On October 23rd, Heart legend Nancy Wilson will issue a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising,” the advance single from her forthcoming first solo album. She spoke with author and BraveWords scribe Martin Popoff a few days back and we will be posting the full feature on that day. Here’s an advance snippet from the interview, addressing the passing of Eddie Van Halen four days ago.

We just lost Eddie Van Halen. What do you think Eddie should be remembered for?

“Oh my God. Well, he scared the hell out of every other guitar player on earth," Wilson tells BraveWords. "And he was such an innovator. He invented a whole language of guitar playing, for everyone to try, never to be able to imitate. But also, I feel really honoured that I was able to know him. He was such a sweetheart, and I was able to gift him his first acoustic guitar. I go, ‘What do you mean, you’ve never played acoustic much?’ And he says, ‘Well, I don’t really have one.’ I go, ‘Oh, you have to have an acoustic guitar.’ So I got one of my guitars and I just handed it over to him and said, ‘Now you have an acoustic guitar.’ So early, early the next morning, as the dawn was breaking, and this was, you know, in the ‘80s, my phone in my hotel room rang, and it was Eddie, who called my room. He’d been up all night, partying of course, and he was like, ‘You gotta check this out! I wrote this piece of music on this acoustic guitar.’ And he played it to me over the phone, and I was just barely awake. But it was one of the prettiest pieces of music ever. It had like this melodic, sort of classical and ethereal kind of thing about it. And if I’d been a little more awake, I would’ve forced him to send me a recording of it (laughs). But I’ll never forget that moment. He just made such beautiful language out of his guitar playing.”

Watch for the complete BraveWords interview with Nancy Wilson later this month!