Right now it's your tomorrow. Tomorrow it will be yesterday. I don't believe in yesterday.

So Eddie Van Halen died today at the age of 65.  Wasn't expecting that but maybe we should have been.  He'd been going downhill for years and mostly covered it up by not doing anything.  He didn't release any music, for Van Halen or anyone else, and even the few tours he'd done this century often got cancelled for health reasons.  I'm not actually complaining, it's probably better this way than to spend so much time in the public eye and a part of me does respect 'I've done enough' from aging artists.  Just yesterday I was listening to a bunch of Billy Joel who did the same thing and I sure as hell respect him.

But EVH never said so openly.  He always claimed to be working on more and then there were a dozen albums worth of material that just hadn't been released.  This is where I do lose respect for that kind of art, just put the work out and move on.

But of course EVH was so financially successful that he didn't have any need to do so.  I'm not sure how good that is for him but it sure doesn't help anyone else.  Even his last few tours and the only album released in this century seemed more about helping his son Wolfgang become famous - Wolf has been talking about his upcoming debut album for several years now - and little more.  And that was how the story ended.

Of course his guitar playing was beyond what anybody else could do.  I wasn't much of a Van Halen fan until the mid-late 90s.  I'd liked a few of the songs on MTV and that was it, but I paid attention to the hubbub of Sammy Hagar leaving and the reunion with David Lee Roth for an MTV event and decided to buy their Greatest Hits album.  The first track is "Eruption" and by the time that finished, I'd realized why EVH was such a legendary guitarist.  And it was just something EVH had jammed out during the recording sessions for the first album and the producer added it to the record.

There's no way to know, but I've always suspected that EVH really ran through most of his potential in the first several years of the band's recording.  They'd recorded 30 or so songs as demos for Gene Simmons when Kiss was thinking of adding them to their record label but when that didn't work out and they got a new contract, the producer just went with the best songs.  Then they picked the best of the remaining songs for their second album.  Then the third.  Of course the band had started coming up with new material but not a full album's worth.  It wasn't until Eddie's interest in the synthesizer was added that they suddenly had a new batch of classic Van Halen, "1984."

I've always wondered if the few other things he was doing around that time was what made all the difference.  He'd built a recording studio in his house so the other band members and staff had to come to him.  He'd played for Michael Jackson on "Beat It," a huge success that had nothing to do with the band or especially the obnoxious DLR.  Then there was his 1983 team-up with Queen's Brian May for "Star Fleet," a few jam sessions recorded in a day or two from two of the top guitarists of all time.  I've always suspected it was conversations around the playing that Brian suggested some changes which inspired Eddie.  Queen had been accused of overusing synthesizers right from the start but didn't actually use any until their eight album, "The Game," in 1980.  I suspect Brian told Eddie about that and that's where the incentive came from.

Anyway, this was where Roth and the band stopped getting along, he left and they replaced him with Sammy Hagar.  If the commercial success wasn't as big, it was still higher than almost any other band has ever had.  This was where EVH had basically run out of gas though, they grew further and further apart and released less music.  There were six albums with Roth in six years, then four with Sammy in ten.  Then there was "Van Halen III" with Gary Cherone singing and was a total failure, at least at the level they were working.  They reunited with Sammy for a tour and three songs added to their next greatest hits album, it ended miserably for them, they finally reunited with Roth for the last album, firing Michael Anthony as bassist and replacing him with Wolf, redoing a bunch of old material that hadn't been good enough for previous DLR albums.

I've always thought EVH was the star of the band, it's just not obvious because Roth was born to be the lead man in the early 80s.  He was great at what he did but it gets tiresome without a hot band on great songs and he was living in his own world even before they became famous.  When they were finally rid of him, they were tempted to change the band's name to "Van Hagar" just to get away from that.  Hagar was the front man but he knew how to work with a band and many great guitarists.  Sammy himself was quite good on guitar, nowhere near Eddie's level but a solid professional.  He had ways to work with Eddie that Roth had long-since lost if he ever had them but obviously found himself having to give in as the relationship continued.  Sammy even said recently that he expected Van Halen to still be doing things in the future.  Obviously that was either totally lying or just completely wrong.  They're over now.  Even if Alex Van Halen and Wolf pretend to keep going, it's not going to happen and it's not like they've done tried for the last several years.

So we're at another end of modern music, the loss of one of the most important people.  There's still Paul and Ringo, Mick and Keith, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, who else?  Diana Ross and Pete Townshend, but I'm not sure either of them made it to EVH's level (although obviously he was inspired by Townshend.)  Elton John and Billy Joel.  Maybe Guns'n'Roses and Aerosmith in their prime but that required the whole band and they've effectively been gone for years.  Ditto Simon and Garfunkel.  Yeah, you can argue a few others, U2, Sting, but it becomes questionable if they're at the top from their music or promotion of leftism.

Anyway, this is where we are now, losing everything that brought us where we are.  It makes you wanna sing 'Come on baby, finish what you started, I'm incomplete!  That ain't no way to treat the broken-hearted, I need some sympathy!'  Or whatever the kids are listening to these days.