I don't care how cool you are.. how experienced you are.. or even how talented you are... at some point you live performance will go south.. turn.. you will look bad. It happened to Eddie Van Halen back in 2007 when the band was closing the show with their hit Jump, and now we know why.
Eddie's long time guitar tech Tom Weber has filled us in on what caused this horrible performance.
Earlier in the show he had been doing his usual guitar madness, slamming the headstock straight into the stage in order to make some odd otherworldly noise.. as he does so well. The violent manuever caused the guitar to go significantly out of tune, and Wolfie, like a good son, quickly adjusted the tuning on his bass to match his old man. This worked for the rest of the song, and at the end, EVH chose not to switch out guitars.. which he usually does before their final number.
Tom stood side stage with the fresh guitar held high above his head signaling the guitar wizard to switch.. he didn't.
The problem.. Eddie does not have the keyboards in his monitor mix. He never heard that he and wolfie were completely out of tune with the keyboards.. that are never out of tune.
We all have bad days.. and sometimes even our best intentions can cause things to derail in ways we never could have expected. It happens to us all, even a musician as experienced and talented as Eddie Van Halen.
Written by Patrick Capone