Sometimes it’s nice to hear a hugely-familiar piece of music in a totally new way, and this Rhythm Scholar-produced remix of Runnin’ With The Devil, track one on side one of Van Halen’s astonishing self-titled debut album, certainly offers a fresh spin on the much-loved song.
Opening with a sample of John Cusack’s record shop-owning nerd Rob Gordon from High Fidelity, and apparently “designed to rock you to hell and back!”, this imaginative six-minute reworking of Van Halen’s 1978 classic has been “rebuilt from the ground up”, with breakbeats, samples from Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Grand Funk Railroad, James Brown, Yes, Donna Summer, Kool & The Gang and the Rolling Stones, and - heresy! - additional guitar supplied by Finnish guitarist Sami Turunen. Purists, naturally, will be outraged, but we’re kinda loving it.
And given that the late, great Eddie Van Halen once said that the best piece of advice he could offer any aspiring musician was “There are no rules. You have 12 fucking notes… do whatever you want with them” he might just have approved too.
