During a recent appearance on The Paltrocast, Hootie And The Blowfish guitarist Mark Bryan shared his thoughts about Eddie Van Halen. The guitarist thinks the Van Halen guitarist was underappreciated.
“I wanna say this because everybody puts him on the top with the guitar playing [makes fingers on the fretboard impression] and he is but he’s also one of the all-time greatest riff masters,” Bryan said. “[He] came up with these song riffs like Jimmy Page did with Zeppelin where you’re like, ‘What a f*ckin’ riff,’ you know? And so Eddie is, I think, underappreciated for that. His songwriting riff ability, it blows me away.”
Van Halen and Hootie And The Blowfish members first met back in 1996 at the Grammys. Hootie And The Blowfish won two awards — one for Best New Artist, and one for Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal.
“We shared a dressing room with Van Halen. Van Hagar-Van Halen. We shared the dressing [room], [we had] the same couches there,” the rocker recalled meeting the band. “[It] was all our room so we come in, and they’re all super cool.”
Bryan also revealed how friendly Eddie was and how the rest of the bandmates had an influence on him: “And we’re meeting them and shaking hands with them and everything, and I tell Eddie what an influence he is on me, and I talk about the riff thing and everything, and he just gives me this big hug. A friendly guy, he has a big smile on his face. All of them were so cool, Alex too. Just super cool guys, man. Michael Anthony couldn’t have been cooler. So that was our first experience. [It] was sharing a dressing room with them, and there’s a picture from the afterparty with me and Eddie Van Halen and Emmy Lou Harris and Daniel Lanois and I feel I’ve never felt cooler in my life.”
Bryan bid farewell to the Van Halen guitarist when he passed away. He referred to him as ‘Shredward’ and noted that his influence on the music world will still be talked about 300 years from now.