Eddie Van Halen is a prominent American musician and songwriter with Dutch origins who is known as the co-founder of a known American rock band named simply van Halen.
He is also famous for his awesome skills as a guitarist and is often voted into the lists of most popular guitarists in the world.
Early years
After his birth on January 26, 1955 he was given the name Edward Lodewijk van Halen by his loving parents.
Their names are Jan and Eugenia.
He was born in Nijmegen, in Netherland.
It is no wonder that he and his siblings inherited a good sense of music since his father was a brilliant saxophonist, pianist and even played the clarinet.His mother Eugen came from the island of Java, which is a part of Indonesia and was a very kind and supportive mother.
His parents weren’t able to provide their children with everything they wanted to so they decided to relocate to the US. They found a home in the city of Pasadena, in the state of California. It was a huge thing for him and his brother Alex who was a little older than him.
It was at the age of six that his father decided that his boys should start having piano lessons. As a skilled pianist, he was eager to learn his boys how to play the piano and to share his love for music with them.
The brothers ultimately found a great learner in Stasys Kalvaitis, a professional piano teacher.
From the very beginning of their lessons, Eddie realized that he can not learn to read music so he completely focused himself on learning through listening and watching his teacher.
He improvised a lot of times but was very good at it so no one quite noticed that he has trouble reading notes.
In fact, in the middle 70’s he even received the 1st prize for his piano play o an annual piano contest. The judges positively responded to him, saying that they like his interpretation of the piece.
The boys learned how to play the piano but it was never challenging enough for them especially after they learned about rock and roll. His older brother transferred to learning how to play the guitar and Eddie wanted to learn how to play the drums. But he saw and heard his brother playing the guitar that he decided to turn from drums to the guitar.
After he started to learn how to play the electric guitar he was amazed by it and soon he and his brother founded a rock group and they named it The Broken Combs. There were five boys in the band and they first performed in their elementary school during lunch break.
He found his idol in Eric Clapton but also respected Jimmy Page very much.
The brothers decided to change the name of the band in 1974, which was two years after they first founded the band. The new name of the band was their surname: Van Halen.
Career development
Van Halen soon became a known hard rock band in the Las Angeles scene and played at many clubs in the city. They mostly played at the Whisky a Go-Go.
The band soon became very popular and in 1977 they were contacted by the Warner Bros who wanted to sign a contract with them.
Van Halen released their first studio album in February 1978 and it was titled Van Halen. The album immediately entered the Billboard Top 100 chart and is considered to be the band9s most recognizable album. The album was later even certified Diamond after selling several million copies of the album.
Following their big success with this album, the band released several albums. Van Halen was followed by Van Halen II. Then the band released their third album named Women and Children First which was different from the previous album because it only had compositions written by the band members and nobody else. This was in 1980.
In 1982, Eddie van Halen had worked on a project outside the group by having a guitar solo in a very popular song performed by Michael Jackson called Beat It.
Fair Warning and Diver Down were the fourth and the fifth albums released by the group.
The sixth album was named „1984″ and it was released the year in the title. This album was different from the previous ones because it was the last album with David Lee Roth as the lead singer because he left the band in 1985 because he didn’t agree with the sound they were focused on.
This was also one of their best-selling albums and was also a certified diamond due to millions of copies sold all over the world. Before going diamond it became platinum several times in just 12 months.
This album came as high as number two on the Billboard album Chart which was a huge success for the group.
This album contained a pop song named „Jump“ which became their first song to be nominated for a Grammy Award.
1985 is considered the year in which the band collapsed. Eddie took away all Michael’s royalties because he didn’t write not one song for the band. Alex became an alcohol addict and Eddie became a drug addict.
The band members often used penicillin because of various sexually transmitted diseases since they all slept with groupies all the time.
In 1986, the band has released the seventh album and named it 5150, after the name of Eddie Van Halen’s studio. This was the album in which the band represented Sammy Hagar as their new singer.
The eighth album, also released by Warner Bros, was named OU812.
For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge is the name if their ninth album which entered the Billboard 200 chart on No.1 and stayed there for several weeks. The strange name for the album is an idea of the band’s singer Sammy who wanted to name the album Fuck but he knew it would be censored so he made this game of words.
They went on a tour and named it „F.U.C.K. ‘n’ Live.
This album brought them their first Grammy Award in 1992 in the category of Best Hard Rock Performance with Vocal.
In 1994, he was one of the writers of the riff made for a group Black Sabbath.
Their tenth studio album was released on January 1995 and is special because of the fact that it was the last one with Sammy Hagar being the lead singer of the band.
This album peaked at No.1 on the Billboard 200 Chart.
One of the songs from the album, titled “The Seventh Seal” received a nomination for a Grammy Award in the category of Best Hard Rock Performance.
Van Halen III is the name of their following album which was released in 1998 and their new singer Gary Cherone debuted on this album.
This was also the last album in which their bassist Michael Anthony performed.
In 1999 Eddie had to undergo a surgery of his hip from which he recovered but the group stopped touring and making music for a long period.
The very next year Van Halen started working on their new album and had recorded several songs but they never released the album because Gary Cherone decided to leave the group.
It is possible that he felt pressured about the poor sales of the group’s last album, the first one in which he was the lead singer.
In 2001, the group was dropped from Warner Bros., due to the fact they have stopped making music.
In 2002 the media exposed that had to receive treatment for cancer.
In 2004, Hagar reunited with the band.
In the summer of the same year, Van Halen released a compilation that contained several new songs made with Hagar.
This compilation album was certified platinum in the same year.
They went on the Van Halen Summer Tour in 2004 which brought millions of dollars to all the members because the tour was very successful.
The tour brought Eddie’s drinking problem wide open. By the end of the tour, he started playing poorly and he even smashed a guitar on one of the concerts.
When the tour ended the band broke down: Hagar started working at The Waboritas again and the fans soon forgot about the band after that.
In 2005, Eddie was featured on the album called The State of Things released by David Garfield and Friends.
His good friend Michael Ninn is a film director for adult movies so he asked him to make instrumentals for his pornographic movie titled Sacred Sin. This was in 2006.
In 2007, Van Halen was honored with being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The same year Van Halen was inducted in the Hall of Fame Eddie went on a rehab.
After his return from rehab, the band went on The Fall 2007 tour which was also successful until Eddie was forced to reenter rehab.
The tour ended in 2008 and it finished as the highest-grossing tour Van Halen ever had.
Eddie Van Halen’s son Wolfgang replaced Mike Anthony in his place as a bass guitarist.
In 2009, he played a riff on his guitar as a guest on a popular comedy TV series called Two and a Half Men.
He was also featured on the on LL Cool J’s album named Authentic.
The band had a long hiatus after this album, and their 12th album came out in 2012.
The name of this album is A Different Kind of Truth and it was released by Interscope Records.
The release of the album was followed by their “A Different Kind of Truth Tour” where they sold-out all of the show although tickets went up to almost $150 per ticket.
The R&B group called Kool and the Gang were their opening acts in the concerts.
In the summer of 2012, Eddie Van Halen discovered that he has diverticulitis and had to undergo another surgery. After he recovered the band toured through Australia and Japan
In 2015 the band released a live album Tokyo Dome Live with Roth.
The group also started touring in North America in 2015 but after the tour ended they didn’t gather up for a new album.
Personal life
As for his personal life he has been married twice. The first marriage was with an actress named Valerie Bertinelli whom he met in 1980 and married in 1981.
They have a son Wolfgang from this marriage who was born in 1991.
Valerie met Eddie at a concert and her brother introduced her to him. After they have met and realized they have much in common they started their romance which upgraded very quickly.
They got married at St. Paul’s Catholic Church.
The pair had a very passionate and turbulent marriage which was on the verge of breaking every few months due to his affairs and heavy smoking and drinking.
The last time he promised that he will stop using drugs and alcohol and broke the promise, she finally realized that he would never change.
Eddie started having health troubles in 1999 when he had his hip injury. A new diagnose came in 2000 when he discovered that he has tongue cancer and the third of his tongue was removed during the operation.
In 2002 he stated that he was cancer-free.
In 2001, Eddie got separated from his wife who filed for divorce four years later. Their marriage was ended in 2007.
In 2008 he git engaged to his publicist Janie Liszewski, and the two of them got married in 2009. His son Wolfgang was his best man.
In 2012, he had to undergo another diverticulum related surgery.
In September of 2019, the Daily Mail had written an article in which they claim that Eddie’s tongue cancer is back and that he is in Germany undergoing treatment for it.
Quick summary
Full name: Edward Lodewijk van Halen
Date of birth: January 26, 1955
Birthplace: Nijmegen, Netherlands, North Europe
Age: 65
Profession: singer, guitarist, songwriter, musician, pianist, keyboardist
Height: 1,73m
Weight: NA
Net Worth: $80 million