Eddie Van Halen reinvents the guitar

There are rock stars, and then there are Rock Stars. Eddie Van Halen is a Rock Star.

Take an incident in the summer of 2007. A security guard stopped me as I attempted to drive through the gates of Center Staging, a rehearsal studio across the street from Burbank Airport.

“That’s odd,” I thought. “They’ve never had security before. I wonder what’s going on?”

Pretty soon, I discovered the reason for the limited access. A black BMW convertible drove up, and a baby-faced teenager jumped out of the driver’s seat. The passenger door opened, and Eddie Van Halen out walked  Everyone stopped talking and stared, including Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals, who were outside taking a break from their own rehearsal.

Van Halen and the other members of the band had just announced a big reunion tour with original singer David Lee Roth at a splashy news conference in Beverly Hills, and I had inadvertently discovered where they were prepping for their journey. Eddie and his son Wolfgang — named for Mozart — greeted a couple of people in the parking lot and quickly disappeared inside the soundstage.

Moments later, the earth trembled as the loudest guitar I’ve ever heard in my life was fired up. It was like a sonic boom — only the sound wasn’t coming from the airport. It was coming from inside the soundstage. The legendary guitarist launched into the familiar intro to Van Halen’s 1978 hit, “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love.” That was followed by “Runnin’ With the Devil.”

Joss Stone ran out of her own rehearsal studio — barefoot — and begged a security guard for entry. She was turned away.

Months later, I would catch van Halen the band, during their triumphant hometown concert in Los Angeles. Little did I know that during that tour, Eddie had been road-testing a series of prototype guitars he was designing with Fender. The instrument was called “the Wolfgang,” after his son, who’s Van Halen’s current bass playerAfter years of wearing down metal frets and having pieces of his guitar rip off or malfunction during shows, Van Halen says he’s built a guitar that even he can’t destroy. On the Wolfgang, frets are fashioned of stainless steel, and metal gadgets are custom-made by a company that specializes in medical tools. Sections of wood are left unpainted so the instrument can breathe and age — “like a Stradivarius,” the 54-year-old musician explains with a degree of pride.We recently caught up with Eddie at his 5150 Studio, high in the hills above Los Angeles. It’s where the album “1984″ was recorded, along with every subsequent Van Halen record. The studio sits on seven acres, just a stone’s throw from the Tudor mansion he bought in 1980. He and his fiancee/publicist, Janie Liszewski, scoot around the property in golf carts. The red, white and black-striped motif of his signature Van Halen guitar is painted on the walkway. The following is an edited version of the interview.

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