Eddie Van Halen Is Guitar World's June 2015 Cover Star

We figured you wouldn't mind a sneak preview of the next Guitar World cover! For the June 2015 issue, guitar legend Eddie Van Halen is back, making his first cover appearance since the February 2014 issue. In our new exclusive interview by Chris Gill, the guitarist chronicles the making of Tokyo Dome Live in Concert, Van Halen’s first official live record with David Lee Roth. He also discusses his super-secret new guitar amp and EVH Gear's mysterious Star Guitar, the latest addition to the company's ultra-cool Stripe Series. Here's a taste! What was the motivation for releasing a live album at this point in Van Halen’s career? We realized that we have never made a live album with Dave. Since we had already released a studio album with Wolfgang playing on it, it also made sense for us to do a live album with both Wolf and Dave. Another reason why we put out a live record was to give people the experience of hearing us play our classic songs live. Did you record any other shows or just the Tokyo show? We have a Pro Tools rig out by the front of the house and have recorded every show since the beginning of the 2007 tour when Dave first got back in the band. But we never originally intended to put out a live record. We just recorded our shows to archive them. We have so much material that it was too overwhelming to listen to about 150 shows and pick the best one. I didn’t even bother listening to any of the past shows, outside of a few jams here and there. We played pretty much the same set every night, although we changed a few songs here and there. We played the classics. That’s what people want to hear. Because the performances by Alex, Wolfgang and myself were pretty consistent from one night to the next, we decided to leave it up to Dave to pick, and he happened to pick Tokyo. Performing live is a lot harder on a singer. Wolfgang and I sing backup vocals on the choruses, so we know how much the vocals can vary from one night to the next. When your voice is your instrument, you can be affected by a lot of different things. If you sleep with the air conditioner on or the bus ride is too long, you can wake up the next day with a fucked up voice. That’s the main reason we decided to let Dave pick. The June 2015 issue of Guitar World will be available April 28.