5 songs guitarists need to hear by… Eddie Van Halen

Don’t be distracted by the razzmatazz, though; EVH is up there with the likes of Hendrix, Marvin and Cochran as one of humanity’s pivotal guitarists and it’s impossible to understate the influence he’s had on rock players past and present. 

Nobody could work out how he was conjuring the sounds he was or why the music was just so damn good, and if there’s anyone to blame for the myriad big-haired bands that crawled out of LA and elsewhere during the early eighties, some of them good, others utterly risible, it’s Eddie Van Halen. But nobody could touch him. 

Here's five reasons why the original will always be the best.