Dweezil Zappa and the story about Eddie Van Halen

"Eddie Van Halen came to my soundcheck when I was playing Running With The Devil with my 12-year-old friends," says Dweezil Zappa.

This is yet another story from Gibson TV's The Collection series. The way Dweezil Zappa ended up with Eddie Van Halen's Kramer guitar is my favourite so far. It's one incredible story among many he has, and it's definitely worth watching. In this episode we see how 12-year-old Dweezil ended up getting a guitar from Eddie in 1982. Along with it, a lesson on 'Runnin With The Devil' too.

"Without even saying 'Hi, how are you?' to him, I said, 'Okay, play Eruption.' That was an amazing moment."

"It's pretty crazy," says Dweezil. "I was 12 years old and had been playing guitar for seven, eight, nine months at most, I don't remember exactly. But all I listened to was Fair Warning and Van Halen I. I'd put them on repeat, one after the other. We also listened to some Ozzy Osbourne with Randy Rhoads, like Diary Of A Madman and stuff like that.

But one day, out of nowhere, the phone rang. My mom picked it up. She just told us it was some guy claiming to be Eddie Van Halen. My dad ends up on the phone and they talk for a few minutes. After 15 minutes he shows up at the house and there's some kind of lighting at the bottom of the stairs, so he's lit up and he's coming up! He brings a guitar with him. For me it was like a fog machine kicking in and Mean Streets already playing.

So, he goes up the stairs and it turns out he's in the mindset of Women And Children First. He's got a Kramer guitar. This is before he endorsed the company, so there's a piece of tape over the logo on the headstock. And it's a purple guitar with two humbuckers. Without even saying "Hi, how are you?" to him, I said, "Okay, play Eruption." That was an amazing moment.

"There was no way I could ever forget what he played."

"Here was this guy I had listened to so much and never seen up close, and when you see how someone actually does what they do. Where they play it, what strings they play on, it burned itself into my mind. That's when I could never forget exactly what he played. That was the coolest experience until the next coolest experience, which came a few weeks later…

"Eddie Van Halen came to my soundcheck when I played Running With The Devil with my 12-year-old friends."

"At first, when I was 12, I was playing in a talent show at my school," Dweezil recalls. "I don't know exactly how it happened, but Eddie came to my soundcheck. I'm not playing wrong, but my guitar isn't in tune.

"So Ed drives home, comes back with his guitar, which originally was cream with orange lightning. He brings the guitar up behind me and says, 'You're playing it wrong.' He stands behind me, counts it in with the kids, and does the pick slide through the whole song. It was the craziest experience. And this is before MTV. You'd never know what rock stars looked like or sounded like unless you met them. You'd only have photos in a magazine or whatever was on the album.

"After the show, the next day, I called him and thanked him."

"I asked him if he wanted to come and get his guitar back. [Eddie said] 'Oh no, you can keep that guitar.' So that's what happened. I kept it and painted it as a tribute, in the style his own guitars were painted. This happened when I was 13 years old."

"Anyway, it's a big part of my youth and it always reminds me of the excitement of playing guitar."

Besides the generosity Eddie showed him as a kid, Dweezil also shares an emotional memory of the former legend in the video above. He was the first person to call when Dweezil's father, Frank Zappa, died in 1993.

"When you have friends who step up and do something for you, it matters," says Dweezil. "But it was unexpected that he would be the first to call me."