Eddie Van Halen is considered as one of the greatest guitarists of all time but Kiss bassist, Gene Simmons once warned him about his guitar. During an interview on the Zak Kuhn Show, Gene Simmons recalled once upon a time trying to play Van Halen’s Frankenstrat and what he suggested to Eddie before a show.
“They’re headlining Nassau Coliseum for the first time,” Simmons remembered. “And I’m backstage, and actually off in the [distance], it was Joey Ramone and some other people who wanted to check them out.”
“And Eddie’s got the guitar around his neck, and they don’t go on for another 15-20 minutes. So I said, ‘Eddie, let me see that guitar.’ Because Eddie put that guitar together, glued on the neck, the neck that he liked to a certain body. It was kind of like a Frankenstein monster put together.”
However, ultimately, Van Halen saved the day.
“And so, when I put it around my neck and tried playing a chord, it was completely out of tune. And I’m not exaggerating. I said, ‘Hey, you better go and tune this up before you hit the stage.’ And he goes, ‘Oh no, no, man, don’t worry.'”
“He put the guitar on his shoulders and then played a chord and bent the neck in tune so that neck had some movement on it, and anybody else playing that instrument would sound horrible on it. And yet, when Eddie played on it, it sounded perfectly in tune.”
Simmons and Van Halen knew each other before he attended this aforementioned concert and he took the band under his wing in the mid ’70s, recorded a demo, and tried to land them a recording contract, but ultimately failed.
Luckily, not long afterward, Ted Templeman discovered the band, and a recording contract with Warner Bros. soon followed.
