Van Halen’s producer, Ted Templeman, recently shared a story about the band’s hit, ‘Eruption’ during a recent interview. Templeman appeared on Guitar Player‘s latest issue, revealing that Eddie Van Halen didn’t realize the potential of their hit song.
The producer was asked about the origins of the song, to which he replied:
“I was in this little room making phone calls next to the recording studio, and I walked in and Ed was sitting there kind of playing it. And I went, ‘What’s that?’ and he said, ‘It’s just something I warm up with before each show.’ And I said, ‘Donn, roll tape!’ and he said, ‘I’m rolling.’”
Expressing his admiration for the guitarist, he went on to share how the song was recorded:
“He heard it, too, and he’d already pressed ‘record.’ So it just went – boom – and we got it, just like that. I’d never heard anything like that. I’d never heard that kind of tapping. I’d never heard anything that brilliant, and Ed said, ‘No, it’s nothing.’ He didn’t even know. In addition to being a genius, Ed is one of the sweetest guys on the planet. Such a nice guy. He wasn’t even gonna show it to me.”
Eddie Van Halen told the same story to Guitar World in 1996, revealing that the song was not supposed to be in the album. Even with the final studio version of the song, the guitarist thought that he ‘could have played it better,’ sharing that there was one mistake at the end of his solo.
According to him, it was only a piece he practiced for the gig he had that night, not knowing that his solo would end up being one of the most admired solos in rock history and even putting his name on Rolling Stone’s ‘100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.’
