LOS ANGELES:Eddie Van Halen, the pioneering guitar player whose hard-rocking band emerged from the Sunset Strip music scene in Los Angeles in the early 1970s to stand at the top of rock 'n' roll for a decade, died of cancer on Tuesday. He was 65.<br /> <br /> Van Halen's death was announced by his 29-year-old son, Wolfgang, a bass player who joined the band, best known for songs like "Jump" and "Ain't Talkin 'Bout Love," in later years.<br /> <br /> "I can't believe I'm having to write this but my father, Edward Lodewijk Van Halen, has lost his long and arduous battle with cancer this morning," Wolfgang Van Halen said on Twitter.<br /> <br /> Representatives for Eddie Van Halen did not disclose details of his death. People magazine reported the rocker died at a Los Angeles-area hospital with his wife, Janie, son and other family members at his side.<br /> <br /> "Through all your challenging treatments for lung cancer you kept your gorgeous spirit and that impish grin," his former wife of 26 years, actress Valerie Bertinelli, said on Twitter.<br /> <br /> Fans placed flowers and guitar picks on Van Halen's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.<br /> <br /> "What a long, great trip its been," the band's flamboyant frontman during its glory years, David Lee Roth, said in a message on Twitter above a black-and-white photo of the two men clenching hands backstage at a concert.<br /> <br /> Eddie Van Halen was born in Amsterdam on Jan. 26, 1955, and studied classical piano after moving to the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena with his family in the 1960s.<br /> <br /> After switching to guitar, he and his older brother, Alex, who took up the drums, formed bands that would eventually become Van Halen in the mid-1970s, with lead singer Roth and bassist Michael Anthony.<br /> <br /> The hard-rock band, featuring Eddie Van Halen's explosive riffs and solos, quickly became a staple of Sunset Strip clubs such as Gazzari's and the Whisky a Go Go before releasing their eponymous debut album in 1978.<br /> <br /> That album shot to No. 19 on the Billboard charts, becoming one of the most successful debuts of the decade and the first in a string of top-selling albums that would make Van Halen one of the biggest rock acts of the late 1970s and early 1980s.<br /> <br /> Eddie Van Halen, known for his two-handed tapping technique on the strings, earned a place along Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page as one of rock's most celebrated guitarists. In 2012, readers of Guitar World magazine voted him the greatest of all time.<br /> <br /> Roth, who often clashed with the Van Halen brothers, split from the band in the mid-1980s and was replaced for a decade by Sammy Hagar. The original lineup reunited in 2007 for a tour and, four years later, an album.<br /> <br /> "My heart is broken. Eddie was not only a Guitar God, but a genuinely beautiful soul," Gene Simmons, lead singer of Kiss and an early champion of Van Halen with record companies, said on Twitter.