Rolling Stone Magazine Article From 1982

[frank]

By the way, do you think Randy had any "signature" licks in his repertoire?

good question. i'll have to give that one a good think. off the top of my head, randy would be the first to say that all music is derivative. all my best licks are stolen from somewhere else, y'know?. how he took old ideas and made his own distinct sound fresh....

i'm listening to a tape right now where...here...listen:

frank: that sounds really hot.
randy: you'll like this a lot...you'll use this.
frank: i keep looking for some secret that you're using
randy: this it. guarantee it.
frank: is that it?
randy: because it's got roll-offs....

the more i think about it i don't know if there is one 'signature' lick. randy used an arsenal of smoke and mirrors infused with tasty minor and melodic playing. so much of the randy experience was a total assault on the senses.

hmmm. that probably didn't help at all did it?

[Six_Strung_Out]

randy: because it's got roll-offs....

Thanks, Frank, for tapping, excuse me, typing that out.

This discussion about "Randys signature" has to do with that old saying: "the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts"

With Randy you can hear the whole and some. With EVH you get an infinite amount of parts. If I try to hum something from the band Van Halen I must think of it first. While walking down the street my mind hears melodies from Mr. Crowley spontainiously.

Of course it is true that some ears and minds probably hear something from EVH that I don't. This is the beauty of music after all. No person hears the same thing another person hears.



Ray

[Paul Wolfe]

Now, just to clarify, I asked the "signature" question to get people thinking and listening to the music.

When the guy wrote that article for Rolling Stone, Eddie had gotten the entire guitar universe into tapping. He also had gotten the whole guitar universe into the whammy bar. As such a huge influence on so many, he was seen by non-guitarists as king. Anyone who used some of Ed's tricks - tapping, whammy - would be lumped into the "junior league Eddie Van Halen" category.

As far as I can tell, Randy didn't have a signature lick or move that made him stand out. That doesn't make him a bad player and it doesn't mean I'm saying Ed was better. All I'm saying is Randy didn't have the "it factor" that made him stand out to non-musicians in 1982.

Randy was phenomenal as a player and musicians recognize that. Musicians, however, don't write for Rolling Stone.

My wife can sing the solo to I Don't Know (I've heard her do it without realizing she was doing it), but she wouldn't be able to tell you the name of the song. To me, that says loads about Randy's ability to compose.

[Paul Wolfe]

Here are two more quotes from a friend who was reading through this thread.

At the 2-2-82 seminar Randy was asked about Eddie and he said this:


Fan: Uh, I’ve heard a lot of rumors that you’re like, just copying off Eddie Van Halen.

(Crowd giggles)

Fan: Was you influenced by him…his technique and playing?

(Crowd makes comments to fan)

Fan: No, was you influenced by him or…

RR: Yeah, I was actually.

Fan: Did you just like that style or what?

RR: To give you a…the best I can answer that…

Fan: Yeah.

RR: I’m trying to save myself. (Chuckles) We’re, uh, from the same town and we were both in local bands. As a matter of fact, there was a lot of guitar players. L.A. was like, everybody was a lead guitar player and everybody played very similar. There’s a lot more players out there that are fantastic, that just havn’t been out yet. But everybody used to say we all sound very much the same. I mean, if you have a circuit and you know all the guitar players, you tend to…like…

Max Norman:"Van Halen was one of the few guitarists Randy would talk about. One day, I said, "What guitar players do you like, Randy?" And he said, "I like Eddie Van Halen."

[Trigger]

I think one reason that Randy fans attack Eddie is that Randy has reieved such little praise over the years, he left behind such a small body of work.
I also think that when we attack other guitarists its often in good humour and not really meant to harshly.

I did it in this thread and it was in solidarity not malice.

[CHI-TOWN2]

ok...i will concede this...EVH sure wasnt influenced by Randy...hes plays the same silly style he made popular 30 yeares ago....that tapping stuff has become a caricature...its dated...Randy expanded his playing with his fusion of classical and metal...thats why hes considered an innovator...why his work all these years later still sounds fresh. He saw way beyond that flash stuff. Randy was headed elsewhere...Ed just stayed the same.

[Trigger]

I am on UR.TK or RR.TK

I hope that is taken in the best of humour!

100% UR, or it could have been murder by now or bullying at the very least

[Zakk Daniels]

i sure have missed a lot...

well, for the record i've got nothing against EVH, i think he's a great guitarplayer/musician.

as for a rhoads signature...hmmm... well you could pinpoint his use of scale shapes and use of certain notes for creating/releasing tension... there are a couple o things like that but do they qualify as sig's - damned if i know.

personaly i think randys signature of such went beyond a specific technique you can pin down... to me at least you can just tell when its randy playing just like with Jeff Beck... he's mixed in more genres than most yet you can hear him a mile off

AMEN!!! Perfectly summed up and said.

[Zakk Daniels]

holy cow. i bait paul with a provocative statement and all hell breaks loose. how manipulative of me!
listen guys, let's just agree to disagree.
this thread is played out.

You are SOOOOOO Correct sir!! I agree 100% with you.

[The Flying Dutchman]

I am on UR.TK or RR.TK

I hope that is taken in the best of humour!

100% UR, or it could have been murder by now or bullying at the very least

No man, this is the Official Randy board !

[The Flying Dutchman]

What? Like the whole innovative whammy bar thing that nobody else could do before Ed perfected it and inspired Floyd Rose to create a locking nut?

I'd need a whole new thread to talk about Ed's innovations that changed guitar playing as we know it.

As with Randy, Ed's signature was his whole playing:

-the whammy bar technique you mentioned
-Tapping
-tremelo picking
-Harmonics
-False Harmonics (a little facet in his playing that became one of Zakk's trademarks)
-extending pentatonic scales with chromatic figures
-he's use of Marshall amps (dummy load setup, variac, I strongely suspect Randy copied that, at leat the variac for Blizzard )
-his great dynamic unique live sound
-his upstroke rythym playing unlike downstrokes most people do

And I may very well forget some things.
Ed's playing was one of a kind. (imo )

But some say he copied from Jef beck and Allan Holdsworth.....

Hey Dutch! You forgot about Ed having a footswitch on the motor of his Echoplex...where he could stop the motor and let it slow down naturally...decreasing the pitch way beyond what a whammy bar at the time could do,.... then turn it back on and let the speed, and pitch, ramp back up.

Great trick!

Hey Dean! I knew it.....
Sounds very cool! Ed was the king those days!
Too bad those old echoes are that big to carry all the time.....

I forgot some things:
- The invention of the superstrat
(Ed replaced the brigde single coil for a humbucker, from what I know nobody did that before)
- midboosting a superlead with an graphic equalizer
I know people did use treble boosters before that, but I think (I'm not sure) Ed was the first using an eq for some more tube saturation! This was at a time Randy still used a solid state peavy. Hence Randy already had a good sound but his sound with Ozzy improved a lot by using the Ed approach.
However Randy went even beyond that by adding an MXR dis+ before the EQ and got some very interesting results too!

[The Flying Dutchman]

i'm listening to a tape right now where...here...listen:

frank: that sounds really hot.
randy: you'll like this a lot...you'll use this.
frank: i keep looking for some secret that you're using
randy: this it. guarantee it.
frank: is that it?
randy: because it's got roll-offs....

Priceless! Thanks!

[rice_pudding]

But some say he copied from Jef beck and Allan Holdsworth.....

everyone copied from someone to some degree IMO
not a bad thing of course its one of the things that define genre.

[stealaway]

RR vs EVH...waste of time to compare two greats. Been getting into old Halen live boots from 1974 & 1975, cool stuff...but not like Randy!

[The Flying Dutchman]

everyone copied from someone to some degree IMO

Exactly, for instance everybody plays chords on a guitar nowadays, but someone was the first.
Imagine nobody was allowed to play chords anymore because of that very first person who did it first!

Another thing, at that time the public demand was very much flashy guitarplaying because of Ed. If Randy didn't do any of those new techniques he would maybe accused of not having enough technique to show off. But once he did they accused him of copying Ed...... So it was not easy at that time to satisfy everyone.

Randy made use of some at that time new techniques and did it with great musical taste, there's nothing wrong with that. I'm glad he did!