Stars Who Couldn't Stand Eddie Van Halen

With sales of about 80 million records via the band named after himself and his brother, along with critical acclaim, and hailed by his peers as an influence, genius, and pioneer, Eddie Van Halen is easily one of the most beloved characters in the history of popular music. Exhibiting superhuman-level powers of guitar technique, keyboard playing, and songwriting, it's hard to believe that Eddie Van Halen was a human being, and a flawed one at that. 

Just like the rest of us mortals, he wasn't 100% likable or always nice or fair with everyone all the time, certainly not across the 60-plus years of his lifetime. And for those reasons and more, Van Halen made a handful of enemies. Even more shocking: Those foes were celebrities, almost as famous as Van Halen himself, and they were willing to talk about how the guitarist did them wrong and why, exactly, they didn't much care for the legendary shredder. Here are some of the enemies and adversaries of Eddie Van Halen, the seemingly rare individuals who just really didn't like the guy.

In 1977, Fleetwood Mac released "Rumours," a soft rock opus about the band members' romantic squabbles that went on to become one of the biggest-selling albums of all time. The year after, Van Halen released its self-titled debut, a loud and heavy collection that would rocket the band to the top of the rock world. Fleetwood Mac's lead guitarist, Lindsey Buckingham, declared his style of play — which pulled heavily from folk music and banjo-picking methods — to be antithetical and superior to that of the other band's chief axeman, Eddie Van Halen, who used both his hands to speedily soar up and down his instrument's fretboard, to the delight of his fans.

"I've always believed that you play to highlight the song, not to highlight the player. The song is all that matters," Buckingham told Guitar World Acoustic (via Far Out) in 2012, meaning that his work serves his bandmates' compositions, while Van Halen is little more than a showoff. "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."

Two fast-fingered electric guitar kings reigned over early '80s hard rock: Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads, lead guitarist in Quiet Riot and for Ozzy Osbourne, after the singer left Black Sabbath. Van Halen and Rhoads seemingly resented one another, while also possibly learning from one another. "At some of the shows, we would see David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen there, which was always interesting to me," said Quiet Riot fan club president Lori Hollen in "Randy Rhoads: Reflections of a Guitar Icon." "Because I know Randy never went to see them play."

As quoted in that film, Van Halen claimed responsibility for Rhoads' style. "He was one guitarist who was honest anyway. Because I read some interview he did and he said everything he did he learned from me," he said. Van Halen may have been referring to a 1982 interview with Guitar World, in which Rhoads said, "As of yet I don't think I have my own style. For instance, I do a solo guitar thing in concert, and I do a lot of the same licks as Eddie Van Halen. Eddie is a great player, but it kills me that I do that." 

Forty years later, Osbourne cleared the air for Rolling Stone, refuting Van Halen's take. "I heard recently that Eddie said he taught Randy all his licks," Osbourne said. "He never. To be honest, Randy didn't have a nice thing to say about Eddie. Maybe they had a falling out or whatever, but they were rivals."

Eddie Van Halen grew up in Pasadena, near Los Angeles. When Van Halen honed its sound there in the '70s, a distinctive punk scene developed in Los Angeles, exemplified by the wild and abrasive band the Germs. Pat Smear played guitar for the punk act, the first success in a career that would land him in the lineups of Nirvana and Foo Fighters.

After the emergence of Van Halen, Smear idolized its guitarist. "He was so disgustingly brilliant. He ruined my f***ing life when he came out," he jokingly told Dimension Seven. That attitude of annoyed adoration abruptly ended when Smear met Eddie Van Halen, who showed up backstage at a Nirvana concert, heavily intoxicated and attempting to convince the grunge band to let him take the stage with them. "It was so disgusting. He was like, 'I'm all washed up; you are what's happening now.' It was horrible!" Smear added that Van Halen perplexingly applied a stick of deodorant around his face before making racially caustic remarks. "Eddie turns around and sees me, but he doesn't say hello or anything. He just says, 'Oh no, not a dark one.' At first I thought he was kidding. But he kept asking me, "What are you? Are you like a Raji or something? Are you Mexican?'"

Following the tumultuous lineup changes in Van Halen in the 1990s and 2000s — Sammy Hagar was out, then David Lee Roth returned, then they were both out briefly in favor of legendarily ill-fated replacement Gary Cherone, only for Roth to eventually come back — other rock stars took sides in the lengthy feud. Dee Snider, frontman of glam-rock group Twisted Sister, proclaimed himself to be firmly in the Hagar camp, blaming Eddie Van Halen for all the messiness and finding the guitarist personally and professionally uncouth.

"Sammy's the real deal. He's talented and he's a bad-a***," Snider told Ultimate Classic Rock in 2015, going on to explain that during one of Hagar's stints with the band, Eddie Van Halen instructed a crew to build walls in arena backstage areas so he wouldn't have to interact with the singer more than necessary. "As far as Eddie goes, anybody who is really watching and paying attention, Eddie's out of his mind," Snider said, referring to a time when the guitarist showed up for an impromptu gig with a band in a Mexican restaurant wearing worn out boots, which showed off his feet and toenails. That was par for the course, according to Snider, whose son saw Van Halen play at his school in the '90s, as a favor to a student's parent. "He said that he looked like a homeless person," Snider said. "And I've heard that from so many people."

In 2004, Eddie Van Halen hired filmmaker and music photographer Andrew Bennett to be his private chronicler. Bennett embedded himself in Van Halen's life, recording him around the clock for two weeks and then living in the guitarist's home across 2006 and 2007. No documentary film ever transpired, and Bennett instead self-published a photo-heavy account of his Van Halen era, "Eruption in the Canyon: 212 Days & Nights With the Genius of Eddie Van Halen." Bennett included many unflattering portrayals of the musician, such as binge drinking episodes and the time Van Halen placed a gun against the filmmaker's head for 30 minutes, after he was unnerved by a meeting with off-and-on bandmate David Lee Roth.

Reportedly promised $250,000 for his work, Bennett claims he was never paid that entire amount. In 2018, he placed some of his footage online, leading Van Halen to ask a judge to stop the release of any more material, citing his ownership of the film. "I'm more confused, disappointed, and hurt than angry," Bennett told Billboard. "Ed gave me his word. He saw how hard I worked and then he f***** me over. That's what shocks me. That's not the person I know. The depression from it is what kills me the most."