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Yesterday, Wolfgang Van Halen, the son of legendary guitarist and rocker Eddie, confirmed his father’s death via social media.

The 65-year-old lost his lengthy battle with cancer, and tributes poured in from fans across the globe.

Eddie’s death has led to many trips down memory lane, and one of those entails a look back at how the guitarist came to jam one of the most famous cameos in rock history.

In 1982, van Halen received a call from Quincy Jones, although he wasn’t very receptive at first, largely because he thought he was the victim of a practical joke.

AP News below:

…he had to be sure the phone call from producer Quincy Jones wasn’t a practical joke.

“I went off on him. I went, ‘What do you want, you f-ing so-and-so!,’” Van Halen told CNN in 2012, 30 years after he worked on the song. “And he goes, ‘Is this Eddie?’ I said, ‘Yeah, what the hell do you want?’ ‘This is Quincy.’ I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t know anyone named Quincy.’ He goes, ‘Quincy Jones, man.’ I went, ‘Ohhh, sorry!’”

Happens to the best of us.

Jones asked if Eddie wanted to play the guitar break on Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’, and after less than an hour in the studio, the deed was done.

‘Beat It’ went on to become one of the signature tracks on Jackson’s album, ‘Thriller’, which won Grammys in 1984 for record of the year and male rock vocal performance.

The guitar god did take a little convincing, though:

Van Halen himself would admit he was initially skeptical of contributing to Jackson’s album, wondering how much he had in common with a singer he remembered for chanting “A-B-C, easy as 1-2-3.” But Jackson had written “Beat It” as a rock song, anchored by a hard and funky ruff by guitarist Steve Lukather.

When Van Halen arrived at the studio in Los Angeles, Jones told him he could improvise. Van Halen listened to “Beat It,” asked if he could rearrange the song and added a pair of solos during which, engineers would long swear, a speaker caught on fire.

Later, Jackson would walk into the studio and say Eddie’s rearrangements made the song better.

Listen from the 3:10 mark below for some mind-bending guitar skills:

When the pair jammed live, Michael was clearly a fan:

Finally, this little anecdote is great:

 After the record’s release, Van Halen would remember shopping in a Tower Records while “Beat It” was playing on the sound system.

“The solo comes on, and I hear these kids in front of me going, ‘Listen to this guy trying to sound like Eddie Van Halen,’” he said. “I tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘That IS me!’ That was hilarious.”

How very rock ‘n roll.

[source:apnews]