-Michael Roffman, Editor-in-Chief

The calling card instrumental of the definitive tastemaker of 80′s hard rock guitar, “Eruption” is a minute-and-a-half of Eddie Van Halen doing his worst to abuse the guitar with mostly unprecedented technique. And on thousands of copies of Van Halen I, there’s a little nick in the vinyl right at 1:03 into “Eruption”. It’s a good solo–it’s got a good sense of build, and Van Halen keeps pulling new tricks out of his bag about every thirty seconds–but back to that nick. Scarred by hundreds of repeated needle-drops, 1:03 marks the spot where Eddie just gets too fast, making millions of bedroom-bound teens go “WTF?!”

The technique responsible is called “tapping”–and depending on who you asked, it was either the scourge of the Eighties or the greatest thing since sliced bread. By shifting his grip on his guitar pick, Van Halen freed up his right-hand index finger to sound notes by slamming against the fretboard, resulting in silky-smooth, otherwise impossible to reach arpeggios. By 1984, the floodgates unceremoniously kicked open by the band’s heavy-rotation video for “Jump”, just about every rock guitarist worth his salt (or not) had worked tapped arpeggios into his repertoire–often ill-advisedly. It didn’t take a genius to see “Eruption” as the cornerstone of tapping’s Spandex Age; but thirty years later, a far-flung selection of buzzworthy artists’ careers would hinge on the technique, from right-brained mathcore bands to girl-powered acoustic indie rock.

But let’s rewind several hundred years for a moment. Although credited by many as the “inventor” of the two-hands-on-the-fretboard technique, even Van Halen’s swollen ego wouldn’t allow him to take top honors, claiming to be inspired by Jimmy Page’s solo on “Heartbreaker” from Led Zeppelin II (which did not feature tapping). However, a variant of the tapping technique had been used as far back as the early 19th century by Italian violin virtuoso/composer Nicolo Paganini, who worked a stunning psuedo-tapping pizzicato technique into his 24th Caprice, a technical watershed that’s pretty much the “Eruption” of the classical violin world. In the 1950′s, jazz guitarist Jimmie Webster published a book called The Touch System for Electric and Amplified Spanish Guitar. The book didn’t exactly fly off shelves–but the technique, which was Webster’s attempt to play piano music on guitar, didn’t go unnoticed.

Along with 60′s jazz greats like Barney Kessel, one player who picked up on Webster’s technique (whether under his instruction or not) was Genesis’s Steve Hackett (side right). His two-handed solos on classic tracks like “Dancing with the Moonlit Knight” and ”Firth of Fifth” predate Van Halen’s work by nearly a decade, and lack for nothing in terms of complexity and speed. However, Hackett’s solos had a tendency to get lost in side-long mega epics, like the jaw-dropping guitar/organ tandem tap solo on “Supper’s Ready” which lives a mayfly’s life about a third of the way into the twenty-minute prog marathon.

And while thousands of tapping solos, from the awful to the sublime, glutted 80′s radio waves, the early-90′s alternative underground waited sulking in the wings. Strangely enough, in 1992, the year when Nirvana’s Nevermind made hair-metal irrelevant, that tapping went from being a center-stage showstopper to a deepest underground cult phenomenon. Chiefly responsible for tapping’s secret life, Don Caballero’s Ian Williams (now of Battles fame) crafted huge walls of sound using both hands and a loop pedal–a technique as ubiquitous and played-out amongst indie-folksters and post-rockers as Van Halen’s tapping was in the white-sneakers-and-Aqua-Net set, as evidenced by the steady spread of tapping techniques throughout the math-rock elite.

Radiating from Don Cab’s home in Chicago to Milwaukee’s jazzy Pele, eventually reaching Seattle-based quintet Minus the Bear by the early 00′s, the technique eventually became so widespread in the insular circles of math-rock that bands like Hella and, to an even greater extent, Chicago’s own Maps & Atlases, made tapping the foundation of their songwriting. But where infinite sustain and ear-splitting distortion had been the hallmarks of 80′s metal’s take on tapping, these below-the-radar pioneers relied on a clean, compressed sound, usually swathed in rhythmic echoes, a la U2′s The Edge–a fitting move, considering the technique’s sordid history.

Perhaps “Eruption”‘s most interesting reflection is in the wave of female guitar players staking their claim to tapping mastery. In a sort of “reclaiming” of the macho spitting-contest attitude towards technique in the 80′s, indie shredders like the mostly-instrumental Kaki King and Pitchfork favorite Marnie Stern have been tapping their hearts out since the early 00′s, putting most of the boys to shame in the process. And these aren’t your Jennifer Battens, with the imitative Spandex tomboy mega-hairdos and Marshall stacks–no, it’s a whole new ball game. No balls involved, in fact–just finger-twisting riffs, guttural slap bass attack, and scintillating tapped arpeggios. In a slice of irony worthy of Voltaire, the very same “Pretty Women” who Van Halen famously objectified in the 1982 banned-by-MTV video for a Roy Orbison cover are giving Van Halen a taste of his own tapping medicine twenty years later. Better late than never.

Tapping’s cyclical history will doubtless continue–its more headbanging incarnations are beginning to crawl out from the shadows again. Mostly under the aegis of sped-up metal shamsters Dragonforce, 14-year-olds and World of Warcraft players everywhere are getting a second helping of recycled tap-wankery. It’s doubtful that any instance of the technique will be as universally influential as ”Eruption”–which even reached people who hated (and maybe even some who had never heard) Van Halen. But it will doubtless survive, just as it has, surreptitiously morphing between cock-rocking caprices, bebop slight-of-hand, progressive bombast, and superhip feminist jams. And just like the 24th Caprice and “Eruption”, some new song will come along and redefine the technique for the next hundred years–as long as stringed instruments are still played (call me in 2109), someone will be tapping. And some douche in the front row is going to thrust up his wiggling fingers in adulation and spill your beer. Or whatever they drink at shows in the 22nd century.

Check Out: