Red Hot Chili Peppers' new single is dedicated to Eddie Van Halen

UPDATE (09.23): Eddie is now officially out and you can hear it now.

Red Hot Chili Peppers have shared a snippet of Eddie, a tribute song to Eddie Van Halen that will feature on their upcoming second album of 2022, Return of the Dream Canteen.

While the full track is set for release tomorrow (September 23), the 57-second clip of Eddie finds John Frusciante’s emotive clean electric guitar leads intertwining with Flea’s textbook bass guitar noodling, while Anthony Kiedis delivers a clear tribute to the legendary Van Halen shredder.

“Sailing the Sunset Strip, I’m a bit of a king / Granny would take a trip, I’ll be bending the strings / Got hammers in both my hands, such a delicate touch / They say I’m from Amsterdam, does that make me Dutch?” he sings.

Eddie Van Halen was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Van Halen made their name playing LA's Sunset Strip.

John Frusciante referenced his love of Eddie Van Halen and how that fed into RHCP’s new material in an interview with Total Guitar earlier this year.

“I really love guitar players like Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen for the way that they could make the instrument explode through hand and whammy bar techniques,” he said.

“But I also really like the way people like Greg Ginn or Kurt Cobain play without it being so much about technique – although there are all kinds of unconventional techniques in there – but the focus is definitely a more visceral thing.

“Eventually, by the time we were recording, my concept was to find a bridge between those two conceptions of the instrument: that idea of making it explode with the electricity of the human energy that comes through the strings.”

Return of the Dream Canteen will land only months after RHCP’s latest outing, Unlimited Love. Its first single, Tippa My Tongue, was released last month.

“We went in search of ourselves as the band that we have somehow always been,” the band wrote in a statement shortly after the record was announced. “Just for the fun of it we jammed and learned some old songs. Before long we started the mysterious process of building new songs. A beautiful bit of chemistry meddling that had befriended us hundred of times along the way.

“Once we found that slipstream of sound and vision, we just kept mining. With time turned into an elastic waistband of oversized underwear, we had no reason to stop writing and rocking. It felt like a dream. When all was said and done, our moody love for each other and the magic of music had gifted us with more songs than we knew what to do with.”

They continue: “We figured it out. Two double albums released back to back. The second of which is easily as meaningful as the first or should that be reversed. Return of the Dream Canteen is everything we are and ever dreamed of being. It’s packed. Made with the blood of our hearts, yours truly, the Red Hot Chili Peppers.”

Unlimited Love and Return of the Dream Canteen are the band’s first two LPs since guitarist John Frusciante’s return in 2019. 

Earlier this year, Frusciante spoke of the songwriting process for the albums, and how well the rock heavyweights have gelled since his reintroduction to the fold.

“There’s an appreciation of the chemistry that I can’t say I really had towards the end of being in the band last time,” he admitted to Total Guitar. “An appreciation of what we’re capable of – when you get so used to something, you sometimes tend to take things for granted.

“I’d had lots of time making music where I do whatever I want. And that was great. And I continue to do that. But it seemed like a really good step for me as a human being to try to play in a band again. Most of all, I just have a lot of fun playing with those guys.”