Chris Cornell guitarist Pete Thorn revealed that late-Soundgarden frontman and Eddie Van Halen actually worked together on the same track. Loudwire reported that the pair had become friendly around the time Cornell was recording his 2009 solo album Scream — with Cornell asking Van Halen to play on one of the tracks. Producer Dave Friedman hooked the pair up, with Thorn recalling, “45 minutes later he texted me and said, 'Ed wants you to call him, here's his cell phone number.' So I left him a message and he called me back and said, 'Well how soon can you come up the studio and play me this stuff?' So we set up a date, I drove up the 5150 (studio) , and he was just so cool.”
Thorn went on to remember making the trek to Van Halen's studio and getting to work: “I get out of the car and there he is, and y'know, he gives me a big hug and said, 'Okay, let's go studio and take a listen. . .' I was just like, 'This is my hero,' y'know? 'This is awesome!' He took me into 5150 and he was so humble and unassuming.”
He went on to explain, “I don't want to get anyone excited about this thinking it ever got finished because it didn't, but he did work on it. I would go up there over the next couple of weeks and he had played on it and I'd be like, 'I can't believe this is happening, myself and Eddie on a track.' But it's a long story, but it never got a vocal on it by Chris. And Ed got busy doing the next Van Halen album right about then. . . it just never ended up getting finished. I heard it once, but we just never finished it. So somewhere at 5150 there's a 24-track reel with that on it, and someday I'd love to (find it).”
Slash — a close friend and longtime fan –– believes that although Eddie Van Halen has been lauded for his groundbreaking physicality — a lot of the guitarists that followed in his wake, failed to pick up on the subtleties that made him so unique: “I don't think anybody's had as much an influence. Every kid on the block was learning Van Halen licks. In between all the technical prowess that Eddie had, there was a killer blues thing. Everybody that emulated it, nobody ever got that part. They had the hammer-ons, they had the tremelo bar stuff, and all that kind of crap — but they never got the most important was all the really tasty stuff that was in-between. And just, like, the melodic stuff where all the soul was coming from.”