EdMan for he truly is a gift of the pleasure within sound.

IM IN MY GLORY!!! GOD FUKKIN BLESS FOR POSTING THIS!!! EVH #1 ...man he loves that House Of Pain riff.

As great as eruption is, I actually wish he would try being a bit more spontaneous for the live solo and elsewhere. Hearing him jam something different I havent heard eleventy million times is refreshing. All those little quirky things that spill out every so often show his personality, and Ive always cherished them.

I adore this sound... hear the armonic of "House of Pain" at 1:30!

Alright, the first 4 mins. are bits of the songs 'House-of-Pain', 'Spanish-fly', 'Atomic-Punk', then he seems to go into a little bit of exploring then starts into 'Panama" around 4:29 mark. Then he seems to go into a few riffs from 'Beautiful-girls' & other riffs I can't quite put my finger on up until 6:10 when he goes back into 'House-of-Pain" up intil 6:43. Then he goes into some experimentals again up until 7:21 when he hits spanish fly real quick & then goes back into 'House-of-Pain'.

you can clearly hear his tone and licks starting to sound like the 5150 album

Eddies groove along with those whip skills. Jeeze man. You da man brother. We will miss new music but at least we can run across pieces like this!!!!

Awesome playing, and that tone!

Did I just hear "Can't Get That Stuff No More"? Yep now I'm sure of it... so cool!!!

i love this gem!

I think it's cool that the last thing he did was tune, so the instrument was ready to go for next time.

i hope they would sell out. you have guys like me a 48 year old guy who have waited around 28 years for them to put out anything. and the new generation of kids who have nothing to listen to because all the great music is from years ago. i loved the 80s, thats when i saw a couple hundred concerts, and slept over night at the arena to get a number and wait in line for hours to get good seats.great days and memories. i saw van halen in 1981 when i was 16. then 1982 1983 1984. and all 80s metal!!!

Really cool to hear this

For me personally EVH was the bridge between SRV and John Petrucci. EvH had this neo-blues style that was so amazing, I wish there were more recordings of it. He could do some 3 note per string runs, but never a thing like Vai or Petrucci

Master Class

The recordings that are popping up are awesome. Now I dont have to rewind that scene in Back To The Future!

The benchmark tone to end all other guitar sounds... Killer :)

This IS Eddie. 100% sure. Argument closed. I've listened to Van Halen since I first heard them when I was in Grade eight in 1982, and through all the 'Van Wailin'' sound-alikes and other influences like Vai, Johnson, Satriani, Beck, Hendrix, et al, I've been an unwavering & faithful EVH student since then. I've been playing guitar since I was 5 years old and my ears are tuned to the EVH frequency, and whether he's playing familiar riffs or not, I can tell... my ears tell me THIS IS ED :-)

Eddie will go down as the most innovative rock guitarist of all time, even surpassing Hendrix

jeez, eddie is like amazing

I love listening to to the mind behind the development of what he created

I can help! Sincerely, Noise Gate

Forever The King ❤

I think ED now how some serious hearing loss, his newer tone is to bright , probably because it sounds warm to him in his head. I have partial hearing loss from loud amps and have to remind myself to lower the brightness in any part of the sound. Because it sounds warmer to me but the listener hears more brightness.

@Greyswyndir Don't get me wrong, I love Hendrix but i just feel Ed took things to another level. Ed was the first guy to really focus on "tone" and he re-invented rock guitar in every way. After the arrival of VH, practically every aspiring rock guitarist was an Eddie clone. Slash was the first guy who was a throwback to the Jimmy Page/Ace Frehley era. I apologize in advance for including Frehley in the same sentence as Page but they both played Les Pauls and used mainly blues pentatonic licks

Holy shit, just found this. F*cking awesome!! As Simon Hurst said, if you think this is someone else you're kidding yourself!

Unless you're deaf, it's clear that Ed's chops are all-time unmatched.

GOD BLESSED ED. MY NAME IS TIM AND I ENDORSE THIS MESSAGE~!

He's just goofing off playing whatever his hands tell the guitar to do, it obeys well!! I could listen to him all day!! ✌😎🎸🎶✨🎶💥✨💨

Eddie must have tons of material that he could use. I mean he has his own recording studio im sure he has hours,days, weeks of shit recorded. I'd like to see some old stuff brought out.

GOOSEBUMPS!!!

15 minutes of this sessions will be a great solo act for the show.

Tone, tone and more tone! True guitar god!

@DukeStarbuckle this is the most insightful comment aboout this cool clip! I get that all the time"Why don't you play the whole song???", I first saw Van Halen in 78 in Spokane loved them ever since! Been playin for a few years. this clip and your comments give me some hope as a player, I think there are to many negative comments, besides even if this isn't the master it pretty damn cool! thanks

Great!!!!!

🎵💖 Eddie 💖🎵😊

Now that's bad-ass tone!

His sound is just in your face bammmmmm!!!

That touch bro What a god

I heard house of pain; a riff from young man's blues, panama....this is awesome.

Crazy. If you're familiar with him..... you'll notice, the techniques are there. This is him searching and experimenting. This is him searching for something new and unique.

Long live Rock n Roll! RIP Edward Van Halen!

RIP EVH the greatest 🙏🏾

Wow! Priceless!... :-)

I can't stand metal, but I have to hand it to old Eddie. His playing always sounds like music... unlike most metal guitarists.

Just got this down on my Aire Guitarcaster...

I'm sure everyone in the studio were speechless.

People often forget what an AWESOME rhythm player he is.....and that FEEL.....guitarists can study his technique forever.....but there has never been a player that could replicate it, until SATSUMA3042 on KZfaq!!!

Great posts. How did you get this in such high quality?

The GOAT!!!

ha ha thats him gooffing around with sounds for the rest of us thats like gold

hhmmm very freakin nicely said man.... very nicely said.

6:10 jamming is incredible

- actually, this was recorded minutes after the Anaheim CA show in '82, Eddie just couldn't stop.

eddie rocks

His tone from 5:22-549 or there aboutss is the echoplex kicked on. Combine that echoplex with the reverb used in studio and you have VH 1 tone. Without that, you have this tone that you're hearing here. Don't be fooled by all the mystique about PAF pickups and guitar body wood type. This amp does sound a little darker (maybe a new transformer), than the VH 1 amp however.

Ed created his own sound and guitar. Hendrix never did that. And yes, Hendrix would have been blown away by it. Besides the fact that i LOVE Hendrix, i honestly think his fame grew because he died very young. Like Randy. Too fuckin bad. To me Edward is the greatest. But it is all just taste.