Why You Should Write Like Eddy Van Halen Plays

You know why people listen to Van Halen?

People know Van Halen because Eddy is a wizard axe man (and believe me as a lifer guitarist and guitar teacher, he is. He’s done the most interesting things with the instrument since Hendrix.) But that’s not why people listen to Van Halen.

People listen to Van Halen because the songs fuckin’ rule. Jamie’s Crying? Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love? Jump? Panama? Unchained? Absolute classics. True, sonic belters. Anyone can get down to that stuff.

See here’s the trick: yes, Eddy could play wild solos and did frequently. But his real talent was as a rhythm guitarist. I don’t care who you are. When he chops you feel it in your, loins, man. And rhythm is about 85% of those songs.

Let me give you some stats: Eruption has 150, 000, 000 plays on Spotify. No mean feat for sure!

Know how many plays Jump has?

More than a billion. Yeah, with ‘B’.

What am I getting at here? I know a lot of you on here: (fantasy writers, sci-fi, God-knows my horror bros) love to cut sick with stream of consciousness, crazy voices, weird tense and word choice, fucked-up punctuation. And, in the right context, I love I love all that shit. I’ll eat up fever-dream, dude. I really will!

But you know what I want to read 85% of the time? Good, clean, solid prose. I want you to tell me a simple, heartfelt story. That’s what most people want.

Focus on your fundamentals: tension, release, dialogue, setting (but don’t go crazy on the descriptions, adjectives or adverbs please).

I want you to write great songs. Most of your potential audience do too.

Don’t spend all your time noodling.

Rant over.