Allan Holdsworth and Eddie Van Halen "Five G"Jam 1983 take1

vhrob wrote:

“Ed was playing soooo loose and free during this. Not my favorite Eddie licks but I remember him talking to Jas during the 82 interview and him saying “I cant play the weird way you guys do Alan but I’ll come up with something to groove on.”

This was when Ed was just starting to really try to cop Alan’s licks. Listen to those Girl Gone Bad demos where it sounds like he was just starting to pull it together his way. I never put any of this together until just recently. The most I ever listened to Alan was his album, “Atavachron” and he really didn’t play anything like this live style. It wasn’t until I heard some of Alan’s live riffs put up next to Eddie’s in Dweezil’s “Runnin with the Dweezil” podcast that I realized how much Ed took from Alan and melded into his own technique. Alan’s scales always fit his avant guarde, fusiony style of arranging, but Ed took a step further and incorporated those oddball notes into their own pieces of music intertwined into solos in the middle of melodic, pop rock arrangements and made it sound like a hundred mice scurrying over the fret board in some sort of organized chaos. From ’81 to ’86, I think Ed’s playing truly flourished and after that, he pretty much fell into relying on a box of licks and tricks. Not saying any of that is a bad thing. He still had some spontaneous and magical moments here and there, but, album to album, there weren’t those, “Wow! He took it to another level again!” moments. I think this era was just loaded with so many magical, spur of the moment flashes of brilliance. I hope we get to hear more rare and uncirculated gems like this in the near future.