[tps_title]23. Eddie Van Halen[/tps_title]
Another trailblazing performer with an immortal, cash-gorging empire is guitar virtuoso Eddie Van Halen. After immigrating Netherlands with little money and practically no grasp of the English language, Eddie found his passion in music by training with his brother, Alex, to become trained concert pianists – at age nine. By his teen years, Eddie had taken up the guitar, which, according to Alex, he could be found playing “from the minute he wakes up ’till the minute he goes to sleep.” All that practice time paid off in spades when Eddie and Alex formed the rock band Van Halen. The bombastic, guitar-heavy quartet would go on to redefine the genre and drop the world’s first RIAA Diamond-Certified album, amassing hundreds of millions of dollars in the process.
The Van Halen empire is alive and well into 2008, with the band having just capped the highest grossing tour in their history
