David Lee Roth claims Eddie Van Halen was an Eric Clapton acolyte: “He followed him like a disciple”
David Lee Roth has claimed that late bandmate Eddie Van Halen was an avid follower of guitar legend Eric Clapton early on in his career.
READ MORE: The IRS wants you to pay tax on gear sales over $600 – Reverb is trying to stop them
Speaking on the latest episode of his Roth Show podcast, David explained that the greatest compliment a disciple of Kendo and Kenjutsu could receive was to be considered a mirror image of their teacher.
The singer then drew a comparison between “warriors” back then to those of our time, saying “Many of our fiercest warriors today carry a guitar, an electrical one. You know exactly what I’m referring to, and [becoming] the mirror image of our master is a compliment.”
“Eddie Van Halen was an Eric Clapton acolyte. He followed him like a disciple. Eddie barely could afford shoelaces when he was learning to play guitar,” Roth added.
“He had one gold top Les Paul. I used to sit right across from him in his little room, almost knee-to-knee touching. [We] slept on crates with a mattress on it. He would sit on the mattress, and I’d sit on the amp right in front of him on the Marshall stack bottom right in front of him, our knees almost touching and writing the songs we became famous for.”
“And there was one poster who was Eric Clapton, who is the mirror image of other folks that he was a disciple of who is a mirror image, and [Eddie] started off as a mirror image of Eric Clapton and took it way beyond the curtain of space across the trackless void.
“My contribution frequently was emotional content,” Roth concluded.
Listen to the full podcast below.
The post David Lee Roth claims Eddie Van Halen was an Eric Clapton acolyte: “He followed him like a disciple” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
