Eddie Van Halen

A recent discovery and available to the market for the very first time, this unique ‘Cat’ guitar is an emblem of Eddie Van Halen’s adaptability and creativity, among his greatest strengths as a guitarist.

Eddie is rightly championed as one of the most gifted guitarists in rock history: not just for his technical skill and emphatic style, but also for his dedicated innovation, modification, and experimentation with his guitars. From his first guitar (a Teisco del Rey) in the early 1970s to the famous Frankestrat and beyond, Eddie was constantly exploring ways to improve his guitars, from the electrics to their visual design.

The present custom guitar was gifted to Eddie in July 1981, and exhibits his modifications including criss-crossing electrical tape in the iconic ‘Frankenstein’ style.

The origins of this guitar can be traced back to John ‘The Cat’ Gatto, guitarist of Long Island rock outfit, The Good Rats. Contemporaries of Van Halen, The Good Rats had received critical acclaim and popularity with their second album, ‘Tasty’ (1974), and went on to open for bands such as Rush and Journey.

By the mid-1970s, John was established as The Good Rats’ guitarist and began collaborating with a luthier based in Fontana, CA to develop custom electric guitars for him. He wanted the body to have a distinctive cat-shaped silhouette, a playful reference to his band and his surname Gatto (‘cat’ in Italian). Even the headstock has pointed cat ears. A variety of different woods and finishes for the body were explored including zebrawood, mahogany, and (in this case) maple.

Dating to around 1980, the present guitar was a prototype with red finish, part of the ongoing development of an advanced ‘super-cat’ model. It is also the only known example with a mirrored-finish pickguard. The pickups were also dipped in wax, a technique which Eddie himself went on to try on his own axes. Although ‘The Cat’ was intended to be produced commercially this never became a reality, making this guitar a highly rare and curious model in its own right.

What transformed the history of this guitar is the meeting between Eddie Van Halen and John Gatto on the 18th July 1981. As fellow Warner Records artists, The Good Rats’ PR contact proposed that they meet shortly before Van Halen played at the nearby Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, NY, during their ‘Fair Warning’ tour. Already aware of Eddie’s own penchant for guitar customisation (including his Ibanez ‘Shark’ Destroyer and ‘Dragon Snake’ guitars), Gatto decided to bring this guitar as a gift, from one aspiring guitar innovator and another. According to Gatto, Eddie questioned why he would gift him a guitar, saying “no-one has ever done this to me before”.

Once it had been given to Eddie, it was unknown what had become of ‘The Cat’ for the next four decades. Gatto himself had no expectations as to its fate, so was surprised and intrigued – along with the rest of the Van Halen and guitar communities – to see a re-surfaced photograph of Eddie Van Halen on stage, believed to be at the Riverside Centroplex at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on the 6th September 1981. He recognised the guitar immediately as the one he had gifted to Eddie two months earlier, and in that time Eddie had applied black electrical tape all across the body in the instantly recognisable ‘Frankenstein’ style for which he is so well known.

Another image is known of Eddie playing ‘The Cat’ beside David Lee Roth, presumably at the same ‘Fair Warning’ concert. The guitar was given to a relative a decade later who later traded it with the current owner who has been its custodian for over 30 years.

This is a highly unusual guitar from what was arguably Eddie Van Halen’s most experimental guitar era. It has the rare accolade of being owned, personally hand-finished, stage-played, and signed by the rock legend, and a recently re-discovered axe from the ‘Fairy Warning’ era of Van Halen.