Just over a week ago, the eminent guitarist, Eddie Van Halen, passed away from throat cancer. I was shocked by the news when I found out, especially considering his relatively young age of 65. Van Halen (both the band and the eponymous album) and Eddie (in particular) were enormously influential to my musical development in my teen years. To this day, Van Halen (1978) is one of the few albums I own, not only on CD, but also on vinyl. I listened to it in full for the first time in quite some time on Saturday. And while I had somehow forgotten “Atomic Punk,” songs like “Ain’t Talkin ‘Bout Love” and “Ice Cream Man” brought back many memories of days past. One particular virtuosic showcase on the album, however, remains, in my estimation, the most defining Van Halen piece... I am of course talking about “Eruption.”
It was after listening to Eruption for the first time—having seen it placed as the number 2 guitar solo of all time—that I was inspired to learn the guitar. And, ambitious that I was, Eruption was one of the first pieces I tried teaching myself when I finally procured a guitar. While I was somewhat successful with the infamous tapping portion, I never actually learned the piece in full. But it is this tapping section in particular that I would like to turn my attention to in what follows: a brief, neo-Riemannian-tinged analysis of the harmonies that underpin Eddie’s two-handed tapping here.
The idea for the post emerged as I was watching Paul David’s tutorial on how to play this lick, as recommended to me by YouTube a few days ago:
As maybe somewhat of a disclaimer, I hadn’t really considered the lick in ~music theory terms~ until watching his video. While I understood that he was arpeggiating chords, I never actually thought to consider these chords functionally, nor took the time to figure out what pitches I was playing. But, as Guy Capuzzo has shown, neo-Riemannian analysis works surprisingly well for much pop music, based as it often is in the parsimonious physical gestures on instruments that create smooth voice leading. This was the experience I had in learning the section. It was less a matter of knowing what notes I was playing, as opposed to feeling the subtle movement along the fretboard: 2-5-9, 4-7-11, etc… This is somewhat reflected in the fact that, when talking with my friend about Eddie’s and Eruption’s respective impacts on us, I alluded to the tapping section exactly as that: 2-5-9, etc. (And, further demonstrating just how much of an amateur guitarist I am, only upon watching David’s video did I realize that this is actually supposed to be 9-2-5!)
As Paul David shows us in his video, Eddie’s technique is actually based in functional harmony. ||PAUSE|| Before getting into David’s analysis, I want to preface this section by saying I will be talking about the actual pitches Eddie plays—in an editor’s note, David acknowledges that he doesn’t account for Eddie’s guitar being tuned in E-flat in his filmed discussion, so the chords he mentions are representative of what they would be in standard tuning. I will be talking about the chords as based in E-flat, so a half-step lower than what David’s mentions. I will mark changes to reflect what he says [in brackets]… Also, the tapping takes place on the 2nd string: B-flat. Okay, ||RESUME|| Starting with a C minor chord (9-2-5), he then moves to an A-flat major chord (10-2-5) by way of an L (“leading tone exchange”) transformation. Next up is what David calls a [B-flat] dominant chord without the bass (10-4-7). What we actually get here is simply a D diminished chord, the upper three notes of a B-flat 7 chord. He’s right, however, in that with the last two iterations of this gesture, we move from 10 to 12, thus adding the missing B-flat, though at the expense of the A-flat, thus leading simply to a B-flat chord (12-4-7). With this dominant and its resolution (12-5-9), we finally move to E-flat major, the relative major (R) of the opening C minor. After this comes a somewhat odd move—a “drop” from E-flat major to C-flat major. This transformation occurs via a PL: a P transformation to the parallel minor of E-flat major (so E-flat minor), and from there a leading tone exchange (wherein the B-flat of E-flat minor becomes the leading of the C-flat major chord it moves to by half step [13-5-8]). Next, everything moves two frets up to D-flat major (15-7-10; *gasp* parallel fifths! [actually, Eddie avoids this parallel motion by adding in anticipations in the highest fret])... and once again, by two frets, back to E-flat major (17-9-12). Here, we have the triumphant bVI-bVII-I cadence often heard in video games, and deemed by some as the “Mario” Cadence, thus affirming our place in the tonal space of E-flat major.
From here, things get “a little crazy” as Davids puts it. We begin by revoicing the E-flat chord to add its seventh, moving from 17-9-12 to 17-12-15. The addition of the D-flat suggests a possible need to resolve this seventh. What ends up happening is an interesting chromatic filigree, wherein we move down the fretboard from 17-12-15, first to 17-11-14, then to 17-10-13, and finally 17-9-12. The 17 (E-flat) remains a constant upper pedal, and we move down my chromatic half steps until we reach a simple E-flat triad, sans 7th. We then reset to 15-10-13 to repeat the entire process down by a step, thus starting on a D-flat 7 chord (15-10-13) and moving down to D-flat (15-7-10). Finally, we repeat the process one more time, moving us down to C-flat (7): 13-8-11 down to 13-5-8. With this sequential series of gestures, we move back down the Mario cadence, effectively undoing our heroic conclusion to revel in chromatic virtuosity.
Indeed, as the concluding section shows, this was a necessary move, in order to move to the concluding E-flat minor space which concludes the piece. Thus we ultimately have a P transformation (parallel) between the first cadence of the tapping section and its conclusion. With the conclusion, we alternate between 12-4-7 and 12-5-8: B-flat major (V) and E-flat minor (i). Especially interesting is how this functions in terms of voice leading: because of the explicit alterations back and forth between 4-5 and 7-8, all under(!) 12, we have what is, in effect, a cadential 6/4 motion. That is, a [i 6/4-V] unit. Obviously, the B-flat is not in the bass here, but rather the upper, “soprano” line. Functionally, however, the effect of having a “sustained” pedal sol, even if in the upper octave, provides the needed dominant charge to suggest a cadential 6/4. This repeated B-flat is also metrically the strongest note in the group of three, falling on the beat. We alternate back and forth between these chords, at first an equal distribution with each chord receiving a full measure of repetition, but quickly gathering speed, alternating arpeggios each triplet before we have a whaling “divebomb” down from 12-5 (B-flat to E-flat) and then a concluding E-flat on the low open 6th string.
In so many ways, this analysis feels woefully lacking. Eruption is, above all else, unbridled passion: vivacious, audacious, ostentatious. I can only put so much feeling into describing the “pathos-ladden” (to adapt a phrase borrowed from Eric Hogrefe) playing Eddie was known for. I wish I had my guitar here. Playing seems the best option to pay tribute to Eddie, but my uke, Iz, is not especially receptive to his two-handed tapping technique (trust me, I tried). But, at the very least, this small analysis allowed me (and perhaps you as well) to spend some concentrated time with Eddie’s playing, considering it in intimate detail. That, for me at least, is ultimately the goal of music analysis: to spend time reflecting-on, listening-to, and contemplating the music we love and cherish.
Rest in peace, dear Eddie.
