Jump.
The first thing you think of, at the mention of Eddie Van Halen.
Not oral cancer, also referred to as mouth cancer or oral cavity cancer, which is what Eddie Van Halen’s ultimately fatal cancer began as, a cancer of the lips, tongue, gums, inner lining of the cheeks, or the floor or roof of the mouth. They’re often observable by dentists as the majority of oral cancers are squamous cell carcinomas, meaning they start in the squamous cells that line the inside of the mouth and lips.
No doubt Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst did jump (and how high) when he answered the door to find a gun at his head after Eddie allegedly drove a tank to his Beverly Hills home sporting a Samurai bun, duct-taped combat boots and jeans held to his torso by a length of rope.
It’s quarter-of-a-century old news, that arrived in an assault vehicle bought at auction with a mounted shine gun for accuracy. Highly illegal, and revealed in the 2020 photobook by respected filmmaker Andrew Bennett, the result of a jam gone more horribly wrong than a Meghan Markle preserve. It’s an easy find for more detail, recanted in every major music magazine and the topic of more than 650 reddit discussions.
Is it true?
Who can tell. Durst has neither confirmed or denied it.
Does it add to the legend of the greatest guitar player of all time? Possibly.
He didn’t just play guitar, he rewired it, re-engineered it; Frankensteined and 5150-combo’d it. He played like the eruption of a secret. Hendrix, Page, Blackmore, Clapton and Beck were all what was possible; what Van Halen brought was impossible.
Two-handed tapping, melody, speed and chaos brought sound that was dangerous, brilliant and loud. Always passionately and joyfully, with a smile that never left. The gift of his solo on Michael Jackson’s Beat It that really was a gift – rarely credited for this blistering axemanship, his contribution was a favour to Quincy Jones. Loyalty without royalties. With the rest of the band out of town and nobody to ask about breaking the band’s policy of not doing anything outside the band, it was no credit, no pay and no announcement.
His reasoning? “Who’s gonna know if I play on this black kid’s record?”
Eddie van Halen performed six-string feats that proved a generational change in musical landscape and vocabulary. Elastic dive-bombs. Magical melodies. All done with massive energy, ingenuity and heart.
He and his bio-and-band brother Alex learned English after arriving in the US from Holland still a few years from their teens. It was illustrative of no hurdle being too great. Not even crippling stage fright, eased by booze and chains of cigarettes.
Eddie’s musical journey began as a drummer, his primary instrument piano, his legacy guitar. In the mid 1960s he won many classical piano competitions, despite never being able to sight-read. He learned every piece by memorising the movements of his teacher’s fingers, and playing by ear.
“I don’t know sh*t about scales or music theory,” he told Rolling Stone in 1980. “… all I know is that rock ‘n roll guitar, like blues guitar, should be melody, speed and taste but more important, it should have emotion. I just want my guitar playing to make people feel something: happy, sad, even h*rny.”
No question he achieved all three.
His death on October 6, 2020 was a gut punch.
You knew from that moment you’d never be hearing something new from him ever again. The slash-and-burn parody of punk in Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love. His symphonic piano on Dreams. The 32-bar scorching shred of Hot For Teacher; the cascading note triads and fretboard tapping that forever changed the genetic code of rock guitar.
The end of this nimble careening at breakneck speed, began with a callus.
You’d think that would mark the beginning of the blur of rhythms and riffs, swells and sonic swaggers that powered for almost forty years. You’d think the callus was on a finger, where it should be.
It was on his tongue, it was the year 2000 and it was tongue cancer.
Eddie underwent experimental treatment, had enough of his tongue removed to require extensive rehabilitation and speech therapy, and was declared free of cancer in 2002.
Although clean and sober since the end of 1994 as a result of newborn son Wolfgang, Eddie’s decades of excessive drinking, drugs and chain smoking weren’t planning to let him, his family, his bandmates and millions of fans off lightly.
In 2018 his tongue cancer returned like a bitter old groupie; and brought throat and lung cancer with it.
Alcohol acts as a solvent for the carcinogens in tobacco, so all the while Eddie was syncing his synth work, it was synergising an effect greater than the sum of its parts.
Much like his red-white-and-black Frankenstein and Van Halen himself.
“I use metal picks,” he told Billboard in 2015, “they’re brass and copper, which I always held in my mouth, in the exact place where I got the tongue cancer. Plus I basically live in a recording studio that’s filled with electromagnetic energy.So that’s one theory. I mean, I was smoking and doing a lot of drugs and a lot of everything. But at the same time, my lungs are totally clear. This is just my own theory, but the doctors say it’s possible.”
Maybe they did. Maybe it was placation for plectrums to take the fall.
Doctors who refute the claim, cite mercury and cobalt as metals harmful to human health with no associated increased cancer risks attributed to copper and brass. Eddie’s pick hypothesis isn’t completely outlandish though – it is more than plausible that his picks also contained chromium or nickel: both known carcinogenics.
Perhaps he was searching for the one thing that gave some explanation for why cancer picked him. Why not pick a pick?
Things that increase the risk of cancer don’t necessarily mean you’ll get it; in the same way that living a healthy, vice-free life doesn’t guarantee you won’t get it.
It doesn’t matter what it was. It matters, that he was. Light up the sky, Eddie Van Halen; light up the sky.
