In the clip below from CMS Music, host Chris Akin talks with guitar legend Steve Vai about Eddie Van Halen.

Akin: For you, how did his passing affect you, and what was it about Eddie's playing, if anything, that was so special to you as a contemporary?

Vai: "I'm not unlike the average Edward fan in that. He really had an effect. For Edward fans that really were touched by him - it's inexplicable, obviously. You can try to use words but it doesn't really work, as with many things. So I have a different position in that.

Yeah, one might say that I replaced the guitar behind the voice, but that's just academics to me. When it comes to the way I felt about Edward and the mourning of his loss... I'm a fan like everybody else, and I feel the way they do. But I know also - like many people - that everything in this world is coming and going and coming and going. And if it doesn't go, it only means you went before it. And we just don't know when. So that's something that helps me to get through loss because it's just going to happen. But it was a beautiful, beautiful, amazing ride that he had. He just delivered so much. He had a great run. And it's not like he died at 27. We don't want to see anybody like that, we want to squeeze every note out of them.

But for me, it was a complete honor to be able to play those parts (in the David Lee Roth Band). If you're a guitar player and you're a fan of that band, you know that those are some of the coolest guitar parts written in rock 'n' roll because they're perfect little arrangements. They fall so well on your hands. They'll never sound like Edward but they're great songs to play on the guitar because they're complete. And you become a better player, especially like a position that I was in where I was playing his parts to his fans.

I had to pay deep respect to those parts, and in so doing, I discovered a really great ride there because you have to focus, it has to improve your play. So I was really lucky in all that."