The Jesus and Mary Chain's William Reid: Eddie Van Halen "ruined rock guitar" in the '80s and '90s

William Reid, guitarist of Scottish noise-pop band The Jesus and Mary Chain, has taken aim at Eddie Van Halen in a new interview with Stereogum, saying the guitarist's style "ruined" rock guitar throughout the 1980s and '90s. The comments, first reported by Far Out Magazine, have circulated widely among rock fans since.

What Reid said

Discussing the aesthetics of shoegaze guitar playing, Reid didn't hold back: "I think the worst guitar player in the world is Eddie Van Halen. He ruined rock guitar in the '80s and '90s because so many people copied him — trying to play as fast as possible, cramming as many notes into a second as they could." The remark targets the technical, virtuosic style that defined hair metal, a sharp contrast to the minimalist, noise-driven approach The Jesus and Mary Chain has built its career on.

Where that view comes from

Brothers Jim and William Reid formed The Jesus and Mary Chain in East Kilbride, Scotland, drawing on the melodic pop of The Velvet Underground, The Shangri-Las and The Monkees, then burying it under thick fuzz and feedback. Their 1985 debut album, Psychocandy, released on Blanco y Negro Records, made that deliberately rough, technically stripped-down guitar sound a signature — one fundamentally at odds with the shred culture of the MTV era.

Peter Hook as the counter-example

Reid didn't just criticize; he offered his own gold standard. He singled out Joy Division bassist Peter Hook, saying Hook's basslines are "a thousand times better than anything Eddie Van Halen could come up with," prioritizing melody and feeling over speed and technical display.

Van Halen's tapping technique undeniably shaped the guitar vocabulary of hair metal bands like Ratt, Poison and Dokken through the 1980s. Reid's comments can be read as a long-standing rebuttal from the post-punk and shoegaze camp against that era's dominant rock guitar aesthetic.