I'd say it ["I Can't Drive 55"] has probably been the most successful song I've ever been involved with, including any Van Halen songs.
If you put a Van Halen album in your record collection, it will melt all the rest of your records.
The name Van Halen, the family legacy, is going to go on long after I'm gone.
It's the most natural progression for me to becoming a singing sensation next. And so many people have offered to be on it. Eddie Van Halen. . . and Prince, Madonna and Cyndi Lauper will probably be a backup trio.
The first Van Halen album makes Johnny Rotten out to be what he really was and still is: a hairdresser.
These days I don't look to other people with the objective of trying to steal their licks, although I've got no objections to stealing them if that seems like a good idea. I'm sure that I'm still influenced by Mark Knopfler and Eddie Van Halen as well. . . . . . I can't play like Eddie Van Halen. I wish I could. I sat down to try some of those ideas and can't do it. I don't know if I could ever get any of that stuff together. Sometimes I think I should work at the guitar more.
I really think that Van Halen has two choices if they want to continue. And maybe they don't want to continue, because they don't seem to do much.
My first impression of Van Halen was that David Lee Roth was a god, and that so was Eddie.
The human mind is like Van Halen. If you just pull out one piece and keep replacing it, it just degenerates.
Punk-rock gave music back to people. For a long time, when I was very young, I went to go see arena rock bands. I was 16 and it was all I could get in to see, legally. And I saw Led Zeppelin and Ted Nugent and Van Halen and all that. Me and [Minor Threat and Fugazi vocalist] Ian MacKaye would go to these concerts, and it was fun.
If I had had a chance to tour with Van Halen before the record, I think it would have been a different record.
Van Halen is a work in progress.
There's no great guitarist that doesn't sit down and listen to Chet Atkins and Eddie Van Halen, and all these other great players.
On 'Van Halen,' I was a young punk, and everything revolved around the fastest kid in town, gunslinger attitude. But I'd say that at the time of 'Fair Warning,' I started concentrating more on songwriting. But I guess in most people's minds I'm just a gunslinger.
I admire Eddie Van Halen and Steve Lukather, but they might blow me away quite easily if we were to jam together.
I had a solo career before Van Halen. My fan base filtered through Van Halen with me and came right on out the other side with me.
When I was 13, I was just figuring out how to play 'Eruption,' poorly, by Eddie Van Halen.
Without a doubt, Eddie Van Halen is the greatest guitar player who has ever lived.
Loial, son of Arent, son of Halen, had secretly always wanted to be hasty.
Eddie Van Halen was probably the most influential.
