Top 70 Eddie Van Halen Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “To hell with the rules. If it sounds right, then it is.”

— Eddie Van Halen

2. “Rock stars come and go. Musicians play until they die.”

— Eddie Van Halen

3. “Bass is for people who can’t play guitar.”

— Eddie Van Halen

4. “Some people think a song without words isn’t a real song. Tell that to Beethoven and he’ll kick your ass!”

— Eddie Van Halen

5. “You only have 12 notes. Do what you want with them.”

— Eddie Van Halen

6. “If you want to be a rock star or just be famous, then run down the street naked, you’ll make the news or something. But if you want music to be your livelihood, then play, play, play and play! And eventually you’ll get to where you want to be.”

— Eddie Van Halen

7. “Music kept me off the streets and out of trouble and gave me something that was mine that no one could take away from me.”

— Eddie Van Halen

8. “I just consider myself slightly left-of-center. I’m not your average bear. I – what’s the word? I’m not – normal.”

— Eddie Van Halen

9. “There are really three parts to the creative process. First there is inspiration, then there is the execution, and finally there is the release.”

— Eddie Van Halen

10. “I have selective hearing.”

— Eddie Van Halen

11. “It’s always a Catch-22 situation. They hate you if you’re the same, and they hate you if you’re different.”

— Eddie Van Halen

12. “A guitar is a very personal extension of the person playing it. You have to be emotionally and spiritually connected to your instrument. I’m very brutal on my instruments, but not all the time.”

— Eddie Van Halen

13. “The name Van Halen, the family legacy, is going to go on long after I’m gone.”

— Eddie Van Halen

14. “I was so used to doing old blues licks with the first three fingers. When I started using my pinky and finding more spread things, that’s when I started getting my own style.”

— Eddie Van Halen

15. “Practice. I used to sit on the edge of my bed with a six-pack of Tuborg. My brother would go out to party and get laid, come home at 3am., and I would still be playing with myself.”

— Eddie Van Halen

16. “It makes me feel kind of weird, but obviously the Man Upstairs gave me something and it touches people, and I’m just so blessed.”

— Eddie Van Halen

17. “We’re musicians. We make music for a living. It’s that simple. Nothing else matters.”

— Eddie Van Halen

18. “I’m just a normal schmo like anyone else.”

— Eddie Van Halen

19. “I’m not a rock star. Sure I am, to a certain extent because of the situation, but when kids ask me how it feels to be a rock star, I say leave me alone, I’m not a rock star. I’m not in it for the fame, I’m in it because I like to play.”

— Eddie Van Halen

20. “A guitar is just theoretically built wrong. Each string is an interval of fourths, and then the B string is off. Theoretically, that’s not right, all the strings should be off.”

— Eddie Van Halen

21. “If I can help a kid discover a liking, or even a passion for music in their life, then that’s a wonderful thing.”

— Eddie Van Halen

22. “It’s Always about the music, never about anything else.”

— Eddie Van Halen

23. “You’ve only got 12 notes and however you mix them up is your thing.”

— Eddie Van Halen

24. “The one thing I do have is good ears. I don’t mean perfect pitch, but ears for picking things up. I developed my ear through piano theory, but I never had a guitar lesson in my life, except from Eric Clapton off of records.”

— Eddie Van Halen

25. “I boil the strings so they stretch.”

— Eddie Van Halen

26. “I can’t read music. Instead, I’d do stuff inside the piano, do harmonics and all kinds of crazy things. They used to put me in these annual piano contests down at Long Beach City College, and two years in a row, I won first prize – out of like 5,000 kids!”

— Eddie Van Halen

27. “Music is for people. The word ‘pop’ is simply short for popular. It means that people like it. I’m just a normal jerk who happens to make music. As long as my brain and fingers work, I’m cool.”

— Eddie Van Halen

28. “I’m not a drunk anymore, but since they cut out my tongue, I sound drunk.”

— Eddie Van Halen

29. “If you have a great-sounding guitar that’s a quality instrument and a good amp, and you know how to make the guitar talk, that’s the key. It starts with the guitar and knowing what it should sound and feel like.”

— Eddie Van Halen

30. “On ‘Honeybabysweetiedoll’ I used a Whammy, a Boss OC-3 octave box, a Sustainer and a Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler. That’s only on the intro, where all those weird noises are happening.”

— Eddie Van Halen

31. “Eventually you’ll take the phrases and rhythm patterns you’ve copped and begin to put your own mark on them.”

— Eddie Van Halen

32. “On ‘Van Halen,’ I was a young punk, and everything revolved around the fastest kid in town, gunslinger attitude. But I’d say that at the time of ‘Fair Warning,’ I started concentrating more on songwriting. But I guess in most people’s minds I’m just a gunslinger.”

— Eddie Van Halen

33. “I started doing all kinds of weird stuff on the guitar, which became part of my playing. I started doing harmonics and tapping on the guitar and pulling off strings and doing all this weird stuff that no one had ever done before.”

— Eddie Van Halen

34. “I’ll always leave the same set of strings on my guitars when I’m recording. If I break one I’ll just replace it instead of putting on a whole new set of strings.”

— Eddie Van Halen

35. “Everything comes to me while I’m sitting on the pot.”

— Eddie Van Halen

36. “Before the operation on my left hand I wasn’t able to stretch my fingers open all the way. I’ve never had very big hands, but I could do the splits with them. Eventually I couldn’t any more. I had a twisted tendon in my little finger that prevented me from being able to stretch.”

— Eddie Van Halen

37. “It’s all about sound. It’s that simple. Wireless is wireless, and it’s digital. Hopefully somewhere along the line somebody will add more ones to the zeros. When digital first started, I swear I could hear the gap between the ones and the zeros.”

— Eddie Van Halen

38. “The stainless-steel frets were a major breakthrough, because of the amount of playing and bending that I do. I have to get my guitars refretted every couple of months.”

— Eddie Van Halen

39. “Best believe that needle hurt you Best to see these true colors Than follow one of your false virtues A little secret to make you think: Why is the crazy stuff we never say, poetry in ink?”

— Eddie Van Halen

40. “Sometimes I just want to lick David Lee Roth in the nuts.”

— Eddie Van Halen

41. “Nirvana was huge, but it didn’t appeal to everyone.”

— Eddie Van Halen

42. “I’ve had a hip replacement, I’ve beaten cancer, I had my hand operation, and I stopped drinking. Something inside of me just went, ‘I’m done.’”

— Eddie Van Halen

43. “I never took guitar lessons. I took classical piano lessons from the age of six when we lived in Holland.”

— Eddie Van Halen

44. “I don’t really know what inspires me to write the music I do, but usually, the music will set the tone for the lyrics.”

— Eddie Van Halen

45. “Obviously you have to have rhythm. If you have rhythm, then you can play anything you need. If you have rhythm and you love music, then play and play and play until you get to where you want to get. If you can pay the rent, great. If you can’t, then you’d better be having fun.”

— Eddie Van Halen

Featured in: Fun Quotes

46. “The piano is a universal instrument. If you start there, learn your theory and how to read, you can go on to any other instrument.”

— Eddie Van Halen

47. “Cancer is like a cockroach. It just comes back stronger. I’m tearing apart the immune system of the cockroach and seeing how it ticks. I’ve opened up my own pathology center.”

— Eddie Van Halen

48. “Every song is like a kid. How can you have that many kids and have a favorite? Which one do I like to hang most with?”

— Eddie Van Halen

49. “Imagine if Beethoven had a tape recorder. Then you’d know exactly what he meant. Maybe he meant ‘Da da da da’ instead of ‘Boom boom boom boom!’ Who knows?”

— Eddie Van Halen

50. “Major third complications can be overcome by lots of alcohol.”

— Eddie Van Halen