10 Legendary Musicians That Play Multiple Instruments

Usually conversations about the greatest rock musicians in the world can begin and end at Eddie Van Halen. While he was by no means the frontman of his namesake band, you could never turn away from Eddie whenever he took a guitar solo, employing the legendary two hand tapping technique that has become the norm for today's modern shredders. Then again, that was only one facet of what Ed was capable of at the peak of Van Halen's powers.

Midway through the David Lee Roth era of the band, Eddie started getting into playing keyboards, which added a much different layer to the band's sound. Even though people chalk this up to the band selling out on albums like 1984, Ed was already utilizing keyboards back on And the Cradle Will Rock, with most people not even being able to tell that the main riff wasn't being played on a guitar at first.

Aside from his technical chops, Eddie was also an inventor in the world of rock, always looking for new sounds and trying to squeeze something different out of his instrument every time he picked it up, like using a drill on his guitar on the interlude Intruder or creating an echo chamber sound by "playing" his volume knobs on the song Cathedral. Most bands might go for a more serious tone when they experiment, but every new sonic avenue Eddie gave us always came from a place of pure fun.