{"id":3377,"date":"2020-10-10T23:51:36","date_gmt":"2020-10-10T23:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drmirkin.com\/?p=3377"},"modified":"2020-10-13T11:18:12","modified_gmt":"2020-10-13T11:18:12","slug":"eddie-van-halen-and-mouth-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/?p=3377","title":{"rendered":"Eddie Van Halen and Mouth Cancer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"eddieEddie Van Halen is considered to be one of the most accomplished guitarists of all time, and he led his hard rock band to international fame. He also developed new techniques and changes in his guitar that many other guitarists have copied, such as finger tapping with both hands on the guitar neck.
\n\u2022 He couldn\u2019t afford a distortion pedal, so he had to bang his guitar with his hands.
\n\u2022 He couldn’t afford a router, so he started hammering away with a screwdriver.
\n\u2022 He thought that manufactured guitar necks were too round on the back, so he used sandpaper to reshape the neck of his guitar.
\n\u2022 He noted that sweating on a lacquer-covered guitar made his fingers slippery, so he built wooden guitars with no lacquer.
\n\u2022 He corrected the strings from loosening and changing tone while he played by modifying \u201cwhammy bars,\u201d pegs that locked down and would not turn to loosen the strings.<\/p>\n

Difficult Early Years<\/strong>
\nVan Halen was born into extreme poverty. His father, Jan, was a traveling salesman in Dutch-ruled Indonesia where he met and married Eugenia, who was Eurasian. They moved to the Netherlands after World War II, and Eddie and his brothers were born there. The children were considered “half-breeds” in the Netherlands, and prejudice and abuse were so strong that the family decided to move to the U.S. They had very little money, and they spent nine days in the lowest quarters of a packed boat to reach California.<\/p>\n

They settled in Pasadena in 1962, when Eddie was seven years old. They had to learn to speak English, lived in a house shared with two other families, and his mother worked as a maid and his father worked as a janitor. From his first day in the first grade, his language difficulties set him apart from his classmates. He had known severe prejudice in the Netherlands, but the elementary school in Pasadena was integrated and he was considered a minority student. His first friends were black and the white kids were bullies. He later recounted that, \u201cThey would tear up my homework and papers and make me eat playground sand. It was the black kids who stuck up for me.\u201d His father was a musician and he taught all his boys how to play musical instruments. Van Halen later told reporters that he is grateful for his experience as an immigrant. “We came here with approximately $50 and didn’t speak the language. Now look where we are. If that’s not the American dream, what is?”
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