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In one of the great “what ifs” of movie soundtrack history, Eddie Van Halen almost appeared on the soundtrack for a movie in the John Wick franchise, which you can watch with a Peacock Subscription. According to the franchise’s chief composer, Tyler Bates, the two discussed the opportunity shortly before the legendary guitarist’s death in 2020. As a huge fan of both Van Halen and the John Wick movies, this makes me doubly sad. My imagination is running wild.
Tyler Bates And Eddie Van Halen Became Good Friends
Bates, in an interview with Screenrant, explained that toward the end of Van Halen’s life, the two musicians spoke often, and eventually Van Halen went by Bates’ house for a hang session, and to possibly discuss adding Van Halen to the soundtrack, saying,
He came over to my place. It was really sweet of him to come over, and he hung out for a while, but I got the sense he was not in the mindset that he really wanted to do anything. He said he hadn’t played for quite a while.
The two spoke on the phone a few times, and at one point, Bates made another plea to coax Van Halen to make a contribution,
Anyway, he called me a number of times and I just said, ‘Look, Ed, you live 10 minutes from me. If you want to do this, I’ll set up a guitar for you, and if you don’t like what we do, I’ll just destroy it in front of you.’
Sadly, as Bates then pointed out, that was the end of the discussions about Van Halen playing on the soundtrack, as he stated,
From that point on, the only times we were talking were about his health battles and stuff.
It’s such a tantalizing idea, one of the greatest guitar players ever playing on a John Wick soundtrack, and it’s a real shame it never happened, but for completely understandable reasons.
It Likely Would Have Been One Of Eddie Van Halen’s Final Recordings
Though Bates is unclear which soundtrack it would have been on, saying it would have been for either Chapter 2 or Chapter 3 – Parabellum, either way, it likely would have been one of the musical legend’s final recordings. The last Van Halen album was released in 2012, the band’s last tour ended in 2015, and the last known recording of the guitarist, called simply “Unfinished,” was released with the audiobook of Alex Van Halen’s (Eddie’s brother) autobiography, in 2024, but when it was recorded is unknown.
From the sound of it, these conversations were going on around the release of the second and third movies of the mind-blowing franchise, placing it sometime between 2017 and 2019. Van Halen spent the last few years of his life battling cancer and other health problems prior to dying in October ‘20 from a stroke. It was a death that devastated the rock world, including me as a fan of the band.
While we patiently wait for more news on the upcoming John Wick 5, we can dream about what nearly was had Eddie Van Halen left us all with one more magical moment.
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