Two bands that are incredibly important to music are Van Halen and none other than Fleetwood Mac. When we look at what both bands did for music, it’s hard to disagree that either or should exist and why they are so important for such. No one’s going to argue with how great Eddie Van Halen was or how great Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac is.
Outside of the fact that Lindsey can play guitar pretty well, having one of the best-selling albums of all time in Rumours is definitely going to earn you some points with the heavyweights of pop music.
When you’re that high on that stoop though, you start to pass judgment on some of the other stars at the top as well. For Lindsey, it’s Van Halen.
When speaking to Guitar World magazine, Lindsey had made mention that he was all about serving the song and giving the right guitar part for every single track, and decided to make a few dunks on Van Halen in the process.
As he was mentioning different players like country legend Chet Atkins, Lindsey pointed out that “I’ve always believed that you play to highlight the song, not to highlight the player. The song is all that matters. There are two ways you can choose to go. You can try to be someone like Eddie Van Halen, who is a great guitarist, a virtuoso. Yet he doesn’t make good records because what he plays is totally lost in the context of this band’s music.”
Amid both the David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar eras, Eddie was always looking to write the perfect guitar part for the song, always trying new things and turning them into some of the best guitar songs of the ‘80s.
Lindsey brings up a point, but it seems to fall flat as it’s incredibly hard to diss Eddie Van Halen and be taken seriously.
