Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen

There's a plaque on our wall that says we've sold over 65 million albums, and I don't feel I've accomplished anything. I feel like I'm just getting started.

Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen

It's always a Catch-22 situation. They hate you if you're the same, and they hate you if you're different.

Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen

If you want to be a rock star or just be famous, then run down the street naked, you'll make the news or something. But if you want music to be your livelihood, then play, play, play and play! And eventually you'll get to where you want to be.

Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen

Music kept me off the streets and out of trouble and gave me something that was mine that no one could take away from me.

Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen

David Lee Roth had the idea that if you covered a successful song, you were half way home. C'mon - Van Halen doing 'Dancing in the Streets'? It was stupid. I started feeling like I would rather bomb playing my own songs than be successful playing someone else's music.

Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen

A guitar is a very personal extension of the person playing it. You have to be emotionally and spiritually connected to your instrument. I'm very brutal on my instruments, but not all the time.

Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen

The one thing I do have is good ears. I don't mean perfect pitch, but ears for picking things up. I developed my ear through piano theory, but I never had a guitar lesson in my life, except from Eric Clapton off of records.

Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen

It's always about the music, never about anything else.

Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen

We're musicians. We make music for a living. It's that simple. Nothing else matters.

Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen

I've had a hip replacement, I've beaten cancer, I had my hand operation, and I stopped drinking. Something inside of me just went, 'I'm done.'

Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen

Music is for people. The word 'pop' is simply short for popular. It means that people like it. I'm just a normal jerk who happens to make music. As long as my brain and fingers work, I'm cool.

Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen

I'm not a rock star. Sure I am, to a certain extent because of the situation, but when kids ask me how it feels to be a rock star, I say leave me alone, I'm not a rock star. I'm not in it for the fame, I'm in it because I like to play.

Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen

I can't read music. Instead, I'd do stuff inside the piano, do harmonics and all kinds of crazy things. They used to put me in these annual piano contests down at Long Beach City College, and two years in a row, I won first prize - out of like 5,000 kids! The judges were like, 'Very interesting interpretation!' I thought I was playing it right.

Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen

It makes me feel kind of weird, but obviously the Man Upstairs gave me something and it touches people, and I'm just so blessed.

Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen

There are really three parts to the creative process. First there is inspiration, then there is the execution, and finally there is the release.

Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen

It's all about sound. It's that simple.

Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen

I grew up on a lot of early Beatles, DC5, Cream, Clapton, Page, Beck and Hendrix.

Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen

Imagine if Beethoven had a tape recorder. Then you'd know exactly what he meant. Maybe he meant 'Da da da da' instead of 'Boom boom boom boom!' Who knows?

Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen

It's all about sound. It's that simple. Wireless is wireless, and it's digital. Hopefully somewhere along the line somebody will add more ones to the zeros. When digital first started, I swear I could hear the gap between the ones and the zeros.

Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen

I was trying to take the band in a direction that I thought was appropriate, and Roth was trying to take the band in more of a Las Vegas direction. And there he is.