So much for Eddie Van Halen, this is from 1965

[leschirons]

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10204997568334313&id=1695061569&anchor_composer=false#

[visog]

Ugh, this isn't GuitarChat. And this has been done before... And EVH himself has never claimed to have invented it. He credits Steve Hackett whom he saw do it...

[skankdelvar]

That 'tapping' timeline explained
 

• 19,003 BC - Ugh the caveman picks up a club and taps out a rhythm on his brother-in-law's skull. He obtains a musically pleasing result though his brother-in-law dies.
• 1763 - Antiquarian and amateur musician Sir Lemuel Linnet discovers Ugh's brother-in-law's skull - infers rhythmic tapping as cause of death
• 1803 - Italian cellist Pietro Bandileggi reads Linnet's Discourse; applies technique to Haydn's Second Cello Concerto and is lynched by furious audience
• 1898 - Sir Edward Elgar finds Bandileggi's marginalia in old musical score: 'Ho iniziato a battere sul mio violoncello e venne fuori la voce degli angeli' (I commenced to beat my cello and this came forth the voice of angels). Elgar mentions technico di tappo to his wife Olga who notes it in her commonplace book.
• 1926 - Jazz mandolinist Eddy 'Little Hands' Schnauzer meets Elgar's widow. Learning from her of Bandileggi's percussive cello technique Schnauzer adapts it for the mandolin
• 1964 - Schnauzer is taken ill while touring in Sicily. Local guitarist Vittorio Cammardese is at Schnauzer's death bed and hears of the 'tapping thing' from the ashen lips of the expiring mandolinist
• 1971 - Pimlico-born guitarist Steve Hackett sees Cammardese performing on TV's The Sooty Show. Intrigued, Hackett begins to experiment with tapping, recording a cover of Alexis Korner's Tap Turns On The Water. Hackett is dismayed when producer Mickie Most removes Hackett's solo and replaces it with sound effects of tap dancer Fred Astaire
• 1974 - 19 year-old Californian covers band guitarist Eddie Van Halen discovers the tape of Hackett's excised tap solo in a garbage can in Los Angeles and spends weeks learning to copy it. Van Halen's tapping technique is unveiled at a Frat House party in Van Nuys, Los Angeles on October 13th 1975. The party-goers are appalled and the band is ejected without payment. Van Halen swears revenge and commits himself to tapping, with what effect we now know.
   

Edited September 23, 2018 by skankdelvar

[Marvin]

Billy Sheehan, renowned bass fretboard tapping artist, cites Billy Gibbons, from ZZ Top, as the first guitarist he saw tap a fretboard ( although, it was not as an extensive a tap as that of the fella in the OP’s link 😀).

Seems tapping was quite well established before 70’s flares 😎

 

Edited September 24, 2018 by Marvin

[HazBeen]

I suggest we replace the T with a CR.

[lowdown]

I love the way the TV host jumps in, fearing another chorus of a walking Bass solo (03:00)....

Vittorio certainly had some 'Tap Chops'.