Eddie Van Halen Once Played “Jump” Out Of Tune On Accident

When people talk of Eddie Van Halen they’re talking about a musician and performer that was almost always at the top of his game. I’ll be honest that when I saw them live with Sammy again back in 2004 Eddie was definitely enjoying his wine that day, at least during the pre-show soundcheck I saw. But later that night during the actual concert he was on fire.

So when I read just recently that Eddie had accidentally played “Jump” out of tune during a show I was kinda shocked. The story comes to us from Eddie’s long time guitar tech, Tom Weber, who said Eddie had been banging the neck of his guitar on the stage and knocked it out of tune. Since only Eddie and, at this time his son Wolfgang, were the only ones playing in a certain key, Wolfie tuned his bass down to match his dads for that song, which was right before their break at the end of the show just prior to the encore. Now when they went back on for the encore Eddie refused a new guitar from Tom. Since the keyboard parts were played through a backing tape at this time, they were in their original key. But both Eddie and Wolfie had their same instruments that were still out of tune. And you can totally tell too. And since Ed never had the keyboards in his monitor mix HE COULDN’T HEAR THAT HE WAS OUT OF TUNE! In fact he didn’t even believe that it happened until he saw a video later on and was surprised to say the least. You can read more on the story here or just watch the interview in the podcast below.

Check out the video podcast where Tom tells the story for the first time.

And here’s the video from that concert where you can hear the completely out of tune song.

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