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8 OUT OF 10 MUSICIANS SAY EDDIE VAN HALEN WAS A GENIUS. THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN ARE THE OTHER 2. In a new Stereogum interview before headlining New York’s Total Bummer festival, the Reid brothers didn’t hold back. William Reid called Eddie Van Halen one of “the worst guitar players in the world.” Not because he lacked talent — but because of what happened after him. And here’s where it gets interesting. William said he couldn’t stand the whole approach: playing as fast as possible, cramming as many notes into one second as you could. He believed Van Halen ruined rock guitar through the ’80s and ’90s because too many people copied that style. He even said Peter Hook’s bass riffs were a thousand times better than anything Van Halen ever played. Jim Reid backed his brother up — saying he deliberately keeps his guitar skills at the bare minimum. That knowing too much about music actually gets in the way. The irony? Eddie Van Halen never learned to read music. Never took a single guitar lesson.

Why The Jesus and Mary Chain Still Spark Debate About Eddie Van Halen

Music arguments rarely stay polite for long, and the Reid brothers have never sounded interested in polite answers. In a recent conversation before The Jesus and Mary Chain were set to headline New York’s Total Bummer festival, William Reid made a remark that immediately turned heads: he called Eddie Van Halen one of the worst guitar players in the world.

At first, the line sounds like pure provocation. But William Reid was not dismissing Eddie Van Halen’s ability. The real target was the style that followed in his wake. To William Reid, the problem was not technique itself, but the way so many players chased speed above everything else. In his view, rock guitar became crowded with rapid-fire notes and flashy runs, as if the goal was to squeeze as much into one second as possible.

A Complaint About Influence, Not Talent

That distinction matters. Eddie Van Halen changed rock music in a way few guitarists ever have. His sound opened doors, inspired generations, and made the instrument feel new again. But William Reid’s point was that influence can sometimes create a problem of its own. When younger players copy the most obvious part of a legend, the result can flatten the music instead of expanding it.

The frustration was not with Eddie Van Halen’s skill, but with the culture that grew around imitation.

William Reid also praised other musicians in a way that reveals how different his taste is from the standard guitar hero model. He pointed to Peter Hook’s bass work as something he valued far more than the kind of guitar fireworks associated with Eddie Van Halen. For William Reid, atmosphere, melody, and tension matter more than speed drills and technical display.

Jim Reid’s Minimalist Philosophy

Jim Reid supported that view and took it one step further. He explained that he prefers to keep his guitar playing at the bare minimum. In his mind, knowing too much can get in the way of instinct. That idea fits The Jesus and Mary Chain’s own sound, which has always leaned into mood, noise, and emotional weight rather than polished virtuosity.

There is something refreshing about that honesty. In an era when musicians are often expected to prove themselves with complexity, the Reid brothers are arguing for restraint. They are defending the value of limitation, and that makes their comments feel less like an insult and more like a philosophy.

The Irony at the Center of the Debate

The irony is impossible to miss. Eddie Van Halen was famously self-taught. He never took a single guitar lesson and never learned to read music. Yet his instinctive approach helped define an era. Meanwhile, The Jesus and Mary Chain built their identity on pushing back against the culture of technical excess.

That contrast is what makes this story so interesting. It is not really about one guitarist versus another. It is about two different ideas of what rock music should be: precision and speed on one side, tension and feeling on the other.

And maybe that is why these arguments never end. Great musicians do more than play well. They force people to choose what they believe music is supposed to do.

 

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TWO YEARS OF CHEMOTHERAPY, RADIATION AND SURGERY COULD NOT SAVE HIM, AND TOBY KEITH DIED AT 62 ON THE NIGHT OF FEBRUARY 5, 2024 — JUST 53 DAYS AFTER HE WALKED OFF A LAS VEGAS STAGE WITH 20 NUMBER ONE HITS TO HIS NAME. On December 14, 2023, the Oklahoma giant gave what would be his final performance at Dolby Live at Park MGM. He didn’t book those shows because he was healthy again. He booked them because he refused to disappear quietly — three nights, every seat sold, the first two gone in under two minutes. He appeared too weak to stand for much of the night. The voice never wavered. Twenty-three songs. He closed with “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue,” walked off, and told fans online that three sold-out nights in Vegas was a fine way to end the year. He was already mapping out a 2024 tour. Fifty-three days later, the stomach cancer he had been fighting since the fall of 2021 took him at home, surrounded by his family. The shockwave reached far past Nashville. Clint Eastwood, then 93, said he was extremely saddened by the loss of his friend. Willie Nelson, his duet partner on the six-week No. 1 “Beer for My Horses,” posted footage of the two of them onstage and one short line of goodbye. Both men were bound to the same song. Audiences will always remember him at the People’s Choice Country Awards on September 28, 2023, visibly thinner, accepting the Country Icon Award and then singing “Don’t Let the Old Man In” — a song he had written five years earlier for an 88-year-old Eastwood, never imagining it would become his own farewell. He fully intended to tour again. But what happened backstage in Vegas, and the vote the Country Music Hall of Fame cast six weeks after he was gone, remains the deeper chapter of his final months.

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THEY HELD HIS FUNERAL IN PRIVATE. A PUBLIC SERVICE WAS PROMISED FOR LATER. WHAT SHOWED UP INSTEAD WAS A PETITION. Nineteen Top 10 country hits. Three No. 1s. “Chiseled in Stone” named CMA Song of the Year in 1989. Tammy Wynette called him “the only other singer who can hold a candle to George Jones.” Nashville called him The Voice, and nobody argued. He got there the long way. Sixth of nine children on an Alabama farm, singing on the family gospel radio show. Bluegrass in California in the 1960s, in a band that also held a young Chris Hillman. Then he quit — moved to Atlanta, ran a glass company through most of the ’70s, out of the business entirely. He was in his forties before his first Top 10 record. He was in his fifties before Nashville handed him its Song of the Year. A stroke hit him in the 1990s and he kept writing anyway. Another came in early April 2009. He died on the 28th in a Nashville hospital at 74, under hospice care — still renovating his tour bus for a June slot at CMA Fest. George Strait said Gosdin had helped him out on his very first tour. The burial at Mount Olivet was private. A public memorial was announced for a later date. What came first was a fan petition to get him into the Country Music Hall of Fame. He still isn’t in it.

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AFTER FOUR MONTHS APART, ALAN JACKSON CAME BY TO SEE HIS CHILDREN AND ASKED HIS OWN WIFE OUT ON A DATE. He and Denise had been married eighteen years by then — high school sweethearts from Newnan, Georgia, married that December of 1979, three daughters, a career she helped start when she stopped Glen Campbell in an Atlanta airport to tell him about her husband. Then it came apart. Denise wrote about all of it in her 2007 memoir, including his infidelity and the long work of forgiving it. They went to counseling. They renewed their vows on their anniversary in December 1998. Ten years after that date, on an album called Good Time, Jackson wrote a duet with Martina McBride called “Never Loved Before.” It’s fast and flirty and a little ridiculous, two people trading lines about not being able to think straight. He was forty-nine. He had loved the same woman since high school, had almost lost her, had won her back — and then he sat down and wrote the sound of falling for someone for the very first time.

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TWO YEARS OF CHEMOTHERAPY, RADIATION AND SURGERY COULD NOT SAVE HIM, AND TOBY KEITH DIED AT 62 ON THE NIGHT OF FEBRUARY 5, 2024 — JUST 53 DAYS AFTER HE WALKED OFF A LAS VEGAS STAGE WITH 20 NUMBER ONE HITS TO HIS NAME. On December 14, 2023, the Oklahoma giant gave what would be his final performance at Dolby Live at Park MGM. He didn’t book those shows because he was healthy again. He booked them because he refused to disappear quietly — three nights, every seat sold, the first two gone in under two minutes. He appeared too weak to stand for much of the night. The voice never wavered. Twenty-three songs. He closed with “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue,” walked off, and told fans online that three sold-out nights in Vegas was a fine way to end the year. He was already mapping out a 2024 tour. Fifty-three days later, the stomach cancer he had been fighting since the fall of 2021 took him at home, surrounded by his family. The shockwave reached far past Nashville. Clint Eastwood, then 93, said he was extremely saddened by the loss of his friend. Willie Nelson, his duet partner on the six-week No. 1 “Beer for My Horses,” posted footage of the two of them onstage and one short line of goodbye. Both men were bound to the same song. Audiences will always remember him at the People’s Choice Country Awards on September 28, 2023, visibly thinner, accepting the Country Icon Award and then singing “Don’t Let the Old Man In” — a song he had written five years earlier for an 88-year-old Eastwood, never imagining it would become his own farewell. He fully intended to tour again. But what happened backstage in Vegas, and the vote the Country Music Hall of Fame cast six weeks after he was gone, remains the deeper chapter of his final months.

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THEY HELD HIS FUNERAL IN PRIVATE. A PUBLIC SERVICE WAS PROMISED FOR LATER. WHAT SHOWED UP INSTEAD WAS A PETITION. Nineteen Top 10 country hits. Three No. 1s. “Chiseled in Stone” named CMA Song of the Year in 1989. Tammy Wynette called him “the only other singer who can hold a candle to George Jones.” Nashville called him The Voice, and nobody argued. He got there the long way. Sixth of nine children on an Alabama farm, singing on the family gospel radio show. Bluegrass in California in the 1960s, in a band that also held a young Chris Hillman. Then he quit — moved to Atlanta, ran a glass company through most of the ’70s, out of the business entirely. He was in his forties before his first Top 10 record. He was in his fifties before Nashville handed him its Song of the Year. A stroke hit him in the 1990s and he kept writing anyway. Another came in early April 2009. He died on the 28th in a Nashville hospital at 74, under hospice care — still renovating his tour bus for a June slot at CMA Fest. George Strait said Gosdin had helped him out on his very first tour. The burial at Mount Olivet was private. A public memorial was announced for a later date. What came first was a fan petition to get him into the Country Music Hall of Fame. He still isn’t in it.

Uncategorized

AFTER FOUR MONTHS APART, ALAN JACKSON CAME BY TO SEE HIS CHILDREN AND ASKED HIS OWN WIFE OUT ON A DATE. He and Denise had been married eighteen years by then — high school sweethearts from Newnan, Georgia, married that December of 1979, three daughters, a career she helped start when she stopped Glen Campbell in an Atlanta airport to tell him about her husband. Then it came apart. Denise wrote about all of it in her 2007 memoir, including his infidelity and the long work of forgiving it. They went to counseling. They renewed their vows on their anniversary in December 1998. Ten years after that date, on an album called Good Time, Jackson wrote a duet with Martina McBride called “Never Loved Before.” It’s fast and flirty and a little ridiculous, two people trading lines about not being able to think straight. He was forty-nine. He had loved the same woman since high school, had almost lost her, had won her back — and then he sat down and wrote the sound of falling for someone for the very first time.

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KRIS KRISTOFFERSON WROTE HUNDREDS OF SONGS. BUT ONE OF THEM NEVER REALLY LET HIM GO. Kris Kristofferson had written enough songs to fill a lifetime before most people fully understood what he was doing. He could write about love, sin, regret, freedom, loneliness, and the strange emptiness that waits after a night you barely remember. But there was one song that always felt different. When Johnny Cash recorded it in 1970, it became a defining hit and won CMA Song of the Year. People heard a lonely man walking through a Sunday morning with nothing but silence, regret, and the ordinary sounds of life happening around him. No tragedy. No dramatic collapse. Just emptiness so plain it almost hurt more. That was Kris’s gift. He understood that the saddest part of life is not always disaster. Sometimes it is waking up and realizing there is nowhere you truly need to be. And maybe that is why, whenever Kris sang it himself, the room seemed to get quieter. Because by the time Kris sang it himself, it no longer sounded like something he wrote. It sounded like something he had survived.