Eddie Van Halen, the pioneering guitar player whose hard-rocking band emerged from the Sunset Strip music scene in Los Angeles in the early 1970s to stand at the top of rock ‘n’ roll for a decade, died of cancer on Tuesday. He was 65.
Van Halen’s death was announced by his 29-year-old son, Wolfgang, a bass player who joined the band, best known for songs like Jump and Ain’t Talkin ’Bout Love, in later years.
People magazine reported the rocker died at a Los Angeles-area hospital with his wife, Janie, son and other family members at his side.
Fans placed flowers and guitar picks on Van Halen’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
“What a long, great trip it’s been,” the band’s flamboyant frontman during its glory years, David Lee Roth, tweeted.
Eddie Van Halen was born in Amsterdam on January 26, 1955, and studied classical piano after moving to the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena with his family in the 1960s.
After switching to guitar, he and his older brother, Alex, who took up the drums, formed bands that would eventually become Van Halen in the mid-1970s, with lead singer Roth and bassist Michael Anthony.
The hard-rock band, featuring Eddie Van Halen’s explosive riffs and solos, quickly became a staple of Sunset Strip clubs such as Gazzari’s and the Whisky a Go Go before releasing their eponymous debut album in 1978.
Eddie Van Halen, known for his two-handed tapping technique on the strings, earned a place along Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page as one of rock’s most celebrated guitarists. In 2012, readers of Guitar World magazine voted him the greatest of all time.