Charlie Sheen has looked back on the time Eddie Van Halen made a cameo in his sitcom Two And A Half Men, calling the moment his own “short, private concert”.
Talking to Loudwire, the actor remembers when the legendary Van Halen guitarist appeared in the first episode of Two And A Half Men’s seventh season, in a scene where he shreds the first half of his iconic solo Eruption after walking out of a toilet stall.
During the sequence, Eddie jokes that he always carries his instrument with him because “you never know when inspiration might strike”, then names the solo that he played ‘Two Burritos And A Root Beer Float’. Sheen reveals that the line was an improvised change Eddie came up with during a table read, which is usually discouraged in Hollywood.
“He made a change in one of the lines of dialogue,” the actor says, “and you’re not supposed to do that in that kind of environment, especially on that show. His change was brilliant! […] I think that it might be the title of the episode.”
Sheen also fondly remembers what it was like being so close to Eddie as he was playing his instrument.
“Then he plays that amazing lead, just shredding, and I’m, like, two feet away from him,” he continues. “I mean, can you get a better private – short, private concert with Van Halen, anywhere, ever? They did five takes of it, and I’m like, ‘Are you sure we don’t need a sixth?’ I don’t know. His idea […] was Eruption. And that would have meant that I would have been front row, the only row, for a live Eruption.”
Sheen then jokes, “It was just the beginning of the piece, so that was taken from me.”
Sheen starred in Two And A Half Men from its premiere in September 2003 up until March 2011, when he was dismissed after entering rehab and making disparaging comments about showrunner Chuck Lorre. Sheen was nominated for four Primetime Emmy Awards for his role on the show, where he played Charlie Harper, a hedonistic bachelor based on the actor’s own public image. In 2010, Sheen became the highest-paid male actor in US TV history, earning $1.8 million per episode.
Shortly after his Two And A Half Men firing, Sheen suffered a public breakdown, and in 2015 he revealed that he was HIV positive. A two-part documentary based on his life, AKA Charlie Sheen, came out via Netflix in September 2025. He released a memoir, The Book Of Sheen, the same month.
Eddie died in October 2020 at the age of 65, following a stroke. He had been hospitalised in 2019, after living with oral cancer for five years. He’s survived by his only child, Wolfgang, who performs as the singer and multi-instrumentalist of hard rock project Mammoth.
