Eddie Van Halen was one of the greatest rock guitar players who ever lived. His band, Van Halen, filled arenas in the early 1980s, and other guitarists studied his solos note for note. So when the phone rang one day with a man saying he wanted Eddie to play on a Michael Jackson song, Eddie figured one of his buddies was pulling his leg.
The man on the line was Quincy Jones. Quincy was the producer behind “Thriller,” the biggest album in the world, and he wanted that famous Van Halen sound on a song called “Beat It.” The guitarist didn’t buy it for a second.
“I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t know anyone named Quincy’,” he remembered later.
He told the caller off and nearly ended it right there. Lucky for all of us, he didn’t.
Eddie ended up in the studio laying down a guitar solo that lasted only about 20 seconds. It took him roughly half an hour to record. There’s even a funny story about whether he got paid in beer for the favor, and his answer was pure Eddie: “Yeah, something like that. Actually, I brought my own, if I remember right.”
That short burst of guitar became one of the most famous moments on the whole album. Which brings us to the part he loved to tell.
Here’s the solo itself, the 20 seconds that started the whole mix-up.
The guitar solo Eddie almost turned down
A few months after “Beat It” came out, Eddie walked into a Tower Records store. These were the big music shops of the day, packed with records and tapes and always playing something loud over the speakers. On this day, the speakers were playing “Beat It.”
Some kids were standing nearby, listening to that guitar solo. And they started talking about it like they knew exactly who was faking it.
“Listen to this guy trying to sound like Eddie Van Halen,” one of them said.
They had no clue the real Eddie was standing right behind them.
So he did the only thing a person can do in a moment like that. “I tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘That IS me!'”
He told the full story in an interview back in 2012, the same year “Thriller” turned 30. You can tell he got a real kick out of it. One of the most copied guitar players alive, being accused of not sounding enough like himself.
We can’t show you that interview here, so the photos are the next best thing. But you can hear the thing the whole story is about. Give the solo above a listen and think about those kids at the store, so sure they had the whole thing figured out.
Eddie passed away in 2020, and fans still trade this little story with a smile.