Grammy Producer Believes EVH Tribute Was Fine

The producer of the Grammy Awards telecast weighs in on the negative reaction fans had to the lousy 15 second "trbute" to Eddie Van Halen. Ben Winston did an interview with Variety about the matter and Blabbermouth shares a section:

Ben said: "We had a call with Wolfgang before the show, and I asked him if he'd be willing to come on and play. He felt he didn't really want to do that, and I offered up eight or nine guitarists who maybe could. But instead, he felt like we should play a video of Eddie himself, because nobody could play like him, so that's what we did."

He continued: "I would have loved for it to be longer than it was, but Eddie was the only person in the whole 'In Memoriam' to play their own music, with no other faces being seen. I felt that was an appropriate tribute to him, but if Wolfgang didn't, I'm sorry about that, of course.

"It's such a horrific thing to lose a parent. We did the best that we felt we could."

This seems exceptionally lame to me and I understand why Wolfie is upset. Just another sad day in the mainstream music world I guess.

GRAMMY Producer Defends EDDIE VAN HALEN Tribute At This Year's Event https://t.co/izHWMUovep pic.twitter.com/rYtN4D8fgo

— BLABBERMOUTH.NET (@BLABBERMOUTHNET) March 19, 2021

Comments

[Gary]

Translation: Wolfie turned us down, so we basically took our guitars and went home.

Besides, it gave us an out to devote more time to John Prine, the man,the myth,the legend. There were tens of people who had Prine posters on their walls during the 80’s, back when he was selling dozens of albums a month and selling out phone booths and confessional boxes nationwide on his “The Maytag Repairman Actually Feels Sorry For Me” tour.

[Kixchix]

Who watches “award” shows anymore. If they’re insignificant; in my opinion they are, why make such hullabaloo about this? I get the influencers in our genre.... (cough cough) Ed Trunk get more “followers” by all the ranting which in turn gets Ed more gigs so he can payoff his 3rd home in Vegas. I love the capitalism here. Not jelly one iota. But peeps, who gives a f***!!!! The music biz is still after all BIZ. There’s still plenty of moolah being passed around which is generated by YOU. Ain’t America AWESOME? It certainly is.

I love EVH. I KNOW he is in rarified air in all of musicians in the last 40 years. Wolf, Sammy, Dave, Satch are all with us and making many happy. Without EVH we would not have those folks in the same capacity we do NOW. Which after all is all that matters....now.

Enjoy your day my bbg buds