Iron Maiden electric guitar player Adrian Smith recently appeared on The Metal Voice to talk about his new fishing book, Monsters of River & Rock. But invariably the talk turned to guitars and, more specifically, Eddie Van Halen.
Asked if Eddie, who passed away on October 6 at the age of 65, was an influence on his playing, Smith responded, “Probably him and Jimi Hendrix, certainly in my lifetime, had the biggest effect on the electric guitar. I loved his playing, although when he came out, I had already been playing five or six years. If I had been starting out when I heard him, I would have just copied him, you know, like 99 percent of the other guitarists did.”
