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[genursus]

Look who made it to the cover of Rolling Stone magazine!!

http://i.realone.com/assets/rn/img/5/4/9/7/20947945-20947946-slarge.jpg

[mr_mojo_halen]

Omar Rodriguez Lopez !!! :dance:

[King Edward]

mr_mojo_halen wrote: Omar Rodriguez Lopez !!! :dance:

Bwahahahaha!!!!!! :D :D

[suebndave]

All living legends, take a step forward. Woooooooah, not so fast, Omar! Who the heck is Omar Rodriguez Lopez?!

Hopefully Eddie placed higher than #70 this time.

[liquid_steel_az]

[Revo11]

Quote: Who the heck is Omar Rodriguez Lopez

The lead guitarist for Mars Volta.

[ron]

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/20979938/secrets_of_the_guitar_heroes_eddie_van_halen

and

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/20947493/van_halen_the_essential_albumbyalbum_guide

[fsfang2]

Omar is an AWESOME guitarist! If you have not heard any Mars Volta definitely pick it up.

[Ryder5150]

I've never heard any Mars Volta, are they a metal band?

[Vince G.]

What's the hell is John Mayer doing on the cover???

Anyways, here's the interview portion for those who don't want to follow the link kindly provided by Ron:

http://www.rollings tone.com/ news/story/ 20979938/ secrets_of_ the_guitar_ heroes_eddie_ van_halen

How did you start playing guitar?
My brother and I were forced to take piano
lessons, and it wasn't fun for me. I heard music
in my head, but I wasn't allowed to play it. Then
I bought myself a drum kit, and somehow my mom
convinced my brother Alex to take flamenco-guitar
lessons. I had a paper route to pay for the drum
kit, and while I was out throwing papers, Alex
got better than me on the drums, so I said, "OK,
fuck you. I'll play your guitar."

What were the first songs you learned to play?
The Ventures: "Pipeline," "Wipe Out," that kind
of stuff. My brother and I loved Dave Clark Five,
but they weren't really a guitar-oriented band.
The first time I turned an amp all the way to 10
and it distorted, I went, "Yeeeah! This is fun."

You ended up covering another Sixties classic,
the Kinks' "You Really Got Me," on your first album.
At our shows, we used to do that and "All Day and
All of the Night" and, you know, just a bunch of
old, semi-obscure rock tunes. I always liked
taking old songs and turning a prop plane into a
jet plane. To me, that's what "You Really Got Me"
sounds like. Ours is like whooosh [laughs].

How important were the Kinks for you?
I just like songs. I don't mean to sound like a
prick or nothin', but I've never really been that
much of a fan of bands outside of Cream. And I
don't really listen to anything nowadays. The
last record I might've bought was Peter Gabriel's
So. With Cream, I was more a fan of their
interaction live. You know, they were an example
of "What's the difference between jazz and rock &
roll? We just play louder." That's all. We get 12
notes. Do what the fuck you want with 'em, you know?

Your biggest innovation was two-handed tapping ­
using both hands to fret notes simultaneously. Where did you get the idea?
I was watching Jimmy Page going [sings hammering
guitar lick], like that, with one hand, in
"Heartbreaker. " I thought, "I can play like that,
and you wouldn't know if I was using this finger
[points to left hand] or this one" [points to
right hand]. But you just kind of move it around,
and it's like, "You got one big hand there, buddy. That's a hell of a spread!"

It became the most imitated sound in hard rock.
Well, don't blame me. It's not my fault. The
tapping had been part of my playing since about
'72. Early on, my brother told me to turn around
onstage so no one could see what I was doing until we had a record out.

Did people think that you were a guitar player from Mars or something?
I remember a long time ago we were playing and
someone told us "A&M Records is here to see you
guys." And it was Herb Alpert. I met him years
ago later and he came up to me. He goes, "One of
the biggest mistakes I ever made was passing on
you guys." I?m going, "I remember exactly what
you said, too. You said the guitarist is too
psychedelic and too much uncontrolled energy." I
asked him why? He goes, "I didn't understand what
the hell you were doing 'cause it was so
unorthodox." It didn't make any sense to him.

Was "Eruption" a piece that developed in concert over the years?
No, no, no. We recorded our first record on
Sunset Sound in Hollywood, and we were warming up
for a weekend gig at the Whisky. And I was just
rehearsing, and [engineer] Donn Landee happened
to record it. It was never planned to be on the
record. So the take on the record was a total
freak thing. It was just an accident. He happened to be rolling tape.

Your rhythm-guitar playing is underrated.
Real musicians actually respect me more for my
rhythm-guitar playing than my soloing. 'Cause
soloing is almost like pissin' up a rope, showing
off ­ unless you're truly improvising off the
melody of a song. But I'm actually a very
rhythmic player, 'cause I'm the only guitarist in
the band, so I've gotta cover both.

I've always been a true believer that music
should hold up without singing on it. You know,
listen to Beethoven, you know. There's no singing on it.

Has anyone taken the electric guitar further than you did with Van Halen?
That's hard to say. Especially nowadays with all
the effects and Pro Tools and all this and that.
You don't know what's what anymore.

You've been writing new music for a while?
Yeah, I haven't written much lately because we've
been on tour. I got thousands of tapes laying
around, but one of these years I've got to go
through 'em, see what lurks. I think a lot of
them will surprise you, everything from mellow
stuff to kind of weird shit. I'm always experimenting with sounds.

Are you going to record?
Yeah. We'll cross that bridge when this tour is over.

How would you imagine the next few years for Van Halen?
I don't really make plans. I don't know. This
tour takes us to June 2nd. We'll probably take a
little break and then sit down and discuss what
we want to do. But it's always based around music.

How have you managed to sustain the tour this time?
It?s a way of life, you know? It's just kind of
inherently built in. It's the only thing I know
how to do. [Laughs] I guess the songs we write
stand the test of time, so to speak.

And you're getting along on a personal basis?
Oh, yeah. We always really have. To me it seems
like the press made more of a stink out of shit
than we actually did. 'Cause everybody kind of
parts ways and tries to find their own niche, you
know, or whatever, but no hurt feelings about anything.

[Revo11]

And you're getting along on a personal basis?
Oh, yeah. We always really have. To me it seems
like the press made more of a stink out of shit
than we actually did.

That's total BS. Back in the mid-80's, Eddie went out of his way to slam DLR. The press can't be blamed for it.

[ks34vh]

Very Nice to see..

[thereadog]

Revo11 wrote: And you're getting along on a personal basis?
Oh, yeah. We always really have. To me it seems
like the press made more of a stink out of shit
than we actually did.

That's total BS. Back in the mid-80's, Eddie went out of his way to slam DLR. The press can't be blamed for it.

Loved the article up until this point. So true....not only Eddie but Alex even said he would never play with DLR again. Total BS answer....but the rest of the interview was real good. Nice to see Eddie do one of these for a change.

[Ryder5150]

Cool interview, and yes Eddie doing an interview suprised me.

[Revo11]

Ryder5150 wrote: I've never heard any Mars Volta, are they a metal band?

No, I wouldn't call them metal, but they are hard to categorize. I recommend you download a song or two from them. They are really good, but I wouldn't call them a guitar band.