Eddie Van Halen's Early "Guitar Player" Interviews in HD Audio

Jas O

Jas O

Active member
Hello Everyone! Today I discovered this forum, thanks to a comment posted on YouTube. I have just become a member to share some info VH fans might find interesting:

During my twenty years as an Editor for Guitar Player magazine, I was lucky to do many interviews with Eddie. These included the one we did alongside a basketball court at the 1978 Day on the Green Concert (what he referred to as "my first interview"), as well as the ones from 1979 and 1980 that were used for his first-ever cover story, published in the April 1980 Guitar Player. I have recently posted the complete HD audio for these interviews on YouTube. You can hear Eddie talk about his guitars, amps, and effects in his own voice. Here's the link:

Talking Guitar: Jas Obrecht's Music Magazine

Also, I have launched an online music magazine with dozens of interviews and articles with dozens of other guitarists I've covered. Here's the link for that: Talking Guitar

Thanks!
 
Jas O said:
Hello Everyone! Today I discovered this forum, thanks to a comment posted on YouTube. I have just become a member to share some info VH fans might find interesting:

During my twenty years as an Editor for Guitar Player magazine, I was lucky to do many interviews with Eddie. These included the one we did alongside a basketball court at the 1978 Day on the Green Concert (what he referred to as "my first interview"), as well as the ones from 1979 and 1980 that were used for his first-ever cover story, published in the April 1980 Guitar Player. I have recently posted the complete HD audio for these interviews on YouTube. You can hear Eddie talk about his guitars, amps, and effects in his own voice. Here's the link:

Talking Guitar: Jas Obrecht's Music Magazine

Also, I have launched an online music magazine with dozens of interviews and articles with dozens of other guitarists I've covered. Here's the link for that: Talking Guitar

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Welcome!
Awesome to get your contributions directly; many of us of course hold EVH as the reason we picked up the instrument.
 
Thanks Jas for coming in here and welcome :cheers:

I did a search on Jas Obrecht and you are the real deal. Therefore, I will subscribe to your substack page. If you don't mind, I'm going to add this thread to my VH tribute thread:

https://www.rig-talk.com/forum/threads/van-halen.247213/
Please feel free to hang out and provide other life experience nuggets :yes:

Lastly, out of curiosity, what kind of copyright or legal hurdles to you have to go through to repost these interviews? I see you have a quite a few. I guess I assumed they would belong to GuitarPlayer (someone else).

Thanks again,
 
311splawndude said:
Thanks Jas for coming in here and welcome :cheers:

I did a search on Jas Obrecht and you are the real deal. Therefore, I will subscribe to your substack page. If you don't mind, I'm going to add this thread to my VH tribute thread:

https://www.rig-talk.com/forum/threads/van-halen.247213/
Please feel free to hang out and provide other life experience nuggets :yes:

Lastly, out of curiosity, what kind of copyright or legal hurdles to you have to go through to repost these interviews? I see you have a quite a few. I guess I assumed they would belong to GuitarPlayer (someone else).

Thanks again,
Click to expand...
The copyright issues concerned me as well. Over the years, four different sets of intellectual property attorneys confirmed that I have the legal right to publish the audio and to re-use the interviews in print, as long as I write new introductions. A magazine, it turns out, cannot claim the copyright on anything an artist says. I revisited the issue again when I did the Talking Guitar book of interviews for UNC Press a few years ago, and got the clearance to include a CD with snippets of the conversations. It's interesting: Every time I spoke with an I.P. attorney about the status of my interviews, they always asked these two questions first: 1) Who possesses the tapes. 2) Did you ever sign a writer's agreement with the magazine assigning them the rights. My answers: 1) me, from day 1. And 2) nope, never. That gave me the green light. Oddly enough, when I got to Guitar Player, they told me to re-use the same tape over and over. In other words, tape over Eddie's first interview with another conversation, and so on. My first day there, I thought, "This is crazy! These are important and unique historical documents." I went in knowing the value of the interviews. So I went right out and bought my first case of high-quality cassettes. The legal teams loved hearing this! And thanks for the kind words!
 
Jas and Edward .



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Jas O said:
The copyright issues concerned me as well. Over the years, four different sets of intellectual property attorneys confirmed that I have the legal right to publish the audio and to re-use the interviews in print, as long as I write new introductions. A magazine, it turns out, cannot claim the copyright on anything an artist says. I revisited the issue again when I did the Talking Guitar book of interviews for UNC Press a few years ago, and got the clearance to include a CD with snippets of the conversations. It's interesting: Every time I spoke with an I.P. attorney about the status of my interviews, they always asked these two questions first: 1) Who possesses the tapes. 2) Did you ever sign a writer's agreement with the magazine assigning them the rights. My answers: 1) me, from day 1. And 2) nope, never. That gave me the green light. Oddly enough, when I got to Guitar Player, they told me to re-use the same tape over and over. In other words, tape over Eddie's first interview with another conversation, and so on. My first day there, I thought, "This is crazy! These are important and unique historical documents." I went in knowing the value of the interviews. So I went right out and bought my first case of high-quality cassettes. The legal teams loved hearing this! And thanks for the kind words!
Click to expand...

That is very interesting indeed. Something I would not have guessed. Surprised GP didn't make you sign those over. So you did the interviews before going to GP, and then once there they suggested taping over? That's crazy. Did I hear you right? What was the benefit there? I thought you were saying, and maybe your were, that you would just retape a new introduction at the beginning of the original interview thus, making it appear as if you were doing it under GP (but then they didn't want a writers agreement?) Strange. I hope I read that right. All to your benefit though :lol:


PS: I would not have a guitar and amp if were not for EVH thus I wouldn't be here either so I blame all of this on him :D
 
311splawndude said:
That is very interesting indeed. Something I would not have guessed. Surprised GP didn't make you sign those over. So you did the interviews before going to GP, and then once there they suggested taping over? That's crazy. Did I hear you right? What was the benefit there? I thought you were saying, and maybe your were, that you would just retape a new introduction at the beginning of the original interview thus, making it appear as if you were doing it under GP (but then they didn't want a writers agreement?) Strange. I hope I read that right. All to your benefit though :LOL:


PS: I would not have a guitar and amp if were not for EVH thus I wouldn't be here either so I blame all of this on him :D
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No, I did the interviews while I was on staff. I was hired in May 1978, and a few weeks later Eddie asked me to interview him. I tell the story in the beginning of this video:

Eddie Van Halen: "My First Interview" (Complete, HD Audio)
 
Welcome Jas! You and Brad were my magazine guiding lights for many many years! Edit - I'm getting my Guitar World mixed up with my Guitar Player! doh!
 
Great to have you here Jas! So much of my youth was spent pouring over your interviews. Great work you’ve done.

I linked your 79 and 80 interviews with Ed here over the past few weeks.

Your Jerry Garcia interview where you can hear him snortin blow while answering your questions was interesting to say the least.
😎😎😎😎😎
 
gtrwun said:
Great to have you here Jas! So much of my youth was spent pouring over your interviews. Great work you’ve done.

I linked your 79 and 80 interviews with Ed here over the past few weeks.

Your Jerry Garcia interview where you can hear him snortin blow while answering your questions was interesting to say the least.
Click to expand...
 
your interview of EVH was instrumental to my understanding of one of my biggest influences, unraveling the genesis of his style and what made his brain tick. the roy clark cover issue was his first GP interview if i’m not mistaken…?

i posted this humble offering many moons ago in honour of the work you did bringing our hero Eddie to life on those pages as well as the many other great interviews you wrote:



🙏🙏🙏🤙🏽
 
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