Slash has always shown his love and respect for his friend Eddie Van Halen — whom the Guns N' Roses guitarist has always cited as an early musical hero.
During a new chat with Consequence Of Sound, Slash spoke about the importance of what Van Halen did for the guitar and music in general, explaining, “The thing about Eddie is that he was such a gifted musician. Any instrument he had chosen to play would have been phenomenal, because he just had that pure musical talent. And for somebody with that kind of musical talent to get turned on to rock n' roll guitar was sort of unique unto itself, because most of us guitar players are a ragged bunch of rock n’ rollers who don’t have too much technical ability or schooling. We just sort of go for this raw thing. And he had that, but he also had this musical, sort of classical gift.”
For Slash — Eddie Van Halen symbolized a once-in-a-lifetime artist: “On top of that, just being somebody. . . who hears something in his head or has an idea and creates it. So it made him a triple threat. He was a great guitar player, but he was also this amazing musician, so it just made his guitar playing that much greater. And then he was an innovator on top of it, creating new things with whatever his imagination came up with. So he was just an amazing artist, period.”
