Eddie Van Halen of the legendary heavy metal band Van Halen was one of the greatest guitarists of his generation. Some would say he was the greatest shredder of all time. It’s a little hard to disagree with that. Still, no musician is without criticism from their contemporaries. And a handful of musicians through the years have had a negative thing or two to say about this rock god. Let’s take a look!
Lindsey Buckingham
The famed Fleetwood Mac singer/songwriter seems like the last person who would make it to this list of musicians who have criticized Eddie Van Halen. And yet, he did have some pretty direct criticisms of Van Halen’s artistry. Few would criticize Van Halen’s skills, but Buckingham did note that he thought the guitarist “doesn’t make good records.”
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“I’ve always believed that you play to highlight the song, not to highlight the player,” said Buckingham in a basically lost 2012 interview with Guitar World Acoustic. “The song is all that matters. There are two ways you can choose to go. You can try to be someone like Eddie Van Halen, who is a great guitarist, a virtuoso. Yet he doesn’t make good records because what he plays is totally lost in the context of this band’s music.”
Pat Smear
You might know Pat Smear as one of the most underrated and talented guitarists of the 90s, playing with the likes of The Germs, Nirvana, and Foo Fighters. He also had a few harsh words for Eddie Van Halen. It’s worth noting that Smear once idolized Van Halen, but his opinion soured a bit in the 90s when Van Halen drunkenly showed up to a Nirvana show, tried to get the band to let him on-stage with them, and made a racist remark to Smear.
“Eddie turns around and sees me, but he doesn’t say hello or anything,” said Smear in an interview with Dimension Seven. “He just says, ‘Oh no, not a dark one.’ At first, I thought he was kidding. But he kept asking me, ‘What are you? Are you like a Raji or something? Are you Mexican?’”
Dee Snider
Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider is rarely ever egregiously wrong in his takes, though he has ruffled a few feathers throughout his career. During the famed Van Halen feud of the 90s/00s, Snider had more or less taken Sammy Hagar’s side, noting David Lee Roth’s aversion to confrontation and Eddie Van Halen’s issues with being standoffish and not entirely presentable during performances. Specifically, he brought up how his then-eight-year-old song had brought up that Eddie Van Halen had paid a visit to his school for a charity event, and the boy thought he “looked like a homeless person.”
“As far as Eddie goes, anybody who is really watching and paying attention, Eddie’s out of his mind,” said Snider of the guitarist. “[..] He looked like a bum, and I’ve heard that from so many people.”
Photo by Ebet Roberts/Redferns