There is no Van Halen after Dave.

_________________
I'm the best guitarist in my bedroom.

Extraordinarily cruel......



Two summers ago, a band calling itself "Grand Funk Railroad" came to my town to play a free concert in the city park. After researching this act I discovered that only two original members were still in the band -- and neither of them were Mark Farner or Craig Frost. Needless to say, I passed on this opportunity and I don't regret it in the least.

Arjay

_________________
"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

So I feel like we're kind of split down the middle.

I don't understand some of you KISS haters....

_________________
"I'll get up there and do my guitar solos in one of those space outfits." ~ Ace Frehley
My YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/fenderflamestrat?

Ya know.. I was originally gonna side-step this thread. But as I started thinking about it, it became a tough question for me to answer.

Ace was the reason I ever wanted to pick up a guitar in the first place. At the time, there was no cooler guitar player on the planet.

But I also remember when I first heard Eruption and it blew my mind into a billion pieces. That was the coolest thing I'd ever heard. I also think about albums like Women and Children First and Fair warning.. And my personal reasons for having those albums were due to how badass EVH was on a guitar more than anything else.. I don't think it's fair to say he's just a two handed tapping one trick pony. His rhythm playing on those older albums is very cool stuff, and he always had that hot bridge pickup sound..

Guitar player??

I gotta go with EVH here.

If I'm being honest with myself, my Ace fascination was more of a visual thing (even though he could play very good as well), but my EVH fascination was much more for his incredible guitar playing. When I was first starting to learn to do solos I would often ask myself "would Eddie play it like this?" And my answer was almost always no, so I would work on how I thought Eddie would play the certain lick.. That pretty much sums up my reasoning for going with Eddie on this one. That process helped to shape my own personal style more than any other guitar player I can think of in my early days of learning to play.

_________________

I bet you haven't heard more than the cliche "Rock 'n Roll All Nite" so really let's be honest here...you can't say KISS is bad if you haven't heard what they should be recognized for. Songs such as "Cold Gin" or "Deuce" or "Shock Me".
Of course I'm just assuming here and well you know what they say about assuming....


Yeah, I've heard about that! Can you imagine that? 1984 wouldn't have been an album! Riddle me this....( ) if EVH would have joined KISS, would you have payed any respect to either? Just a curious thought.
And the entire Van Halen band would go to multiple KISS shows. Ace was tapping before Eddie, and Eddie must have been influenced. Whether he realized it or not he must have gotten his tapping from Ace. The brain is quite funny, subconsciously he might've taken from him.

~FFS

_________________
"I'll get up there and do my guitar solos in one of those space outfits." ~ Ace Frehley
My YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/fenderflamestrat?

Another word for "Kiss haters" is musicians..

Just my own thoughts about "Eruption" - well the track is notable for many reasons. The main one being, that you can actually point to it as one piece of work that changed rock guitar forever. An abrupt acceleration out of the pentatonic blues tedium we were all locked into at the time (don't flame me - I personally love pentatonic blues tedium..) Perhaps it was like Hendrix first appearing - everything takes a major leap forward.

Actually, I'm not a big Van Halen fan - other than owning just the first album. But I saw the band on their first tour of the UK as special guests of Black Sabbath, and they blew Sabbath away (in their home town too!). I remember watching them thinking that I was seeing something that was going to be very significant. As for Sabbath, they pulled the plug after 4 numbers and got out of there. The Odeon theatre MC made an announcement claiming "Equipment Problems"..

_________________
Fender Highway & Classic 60s Strats, Fender Toronado, Telecaster, Gretsch Projet, Charvel 3, PRS SE Soapbar II & Custom 24, Burns Batwing and many others!

Very hard and a little unfair to definitively say whether one player was "better" than another. BUT...

Eddie fundamentally changed the way that people approach playing electric guitar. He has monster technique, and is a VERY underrated rhythm player to boot. He's a rare, once in a generation kind of talent.

Ace does what he does very well, and I think he's great! But if he hadn't been in KISS, I'm not so sure we'd ever have heard of him.

Not a big fan of either. So FZ

_________________

Interesting observations on this one.

They're both famous because what they did, they did it well. We'd probably never heard of either of them if just the right combination of groups/personailities/management/career breaks hadn't happened in the order that they did.

The one I really like....."another word for KISS haters is musicians"....classic.

Whatever, if we all liked the same things it would be a pretty boring world.

Eddie is a real character, and I think a true genius. I also believe he is psychologically bi-polar, like many geniuses. His personal life is a tradegy.

I think his influence on the guitar playing world is much greater that Ace. Eddie was a true creative force. Like Jimi Hendrix, he was not the first to do much of what he did, but he was in the right place at the right time with the appropriate energy level. It all came together.

_________________
I remember when we were free!

I like Ace, he is he reason I picked up a guitar, but the Beatles are the reason I wanted to learn how to play this guitar!

When Ace left Kiss musically, the never fully recovered. Their new found claim to fame came when they decided to go back to the Ace influenced Kiss Classics.

Now if Eddie left the band, Van Halen would be no more.

Sorry Ace, but this one goes to EVH.

I decided to play drums, my first journey into rock music, because of Peter Criss and the Double Platinum album. Bass and later guitar came much later in life. Huge influences, yep, they were.

"Better" is kind of tough to determine, because everyone has their own criteria. But all I can say is......Ace all the way. No contest.
SB

Wow, I didn't expect us to be split like this....I thought EVH would be favored but it's nice to see a somewhat even split.

I just don't like when people discredit Ace because of KISS. Take away KISS and you still have an incredible guitarist. Paul and Gene are great songwriters and Peter a fantastic drummer. Alone they each incredible in their own rights and together they make an incredible group of musicians. They just were even smarter and turned it into an industry. I don't know how KISS can't e recognized for that....
Just one of my many opinions though

_________________
"I'll get up there and do my guitar solos in one of those space outfits." ~ Ace Frehley
My YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/fenderflamestrat?

Defending KISS on this forum is a tough gig, they are considered "entertainers" or worse and not serious musicians. Beatles dolls were OK but not KISS ones right?

To each his own, the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame will never induct them either but it's all good. I freakin hate Nirvana, can't listen to most of Jeff Beck's tunes, and never had a real urge to sit through a Garth Brooks or Yngwie concert. But to say they all "suck" just because I don't care for their music would be pretty silly. But KISS is an easy target, heard it since I became a fan, it's part of the fun of being different I guess.