There is breaking news that Eddie Van Halen, the legendary hard rock guitarist and co-founder Van Halen has died after a long battle with throat cancer at the age of 65 at the Providence St John’s hospital Santa Monica.
Reporter Sandy Kenyon looks back at his life.
He was born in the Netherlands and raised in Pasadena, California. A guitar prodigy Eddie Van Halen became a rock god with all of the excess that implied.
He married one of America’s sweethearts, the Television star Valerie Bertinelli; to be alive in the 1980s was to hear his music everywhere.
Halen’s only number-one single in 1984 sold 10 million copies and put the band into rock’s pantheon. The group consisting of Eddie Van Halen and his brother Alex on drums. The flamboyant David Lee Roth out front by the mid-1980s, the band was one of the most successful rock acts of all time, selling an astounding 80 million albums worldwide.
Eddie Van Halen wanted a solo career, but many on-stage reunions followed in the decades to come, and in 2015 Van Halen spoke to good morning America backstage at the billboard music awards becomes increasingly difficult with age.
As found on Youtube