Dutch-American singer-songwriter and musician whose family moved to southern California in 1962 when he was seven. He learned guitar while his brother Alex learned drums and they formed a heavy-rock group with David Lee Roth and Michael Anthony in 1973. Within two years they were the loudest and heaviest metal band in the Los Angeles area, creating a live reputation that was growing. Roth was noted for vocals and outrageous stage antics. He was also known for popularizing the tapping guitar solo technique, allowing rapid arpeggios to be played with two hands on the fretboard.
In February 1978 they put out their debut album, Van Halen, and began touring. In August 1979 they made a ten-month world tour taking 22 tons of equipment, hitting the trail of drugs and babes and rock-n-roll.
The band won the 1992 Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance with Vocal for the album For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, and the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 12 March 2007.
Eddie Van Halen was engaged in several projects outside of his eponymous band. In 1976, both Eddie and his brother Alex recorded three demos with Kiss bassist Gene Simmons. “Christine Sixteen”, “Tunnel of Love”, and “Got Love for Sale” were recorded and eventually released on Gene’s 2017 boxset The Vault. In 1982, Eddie played the guitar solo in Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.”
On 11 April 1981, Van Halen married actress Valerie Bertinelli and their son Wolfgang was born on 16 March 1991 in Santa Monica, California. The actress filed for divorce on 6 December 2005 in Los Angeles. They had been separated for the four years prior.
Van Halen married his girlfriend, Janie Liszewski, an actress and stunt-woman who became his publicist in 2007, on 27 June 2009 at his Studio City estate.
Van Halen struggled with alcoholism and drug abuse. He stated that he began smoking and drinking at age 12, and that he eventually needed alcohol to function. The musician announced on 8 March 2007 that he would check into a rehabilitation facility. While he didn’t disclose the exact reason, he did say that he wanted to work on the areas of himself that needed change so that he could give his fans “110 per cent.” In a 2015 interview, he stated that he had been sober since 2008.
Suffering from lingering injuries from past, high-risk, acrobatic stage antics and crashes, Van Halen underwent hip replacement surgery in November 1999. Van Halen began receiving treatment for tongue cancer in 2000. The subsequent surgery removed roughly a third of his tongue. He was declared cancer-free in 2002.
In 2019, it was revealed that Van Halen had been secretly battling throat cancer over the previous five years. He died from the illness on 6 October 2020 at age 65.
Link to Wikipedia biography