Drummer Alex Van Halen recently explained why Van Halen was not afraid to include mistakes on their albums, despite the objections of some working with the band in the studio.
Eddie Van Halen helped usher in a new era of “shred guitar” in the late ’70s but it turns out that he was not always as precise as some of the modern-day shredders, who have perfected their playing to the point of never ever allowing a slight flub on their albums.
For Eddie and his bandmates, it was always about feel over perfectionism. And this “live feel” is exactly what made Van Halen’s early albums so timeless and classic, especially their self-titled debut from 1978.
Alex Van Halen talks about imperfections
During an interview with Modern Drummer Official, drummer Alex Van Halen discussed why certain mistakes were not corrected in the studio, and how engineer Donn Landee wanted Eddie to fix up his now-iconic six-string showcase, “Eruption.”
“There are times when we cringe,” Alex admitted. “We go, ‘Man, we could have fixed that.’ And we should have fixed it. But Ed was very much a purist, if you will.”
“Like on ‘Eruption’, he made a couple technical mistakes, and Donn wanted to fix it. And Ed goes ‘No, no, leave it,’ which I thought — it was brilliant, because you never relived that moment. And there were other moments on those records.”
Alex then added a seemingly nonsensical phrase to sum up the “special something” that leaving an error in a song can help add to the overall vibe of a song.
“But in hindsight…I’m gonna quote something from Dave [David Lee Roth], which is he called it a ‘wabi sabi’ or something. It means the imperfections are what make it what it is. And so we left all the imperfections on the records.”
