{"id":314843,"date":"2025-12-14T02:03:04","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T02:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/314843\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T02:03:04","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T02:03:04","slug":"the-closest-rival-to-the-beatles-according-to-alex-van-halen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/314843\/","title":{"rendered":"The closest rival to The Beatles according to Alex Van Halen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" <\/p>\n

Sat 13 December 2025 19:30, UK <\/p>\n

Some acts don\u2019t necessarily have the influences that you might expect them to, and in the case of Van Halen<\/a>, it wasn\u2019t exactly the progenitors of heavy metal that spurred on the two brothers in the band to take the course they did.<\/p>\n

With\u00a0Eddie Van Halen\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0technical mastery of the guitar and the attacking style that he used to wrangle the instrument, you\u2019d have thought that a steady diet of Jimmy Page and Tony Iommi would have been the main catalyst for him becoming the showboating performer he was known for being. While he would certainly have taken some inspiration from these players, it was elsewhere that his attention was focused.<\/p>\n

Similarly, his brother Alex wasn\u2019t quite as transfixed on the hard rock and heavy metal drummers of the generation before the band\u2019s emergence, and was seemingly more interested in pop music, which was what ended up drawing the siblings together to pursue a career in music.<\/p>\n

Having both begun as classical musicians, the brothers were convinced to cease their formal musical education in order to pursue something that would be more commercially successful as a result of their exposure to The Beatles. According to the Dutch-born siblings, moving to the US and watching the band\u2019s A Hard Day\u2019s Night<\/a> film was what persuaded them to take this alternative direction, and according to Eddie he stopped playing piano when he realised guitars were the way forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never really doubted I\u2019d be in a band, and I never doubted it would be with my brother. But we didn\u2019t know what kind of music we\u2019d play until the British Invasion made it clear,\u201d Alex later reflected in his autobiography, Brothers. They\u2019d become completely smitten with the four lads from Liverpool, and were determined to make music that sounded exactly like what they were newly being exposed to.<\/p>\n

Somewhere along the way, there would have been a moment where they were drawn towards something heavier, hence the metal tag that the band were often labelled with, but the earliest influences were far more pop-adjacent than one might expect from a band such as Van Halen. <\/p>\n

Aside from The Beatles, however, there was one other band of a similar ilk that they became completely obsessed with, and Alex went on to argue in his book that they were almost just as influential to their decision to pursue rock and pop music as their path. \u201cWe wanted to rock \u2019n\u2019 roll like our idols: the Beatles and the Dave Clark Five,\u201d he continued, adding, \u201cYou may never have heard of that second band, but back then they were neck and neck with the Beatles, I\u2019m telling you.\u201d <\/p>\n

He continued by praising them for songs like \u2018Glad All Over\u2019, which was a major hit for the group on both sides of the Atlantic in 1964. \u201cWe were hooked on that grungy saxophone. It was an instrument we already knew how to play, so we could imitate their sound. We were excited by the wildness and the rebellion of rock.\u201d <\/p>\n

While it\u2019s hard to imagine Van Halen ever diving into a cover \u2018Bits and Pieces\u2019, it\u2019s still fascinating to think that this was their gateway into contemporary music, and had they never been exposed to bands like the Dave Clark Five, then there wouldn\u2019t be hits like \u2018Runnin\u2019 With the Devil\u2019, even if it is a significant stylistic leap.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sat 13 December 2025 19:30, UK Some acts don\u2019t necessarily have the influences that you might expect them…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[113242,57306,96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-314843","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-alex-van-halen","9":"tag-eddie-van-halen","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}