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Eddie Van Halen played on Michael Jackson's
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Eddie Van Halen performing "Beat It" live with Michael Jackson.
Put this in the category of "this will never happen again in our lifetime," but I was amazed to find that Eddie Van Halen recorded the solo for Michael Jackson's "Beat It" for free. The solo is a perfect example of the amazing nuance Van Halen can bring to a guitar part with what was, at that time, groundbreaking technique.
Steve Lukather (Toto, Boz Scaggs), a phenomenal guitarist in his own right, shared some great information about his and Van Halen's contributions to "Beat It."
From SteveLukather.net:
Rock guitarist Eddie Van Halen was interviewed by Rolling Stone magazine in 1984. In the interview, he explained why he didn't ask for any royalties over the sales of Beat it, the song on which he plays a guitar solo. "I did it as a favor. I didn't want anything. Maybe Michael will give me dance lessons someday. I was a complete fool, according to the rest of the band [Van Halen], our manager and everybody else. I was not used. I knew what I was doing. I don't do something unless I want to do it."
Steve Lukather: "Quincy Jones and Michael took a skeleton version of Beat it up to Eddie Van Halen's place as they wanted him to solo over the verse section. However, he played over a section that had more chord changes. So to fit his solo to where it went in the song, they had to cut the tape which took a lot of time to synchronise together."
"After they had managed this, Jeff Porcaro and me were called in to bind Eddie's solo and some haphazard percussion which was a major headache. Initially, we rocked it out as Eddie had played a good solo but Quincy thought it too tough. So I had to reduce the distorted guitar sound and this is what was released. It was a huge R&B/rock success for us all really and helped pave the way for the bands of today that fuse these styles."
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