Nancy Wilson has released an extended version of her tribute to Eddie Van Halen, 4 Edward, entitled 4 Edward With Love.
The original track – which is taken from the Heart guitarist's debut solo album, You and Me – sees Wilson pay homage to the late guitar legend with a mostly original acoustic number which takes inspiration from Van Halen's 1983 mega-hit, Jump.
Arriving yesterday (October 4) – just two days before the one-year anniversary of Eddie Van Halen's death – Wilson's new version runs 40 seconds longer than the original, and features a number of fresh unplugged riffs.
“I created the extended version of 4 Edward called 4 Edward With Love as a remembrance of the anniversary of Eddie's departure,” Wilson says. “Also, there was a general outcry that 4 Edward was too short, and so I had a good excuse to record a new version and a new video to accompany it, once again starring [Wilson's French Bulldog] Lucy the Wonderdog”
“We were actually on the road with those guys a couple of times, and they were just wild men,” Wilson reminisced in a recent Guitar World interview. “They were the wildest partiers I'd ever seen.
“But Eddie actually complimented me on my acoustic playing and I said, ‘Oh, coming from you, that's everything.’ And I asked him, ‘Why don't you play more acoustic yourself?’ And he goes, ‘Well, you know, I don't really have one.’ I told him, ‘I'm giving you this one right now!’ I think we were backstage and I said, ‘Give that man a guitar!’
”So then at the crack of dawn the next morning, the phone in my hotel room rings, and it’s Eddie. It was obvious he had been up all night and he said, 'Listen.' And I listened to him play this gorgeous acoustic instrumental piece that started sort of classical, had a lot of fiery kind of stuff in the middle, and then kind of finished up with a beautiful major chord thing.
“So when he left us recently, I thought, Okay… I'm recording… I should do an instrumental… I should dedicate it to Eddie.”
“I like how it turned out,” she concludes. “I basically wrote it in my mind while I was falling asleep, and then when I woke up I laid there and pictured it and listened to it in my head.
“Then I went back to my phone and I found a little bit that I came up with a long time ago, [which] once in a while I would add to Silver Wheels when we played Crazy On You live, just as an extra bit I could toss in there.”
Nancy Wilson's debut solo album You and Me is out now via Carry On Music.
