Van Halen

Two Dutch-born brothers in Pasadena, one of whom had been delivering newspapers to pay off a drum kit before his brother took the drums and handed him the guitar instead. Eddie and Alex Van Halen cycled through band names through the late sixties and early seventies — the Broken Combs, the Trojan Rubber Co, Genesis, Mammoth — and rented a sound system for ten dollars a night from a local singer named David Lee Roth, whom they eventually invited to join partly to stop paying him. With Michael Anthony on bass, they became Van Halen in 1974. The debut album arrived in February 1978 carrying Eruption, and the question of what a rock guitar could physically do had to be reopened.

Twelve studio albums followed. 1984 produced Jump, their only American No. 1 single, and put a synthesizer at the center of a hard rock record without apology. Roth left in 1985; Sammy Hagar replaced him, and four consecutive albums went to No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Gary Cherone sang on one record in 1998, Roth returned in 2006, and Eddie's son Wolfgang took over on bass. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted them in March 2007. They have sold more than eighty million records worldwide, with the debut certified diamond in the United States. Eddie Van Halen died on October 6, 2020, and the band ended with him.