I always love this argument. Comes up by every newbie on a Zeppelin board who heard that comment by EVH. Same old opinions, Page could do this, Eddie could do that. Truth be told they all looked to the past and then developed techniques for themselves to be used within their own idiom.
The real reason Zeppelin fans don't like VH is simply because they were the pretenders to the throne of Zeppelin in the US, punk never even entered into the equation back in 1977. It was the end of an era.
Personally I say thank God for EVH, he dragged rock guitar playing kicking and screaming out of the dead end that was the blues. It's hardly his fault we got RATT, Warrant, and the rest is it?