11/18/2023 0 Comments Eddie van halen hair![]() “They sent me the basic chords, and then I had one rehearsal with them in Hollywood and it sounded like crap,” Zabka recalls. In 2019, Zabka had the opportunity to live out his rock dreams by performing to a packed audience at Hollywood’s famed Whisky a Go Go (Johnny Lawrence, we presume, would be super-jealous).Īrmed with a Taylor acoustic (his other gear over the years has included a Takamine acoustic electric guitar, a white Ovation 12-string and a “chestnut-brown” Les Paul Custom with a Marshall stack), he joined Cobra Kai composers Leo Birenberg and Zach Robinson onstage to perform Johnny’s theme song, Ace Degenerate.Īt first, Birenberg and Robinson assumed Zabka would merely strum along and try to keep up. And he’s a great piano player, actually.” “I would always bring my guitar to any set I went to, and happened to bring a Casio with him. at their hotel after full days of shooting in Madison, Wisconsin. On the set of Back to School, for just one example, Zabka recalls impromptu jam sessions with co-star Robert Downey Jr. That’s not to say he doesn’t find the time to bring the guitar into his acting life whenever possible. And that’s also why I never chose not to pursue it professionally – it’s something I don’t look to get anything back from, outside of just the joy of doing it.” But music was the other thing that fed me artistically and creatively. So as far as my career was going, I was headed to film. I went to college at Cal State Northridge and entered the film school, and then I got cast in The Karate Kid. Zabka says that he “loved guitar deeply,” but at the same time, “it was always something of a hobby. “We’d perform at pumpkin festivals and things like that, where we’re sitting on haystacks singing Listen to the Music and Layla,” he recalls. He enrolled at the Dick Grove School of Music in California, where he learned to read music and studied to be a trained session player and studio musician, and he also played in a series of bands, including one with a few friends called the Acoustic Outlaws. Zabka obviously didn’t pursue music with the same zealousness as his Fishbone school mates (or, for that matter, his father, Stan Zabka, a successful pianist and composer who co-wrote the 1950s holiday classic Christmas Eve in My Hometown and later worked for and performed on The Tonight Show), but he did take it seriously. So I had a little keyboard, I had an amplifier, and they would come and use my stuff and I would jam with them.” (When reached by phone, Moore recalls, “I remember going over to his house, kickin’ it and playing games and running up and down the street. ![]() In fact, Zabka continues, “Here’s an even crazier story: In junior high school Angelo lived across the street from me, and when they first started the band, they didn’t have a lot of instruments. The guitar’s a companion, just like it always has been. “Angelo Moore, John Fisher, I went to high school with those guys, and they were running around onstage with horns, playing all this crazy jazz and fusion type music that no one had ever heard before.” “We played against Fishbone,” Zabka recalls with a laugh. “That might make me sound like a dick, but after being told I sounded like him, that I was copying him, and all this shit, it meant a lot to hear that he liked what I did and that he respected it.He continued to play throughout his school years, including at his high school Battle of the Bands in El Camino Real, where his group, Siricon (“a silly, funny name”) had some stiff competition. “Eddie said a lot of nice things to me that day and I’ll take them to my grave, but I’ll tell you this, I was touched enough to where I had to leave the room, go to the bathroom, and cry. The White Lion guitarist admitted that he felt very emotional about it: And during that occasion, Eddie had nothing but fine things to say about Vito. Here I am, standing in the studio, watching Eddie Van Halen sitting on my amp, jamming out on guitar.” I got to meet him once when he came into the studio during the recording of ‘Mane Attraction.’ He came in, and he was sitting on my 5150 amp. “What I will say is that when I talked to Eddie, he didn’t agree. ![]() “Now, I’m not the type to use Eddie’s name for whatever – especially since he passed away – but I will say that Eddie complimented me and that he didn’t agree. “It got to the point where I met Eddie once, and I asked him, ‘Does it freak you out that I play like you?’ I thought that because it had been drilled into my head by magazines and stuff. That was all bullshit.”īratta recalled meeting Eddie in person and asking him about it: ![]() ![]() “Once I became established with White Lion in the ’80s, I got a lot of shit from people who said I was aping his style. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |