10 Rock Guitarists That Are Impossible To Duplicate
1. Eddie Van Halen - Van Halen
And now we come to the man who started it all for many of us guitar players. As the years go by, it's easy to take for granted a lot of the trademarks that Eddie Van Halen made for the guitar community, because most of us are just doing it naturally at this point. When he first burst onto the scene with that self titled record though, the entire rock community found their next guitar virtuoso.
It's practically impossible to pull off the job that Eddie fulfilled on every single VH release. Along with giving us some amazing tapping licks, he actually made them work in the context of some of the best songs in the hard rock cannon, like the tapping intro on Hot For Teacher or every single second of Eruption, which you can somehow sing along to despite it being an instrumental.
That being said, most people like to go over the amount of gear that Eddie pioneered as well, from the amazing Frankenstein guitar design to eventually making his own studio and 5150 amplifier system that has become a staple in the world of rock guitar. Even if you get all of those extensions of the guitar though, there's no way it's going to sound like he plays it. He may have given the guitar community more than we could have asked for, but the magic of those records is still all in his hands.