There have been many milestones in the history of the genre we now know as Shred, and in this new series we will be taking a look back at some of those pivotal moments. Our choice for the first installment will become obvious as you read...

It was 1978, the height of the dreaded "Disco Era". The Bee Gees led a virtually never-ending assault on the Billboard charts of mindless, thumping, dance-oriented smegma the likes of which the world had never seen. A true low-point in pop music, it was a time of one-hit wonders that may never be repeated: The Trammps, Gloria Gaynor, Amy Grant and others had entire careers based on a single chart-topping song. Huge lapels ridiculously adorned by gold chains and chest hair were actually seen as attractive by the bra-less Studio 54 skanks of the day. The general public simply wanted to party and dance their coked-up asses off in a grotesque display of modern debauchery. The mighty rock 'n' roll machine of the early Seventies seemed to be sputtering a bit in the wake of this pseudo-musical madness.

The Gods frowned upon this, scratching their beards in disgusted bewilderment until suddenly, without warning, it came from out of nowhere - a virtuosic bolt from the blue, a frenzied torrent of electric bliss unlike any before it...the birth of a new musical epoch that would change the mainstream for years to come. They called it, quite appropriately, Eruption, a blistering aural assault of solo electric guitar performed by a heretofore unknown guitarist named Eddie Van Halen. The Los Angeles band bearing his surname had just released their self-titled debut album and it was a flaming dagger through the heart of the demon Disco. This mind-blowing, one-take guitar solo (played on a veritable Frankenstein's monster of a guitar assembled by Eddie himself) featured a technique that would become a prerequisite for all lead guitarists who followed. We know this technique as "tapping", and though not exactly invented by Eddie, it was something that had rarely been heard in a rock context before. It didn't hurt that Eruption was the intro to a severely ass-kicking cover of the Kinks' classic, You Really Got Me, that has arguably become the standard version of the song! (How often has that happened?). Suddenly, radios everywhere were pumping out song after song from the band's Warner Brothers debut. In addition to the one-two punch of Eruption/You Really Got Me, Runnin' With the Devil, Jamie's Cryin', Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love and Ice Cream Man all became staples on rock radio everywhere. The record was packed with super-charged blasts of melodic machismo laced with catchy vocal hooks and the fluid fire of Eddie's solos. It was the kick in the ass that rock needed! If you've never heard the opening riff of Little Dreamer or the frenzied power of On Fire at extreme volume through a nice sound system, make it a point! This is the record, above any other, that spawned the genre of Shred and thousands of electric guitar junkies that would take technique to an unthinkable new threshold. I remember listening to the record with a bunch of buddies and staring at each other in speechless awe! The feeling that something big was happening was undeniably apparent.

A few years later, Eddie took Shred to the masses on an even bigger scale when he guested on a track called Beat It on Michael Jackson's Thriller LP. The video was in heavy-to-ridiculous rotation on MTV for months and though Eddie didn't appear in it, the fact that Thriller went on to become the biggest selling album of all-time made his performance on Beat It common knowledge and Shred a household phenomenon. While many frowned on Eddie's involvement with the gloved freak show at the time, it's important to acknowledge it as a major step up for shred guitar. (Weird Al Yankovic parodied the song in his Eat It video. At the end of the solo, the guitarist exploded!). Soon it became standard procedure for almost every pop song to have a hot lead break. Within five years of the release of Van Halen, MTV would become the major force in pop music and their playlist featured a vast number of rock bands in the Van Halen mold. The phenomenon became so big it couldn't be ignored, so MTV answered the demand with a new show called "Headbanger's Ball" and it was everything a young rocker could hope for. At its height, it was a weekly, three-hour extravaganza of rock and metal videos that covered the whole spectrum. Real metal giants like Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, the thrash of Metallica, Megadeth and Anthrax, the more mainstream pop-metal of Night Ranger, Scorpions and Bon Jovi and the all-out glam of Motley Crue, Cinderella and Poison insured something for everyone. (It would be cool if MTV or VH-1 started re-running the show. I think they'd be surprised at the ratings it would garner. At least a marathon once in a while would be very well received, I think).

This flood of guitar-oriented rock bands that he and his band so inspired can perhaps best measure the true extent of Eddie Van Halen's effect on popular music. This new wave of guitar bands swept away Disco, Punk and New Wave as Heavy Metal became the music of choice for a new generation of kids who simply wanted to ROCK! His influence on rock guitar, however is literally immeasurable. This very web site is merely one of thousands of aftershocks of that initial Eruption! Thanks, Eddie! We owe ya one!

Next time, we'll hearken back fondly to one of Eddie Van Halen's biggest influences - a criminally under-appreciated guitarist who pre-dated the whole Shred thing by about five years! Can you guess who this amazing virtuoso is?