Former Dokken guitarist George Lynch has opened up about the late Eddie Van Halen, revealing that “a lot of people thought he wasn’t that nice of a person.”
During an appearance on Appetite for Distortion (via Ultimate Guitar), Lynch was asked about his reaction to the death of Van Halen in October last year.
“Yeah, that hit me personally very hard, and every guitar player I know pretty much kind of felt the same way. As we get older, obviously, we’re seeing people go away and pass, and that’s just normal, of course, and we’ve seen a lot of that, so that’s pretty profound,” he replied.
He continued: “I mean, David Bowie, I mean, George Michael, all these people – Prince – these giants – Tom Petty – all at once it seemed like.”
“Eddie was on another level because, obviously, we’re a little closer as far as what we do, and we kind of came up through the same place at the same time and had some connections, so that’s why it was more profound I think, and I learned a lot from him, and I based a lot of my style on him.”
“Even though we were compatriots in a way, he was way beyond me, so I lifted a lot of stuff from him and got inspired by him, as we all did. He’s a Southern California guy, and we were like kind of neighbors and played the same clubs and played on the same stages together and hung out, did Monsters of Rock…”
“So yeah, that was a pretty tough one. It hits close to home too I think for us when our friends and stuff start disappearing because it’s a lonelier place after that.”
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Lynch continued on to reveal more about Van Halen‘s personality, describing him as “incredibly shy”.
He began: “Well, he was just incredibly shy… he was just a super introvert. All the guy did was just sit in his room and play guitar his whole life and drink his beers, and smoking cigarettes, and develop what he developed – changed the guitar world.”
“I think he was just sort of burdened with this whole fame thing and being a human being in a complicated world. It isn’t always so nice. He’s a super-sensitive guy, which allowed him to be this incredible musician, as you have to have that sort of sympathy and empathy,” he continued.
“A lot of people thought he wasn’t that nice of a person, but it was just because he was really quiet, he was a little bit scared, but he spoke so beautifully through his instrument. We had moments, we used to hang out…”
“Monsters of Rock, we would go almost every night, just sit in our hotel room and just play guitar all night, it was pretty awesome. Actually, I had some issues with my gear out there on the Monsters tour, and they were the headliner obviously, and he was so sweet because he’s like, ‘Hey, man, take anything you want of mine.'”
“So I did half that tour with his gear. That’s pretty insane because headliners usually don’t do stuff like that, they go, ‘That’s your problem, figure it out,’ which is fair. He was very sweet, ‘Just take anything you want, heads, cabinets.'”
“I used his rig for like half that tour, that was pretty sweet. He gave my son a guitar lesson, my kid was going to GIT, and he wanted to be a guitar player like his dad, and I was, I took him to meet Eddie, and Eddie’s like, ‘You know what? You’re a guitar player? Let me show you…'”
“They went back in the warmup room and gave my son a little lesson. That was pretty cool. Who does that?” he concluded.
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Check out George Lynch discussing Eddie Van Halen:
