Wolfgang Van Halen defends Billie Ellish for not knowing Van Halen

I don't know if I would say that though, being a guitar teacher and someone in my 20s I think the music that younger kids listen to can be so varied and so all over the place that to say my generation and younger is generally uneducated on music is doing a great disservice to us

 

You can always count on at least a few members of the Hoffman Forum to get indignant when the younger generation doesn't revere the artists / albums / formats they do.

It's as predictable as it is tiring.

 

Her profession is a pop artist and pop songwriter, I certainly would argue her profession and career does not necessitate her knowing every single rock band from the 1980's that older people, and younger rock fans, are attached to

If her profession was music historian, or session guitarist, or a guitar professor at Berklee I would say to not know Van Halen would be insane. But I can't fault a 17 year old who loves to make and listen to pop music, to not know rock bands that people who listen to rock surely know

 

My mother was already pushing 50 when I was a teen, and so I knew of folks like Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Dean Martin, Louis Armstrong etc., from her. Of course Elvis. Big names that were still popular in the 70's. But folks who had been famous in the 40's-50's whose popularity was gone by the 70's I didn't know about. I loved music, but only the stuff that I thought was cool. And anything my mother liked was not cool to me. So I have no problem understanding how Ellish doesn't know VH.

 

Right?!? Even if VH is not her thing, as a musician, she never had the slightest curiosity about the guitar on Michael Jackson’s Beat It? The lack of curiosity is what disturbs me.

 

Shame on their parents...

 

Maybe she has heard Beat It but never knew the name of the guy who did the guitar solo? Or heard/liked the guitar solo but was mostly focused on the overall songwriting, lyrics writing and melody crafting?

I don't think there is anything disturbing going on here, without making wild assumptions about how she personally attaches herself to the art form that is music that we can't reasonably extrapolate other than saying she isn't a rocker

 

Seriously. One of the most annoying bands of all time. Can't wait until they're permanently forgotten.

 

True musicians are curious about others art. Granted there is more now then way back when but Van Halen’s music does get played a fair amount still...

 

Billie Ellish will be forgotten first!

 

Although to be fair to her, who is to say she isn't curious about other music, that isn't necessarily one specific band from the 1980s? Even pop music is vast in style and variety from the past few decades, and that is her genre and scene, after all

"True musicians" is dangerously close to a "No True Scotsman" fallacy. Through my looking glass - she writes and records music, she is a musician

 

I’ll give you that but exactly what has she been exposed to?

 

That is something that I don't think any of us knows. However to me that is the larger point of it all, and why I am saddened Wolfgang is even having to make a statement to try and calm the fires of older folks blasting Billie for not knowing a specific band from 30 years before she was born and not in the vast genre world of pop that she loves and makes art within

To me articles like these, exist just to stoke the fires. They knew that taking a throwaday little situational moment/joke on Jimmy Kimmel will get all the old folks with old torn up 1984 tour T-shirts to go on their computers, click the articles ,and put a 17 year old pop singer (and her generation) on blast for no real reason (not pointing that specifically at you by the way just in general)

It is much ado about nothing, designed to stoke the generational dichotomy of today

 

It sounds to me, from listening to her interviews, she is very interested in a lot of music. Just not the music everyone here seems to think she should be.

It's astounding to me that people can't see how ridiculous that is.

 

why are some people here shocked that billie doesn't know van halen who peaked before she was born, when they admit they don't know who SHE is....when she had a number one record two months ago.....come on y'all…..we're trying to shake off our dinosaur image

 

It's a pity she didn't have a boomer dad to teach her about "good" music...

 

Yet she knew of the Spice Girls who were has beens before she was even born...sad but again depends on what she is exposed to and interested in. Yes she’s only 18 but should still be a little more knowledgeable of music(which she seems to be at least in her interests) Yes time changes but the past still haunts. Ask her if she knows who The Beatles are.

 

She should meet the one who started that thread recently.

 

I gotta admit I'm a bit jealous of someone who is unaware of Van Halen.

 

To be fair though why does it matter if she knows anyone at all? I don't even care if she knows The Beatles, because people like you and me are not her demographic. To me, she likes the music she likes, creates music in that framework, and other people into that style enjoy it. To me that is the end of the story right there, anything else IMO is irrelevant

All those artists of decades gone by, considering music doesn't exist in a vacuum, are all within the music she listens to. Or the music of the musicians of the people she listens to.


It is all arbitrary sound waves, to me I am not going to need her to qualify her art with anything but the art itself

 

My dad was way into Duane Eddy, so I had that covered.

 

True but still seems a shame. Good music is good music. Her loss for missing out. Maybe she’ll hear it at some point. Yes she does not have to like it.

 

In that case, I just hope Van Halen III is not the first thing she hears from them otherwise she will run and not look back

 

You never know...

 

I dunno, while I agree with you, I get that same urpy feeling from the Van Hagar years....