YEAR
2007
INDUCTED BY
Velvet Revolver
CATEGORY
Performers
Inductee Eddie Van Halen forever changed the vocabulary of the electric guitar. With blistering speed, control, and melodic feel, he perfected the art of shredding, unleashing two-handed finger tapping, dramatic whammy-bar moves, and other astonishing never-before-seen techniques. Innovative, like his hero Les Paul, Eddie reimagined the sonic possibilities of the guitar and became an inspiration for an entire generation of musicians who worshiped his sound and style.
His band Van Halen kicked the American hard rock scene into high gear in the late Seventies, became rock heroes on MTV in the Eighties, and gave rise to a steady stream of shredders and trailblazers ever since.
Eddie Van Halen
Michael Anthony
Alex Van Halen
David Lee Roth
Sammy Hagar
HALL OF FAME
ESSAY
By Deborah Frost
The National Weather Service labels a blizzard as severe when winds reach 45 miles per hour, snowfall is dense, and the temperature drops to degrees. What started smacking Boston on February 6,1978, was no mere severe blizzard. Winds hit 83 m.p.h., generating a tidal surge and coastal flooding. Snow drifts towered fifteen feet. The blizzard took fifty-four lives, destroyed two thousand homes, sent ten thousand to shelters, and did more than $1 billion of damage. Driving was forbidden for six days to all but essential relief workers.
Some of us, who didn’t thaw or dig out till April, hardly noticed. The stripper next door to me, lawfully restrained from her daily grind downtown, had Van Halen’s eponymous debut, officially scheduled for release on the tenth, and blasted it, “Runnin’ With the Devil” in particular, for the duration. It wasn’t just that the cradle was rocked – the whole neighborhood was.
