Dweezil Zappa has revealed he once got to record his friend and mentor Eddie Van Halen at the latter’s renowned 5150 Studios – describing the moment as a true ‘role reversal’ experience and noting he even had to remind the late great guitar icon how to play some of his parts.
The guitarist recently shared a clip from an interview with YouTube channel LaughingMonkeyMusic, in which he says the session took place in the early ’90s as part of his ‘audio movie’ concept, What the Hell Was I Thinking?.
The unreleased project saw him trying to recreate the experience of changing a radio dial, with an exclusively drums, bass and guitar setup – drafting in a variety of big-name guest guitarists in the process.
Asked if Van Halen was involved, Zappa responds, “Yeah, there's two solos. And the coolest thing was I got to work with him at 5150.
“It was like a total role-reversal because the first thing that he did with me, when I was 12, was he was teaching me how to do punch-ins in the studio – like, you gotta play along and then he'd press play and record, and record at the right time – so, all these years later, I'm saying, ‘Okay, on this solo, I need you to play…’
Tantalizingly, Zappa describes the resulting, unreleased contributions from EVH as a “greatest hits” solo that combined elements of classic Van Halen tracks into something of a lead guitar medley.
“We made like a greatest hits guitar solo,” remembers Zappa. “[So] it was just a funny thing to say, ‘Okay, I want you to play this lick from Mean Streets, this one from Push Comes to Shove, this one from On Fire…’ and we put it all in one solo over this thing.”
Zappa says the trip down memory lane to revisit some of Van Halen’s most challenging material presented some hurdles for the guitar icon.
“[Sometimes] he was like, ‘I don't remember how that one goes’ and then I would show him the lick,” says Zappa. “He's like, ‘Why don't you just fucking play it? You sound just like me, anyway!’
“So the funny part was I would show him things that he didn’t remember but then he would play the whole thing, and if we had to do a punch-in, I was now punching him in. So it was like this total role-reversal thing – and I was having to show him some things of his own music. I was like, ‘No, no! It goes like this…’”
Zappa has previously discussed the What the Hell Was I Thinking project elsewhere, revealing in a Sunset Sound interview [above] that he has contributions from the likes of Malcolm and Angus Young, Brian May, Brian Setzer, Warren DiMartini and Steve Lukather, alongside the Van Halen material and hopes to add contemporary guitar heroes to the mix.
In a recent interview, this time with Rick Beato, Zappa recalled his first meeting with Van Halen, and described what it was like to be 12 years old and get a phone call from the guitar great – only for him to turn up ready to play, 15 minutes later.
