Runnin' with the Devil

by Noel Monk

  “You see!” he shouted. “I told you there was something there!”

  “My goodness, Pete. How the hell did that get in there?”

  Peter stiffened. The fear drained from his face, replaced quickly by anger.

  “You son of a bitch, Monk. You did this, didn’t you? You and Al.”

  I shook my head dismissively. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Let’s check the other bed.” I pulled back the sheets to reveal another foul and slimy mess. “Holy shit,” I said, trying to sound surprised. “Someone really had it in for you, Pete.”

  By now the whole room was beginning to reek, so I invited Peter down to my room, gave him a couple extra sheets, and invited him to sleep on the sofa, an offer he grudgingly accepted.

  “Thanks for nothing, Noel. I know you did this. You guys are fucking crazy.”

  Not crazy. Just bored. The road will do that to you sometimes.

  FAIR WARNING WAS AN UNUSUAL ALBUM, but certainly not a great album; I don’t mind admitting that, and I don’t think any of the guys in the band would dispute my opinion. It was a somewhat experimental effort, written and recorded on the same brisk schedule as the previous three albums, but with less emphasis on melody or memorable hooks. This stemmed in large part from Edward’s increasing unease with the influence of Ted Templeman and David Lee Roth, both of whom had strong pop sensibilities and wanted Van Halen to continue along the well-worn path that had proven highly successful thus far. Edward had always bristled under these constraints, but during the making of Fair Warning, he began to assert himself to a much greater extent, often hanging out in the studio until the wee hours, tinkering and writing alone with the help of engineer Donn Landee. Songs that were worked out during daylight hours often became twisted into something entirely different when Edward was left to his own devices. He was an artist whose particular vision was beginning to veer sharply from the vision of those around him.

  In retrospect, Fair Warning stands as Van Halen’s hardest and most muscular album (the closest to being true metal), and for that reason it remains a favorite among the band’s hard-core fans. But it lacked a single hummable track, or one that would easily translate to radio airplay, which made it a harder sell to a mass audience. Simply put, it was the band’s least accessible album—a collection of songs that shared a common theme: Life is fucking hard. This was a far cry from the party songs that had marked Van Halen’s arrival a few years earlier, as well as from subsequent albums that would catapult the band into the stratosphere of mainstream popularity.

  While critical reviews for Fair Warning were relatively kind, the album initially sold at a pace far below that of its predecessors. Released in late April, shortly before we went out on tour, Fair Warning was hampered by a lack of radio airplay. It was the strangest thing: here we were, out on the road, playing one sold-out arena after another, and yet fans apparently were not terribly enthusiastic about buying the new album. We were not accustomed to this, and frankly we weren’t sure what to do about it.

  I had an idea that things weren’t going well, but it wasn’t until Carl Scott called me into his office in the summer that I realized the extent to which Fair Warning had underperformed. The album had struggled to reach gold status, and looked very much like it might become the first Van Halen album to fail to go platinum.

  “Carl,” I said, “we can’t not go platinum. That’s unacceptable for this band.”

  He shrugged. “Unacceptable or not, it might just happen.”

  “Isn’t there something we can do?”

  Carl sighed deeply and nodded. “Yeah, there is. But it’s not cheap. Go down and talk to the guys in promotion; they’ll give you the details.”

  And with that, Carl wiped his hands of the whole sordid affair, which was precisely the right thing for him to do.

  That same day I wound up having an enlightening conversation with the head of publicity at Warner, during which I learned the finer points of an age-old illicit system of promotion known as payola. Basically, it works like this: through intermediaries (payola brokers, for want of a better term), we could buy airplay for the album and various singles at any radio station in the country, which in turn was likely to result in increased sales for the album. That’s just the way it worked; without massive radio exposure, it was very hard for an album to reach platinum status. I had heard of payola, of course, but had presumed that the practice had long faded away by the early 1980s. In fact, it was alive and well. With Van Halen, we had been fortunate in not needing such a boost with our first few albums. The band was a true organic success, its audience expanding through word of mouth, fantastic live performances, and songwriting that resulted in numerous hit singles.

  Now, though, we had a bit of a roadblock. It was time to play by the game’s dirtiest unwritten rules. I had no idea what was involved or what it might cost, but as the plan was laid out for me, it became apparent that the fee would be substantial. A large station in a major market, such as Los Angeles or New York, was referred to as a P1. To guarantee airplay at a P1 would cost five thousand dollars.

  For a single station!

  A P2 was a secondary station, usually located in a smaller but still significant market: think Columbus, Ohio, and Grand Rapids, Michigan. The cost for airplay at a P2 was three thousand dollars.

  Finally, at the bottom of the ladder, were the P3 stations, often located in the hinterlands, but sometimes with significant reach. Buying a P3 cost a thousand bucks. If this doesn’t sound like a lot of money, well, it added up very quickly. As the meeting wore on, I did the math in my head and came up with a conservative estimate: it would cost us at least a couple hundred thousand dollars to guarantee coverage across the country. And the money would come directly out of our pockets. Warner Bros. would not be picking up the tab.

  Armed with this disturbing information, I called a meeting with the band. I held nothing back.

  “Here’s the deal, boys. We made a mediocre album and we’re not getting away with it this time.”

  Al was the first to speak up, which kind of surprised me, as David often dominated meetings that revolved around business matters. “What are you talking about, Noel? The album is doing great, isn’t it?”

  “No, it’s not. In fact, right now it looks like we won’t even go platinum.”

  Dead silence. It had been a long time since I had seen the band so utterly dumbstruck. Finally, Al spoke again.

  “What are you talking about? We have to go platinum; we’re a platinum band, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Were,” I corrected. “We were a platinum band. Right now we are a band whose latest album is being met with indifference.”

  This got David’s attention. The last thing he wanted was to be . . . average.

  “Fuck this, Noel,” he said. “There has to be something we can do. We’re out there every night on the road, working our asses off. There must be a way to turn this into big numbers for the album.”

  “Oh, there’s a way, all right, but it has nothing to do with your live shows. Fact is, radio stations aren’t crazy about the album. It’s too . . . well . . . weird. So they aren’t playing it. And until they start playing it, we’re not going to get the numbers we want.”

  “Okay, so how do we get them to play it?” David asked.

  “That’s a great question,” I responded. “But you’re not going to like the answer.”

  I proceeded to explain the process of buying airtime at stations across the country. I told them how much it would cost per station; like me, they did the math in their heads and very quickly came to the conclusion that this was going to be an expensive endeavor. (They were no longer the clueless boys they had been when we first got together.)

  “Five thousand fucking dollars? Per station?” Al shouted incredulously.

  Even Michael, ordinarily quiet during band meetings, seemed flummoxed. “Oh, man, this is going to hurt.”

  “Yeah, it is,” I said. “And we don’t have to do it. I’l
l leave it up to you. But here’s the truth: if we don’t buy some airtime, this album is not going platinum anytime soon.”

  As was customary in these sorts of discussions, the band deferred to David. After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, he gave the plan his blessing.

  “Bottom line is, we can’t afford to be just a gold band anymore. So do what you have to do. We trust you, Noel. Make it happen.”

  And so I did. For the next few weeks I took countless meetings and phone calls, setting up deals with radio stations large and small throughout the country. I wrote a check for more than two hundred grand and gave it to our promotion guy, who in turn handed it over to the payola brokers, who in turn wrote smaller checks—or handed over wads of cash—to scores of individual radio stations. What happened to those smaller payments is anyone’s guess, but you can use your imagination: in many cases, I believe, the cash was used to buy drugs (primarily cocaine), which became a tool in the effort to convince programming directors and disc jockeys of the merits of a particular song or album. And lo and behold, Fair Warning began to get significant airplay. Tracks that were not even intended as singles started showing up in the regular rotation.

  Go figure.

  For me, it was an interesting position to be in. I had always represented either bands that got no airplay at all, and thus weren’t worth any sort of payola investment, or bands that received all the airplay they wanted, without coercion of any type. But here was a band whose popularity and success had reached a level that created certain expectations, and those expectations had to be met. At any cost. In order to be deemed a platinum album for 1981, Fair Warning had to sell a million units within the calendar year. It never occurred to me that this would be a problem, but it was. In the end, though, our nearly quarter-million-dollar investment proved worthwhile, when the album reached platinum status on November 18, and we all breathed a sigh of relief. Eventually, Fair Warning would sell more than 2 million copies, but it was the slowest-selling album of the David Lee Roth era for Van Halen. Maybe that’s because it was the album that least reflected the influence and interest of Roth himself. For better or worse, the guy was dialed in to his audience. And he wanted to make that audience happy. I’m not sure Edward cared about any of that. First and foremost, he made music for himself.

  But this was a significant come-to-Jesus moment for all of us. We realized that Van Halen couldn’t continue to crank out one album per year, usually cobbled together in a few weeks of frantic recording after endless months on the road. Although still a remarkable live act, Van Halen as a studio band had begun to slip ever so slightly. And they knew it.

  “We can’t do this anymore,” David said.

  “Yeah, no more fourteen-day records,” Edward added. “We’ve been coming off the road and cranking out these albums. We need more time, Noel.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “I’ll make sure you get it.”

  THE FAIR WARNING TOUR ended in spectacular fashion, with a pair of sold-out shows at the Tangerine Bowl in Orlando, Florida, as the opening act for the Rolling Stones. This was the first time Van Halen had played with the Stones since opening for the band at the New Orleans Superdome in 1978. Since that time, Van Halen had ascended to superstardom; as for the Stones, well, they remained ageless. In ’78 the band was touring to promote the critically acclaimed album Some Girls, a career highlight released at a time when the Stones were supposedly getting a little too long in the tooth to do this sort of thing. Now, three years later, they were at it again, with the album Tattoo You, a massive commercial and critical success anchored by “Start Me Up,” which became not merely a hit single but one of the Stones’ most enduring titles.

  So, even with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards approaching forty years of age, the Rolling Stones were not merely still relevant but arguably the biggest band in the world. Van Halen wouldn’t have played second fiddle to many bands in those days, but the Stones were icons, and when the call came to open two shows at the Tangerine Bowl in late October, we didn’t hesitate to accept. It seemed a perfect way to end the year—or at least the touring part of it.

  Both shows were fantastic; sure, the crowd of 65,000 was there primarily to see the Stones, but Van Halen had its share of fans, as well, and did a stellar job of winning over those who might have been neutral on the subject. With only an hour of allotted stage time, the band jettisoned a half dozen songs from its normal playlist during the Fair Warning tour but added an ass-kicking version of “Summertime Blues”—a surefire crowd-pleaser.

  One of my favorite memories from the first day occurred before the concert even began. It was after sound check and we were up on the deck, looking out over the Tangerine Bowl, somewhat awestruck by the scope of it, and the fact that we had come so far in a relatively short period of time. There is something at once exhilarating and humbling about playing in a sold-out football stadium, alongside one of the greatest bands in rock ’n’ roll history. As we were standing there, out walked Mick Jagger; it was like God himself had entered our midst. Now, I had worked with the Stones before, back in ’71, so I knew Mick a little bit. Though small and slightly built, not physically impressive in a traditional sense, there is something about the way he carries himself, even when offstage, that commands attention. He has that strut and swagger thing going all the time, and obviously his face is among the most unique in pop culture history. When Mick enters a room, you can’t help but stop and stare. He has this effect not just on the average Joe but on other celebrities, as well, musicians in particular. The guys in Van Halen were no different. As Mick stopped to chat, they all fell silent, even David. But the cutest moment was when Mick turned his attention to Edward.

  “You know, Edward,” he began, in that unmistakably guttural, marble-mouthed way, “you are a fucking brilliant guitar player.”

  Coming from someone who shared the stage each night with Keith Richards, an acknowledged master of the art form, this was high praise indeed, and so we all turned to look at Ed. How would he respond? The short answer is, he didn’t. Instead, he just sort of scuffed the ground with the toe of his boot and avoided making eye contact while smiling like a nervous schoolboy (similar to the way he acted upon first meeting Valerie Bertinelli, who, it should be noted, was present for both of the Tangerine Bowl shows, and clearly starstruck in such close proximity to the Stones’ singer). After several awkward moments, Edward half-whispered, “Thank you.” And that was it.

  But Mick did not just walk away. He hung out for a while, making small talk and surveying the scene. At one point he gestured toward Al’s drum kit, attached to which were two large fire extinguishers.

  “What’s all that, then?” Mick said. “Fire extinguishers? You guys are known for pulling off some stunts, right?”

  Nods all around.

  “You wouldn’t be doing some stunt with those fire extinguishers, now, would you?”

  Heads shaking vigorously. “Oh no, no, no! We’d never do that. It’s going to be a regular, you know, show . . . and . . . you know, we’re not going to pull any stunts. We’re just really glad to be here.”

  Mick smiled. “That’s good.”

  I wouldn’t say that Mick enjoyed the adoration being heaped upon him by his opening act, but I wouldn’t say he hated it, either. I think it was utterly normal for him, and he accepted it. As for “stunts,” well, those were actually left to the Stones, whose set concluded with a fireworks display in which tiny American and British flags rained on the audience. A nice touch, I thought.

  Roughly twelve hours later we were back at the Tangerine Bowl for the second concert, and the last show of the year. Not surprising, the boys began partying well before they took the stage—not to the extent that it impaired their performance but enough that they were pretty riled up by the time we left the catering area and hopped into a private limo for a ride halfway around the stadium, where the dressing room was located. Almost immediately upon entering the limo, they began behaving badly. This was not uncommon o
n the road, and it wasn’t uncommon when traveling by limo. What made it unusual was that we hadn’t played yet, and the limo was not simply a shitty cookie-cutter model that was part of a fifty-car fleet owned by a large company. This was a private car, owned and operated by the driver. It was a beautiful French limo, meticulously maintained. Unfortunately, with Van Halen, drinking often was accompanied by wanton disregard for the property and dignity of those in proximity. So I wasn’t terribly surprised when Al, sitting in the front seat, asked the driver, leaning forward and tapping the glove compartment door mischievously, “What’s in here, man?”

  The driver smiled nervously. “Just some papers. Registration, manual—you know, the usual stuff.”

  “Really?” Al said. “Let’s take a look.”

  He popped open the glove compartment, pulled everything out, and began tossing it around the limo, provoking howls of adolescent approval from the rest of the guys. The driver, meanwhile, tried to keep his eye on the road while casting a wary glance at Al.

  And that was merely the beginning.

  There is no way for me to put a positive or even a benign spin on what happened next. All of a sudden, as if he didn’t want to be outdone, David began tearing apart the back of the limo. Armrests were ripped from their sockets. A door was opened and closed so hard and so fast, and so many times, that it came loose from its hinges. Most of this happened while we were still moving, as the car was traveling at less than twenty miles per hour around a parking lot. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and tried to calm the guys down, but they were in a frenzy by now. The driver offered only the meekest resistance, protesting, “Please . . . my car.” At one point the car came to a stop and Edward jumped out and began dancing on the hood and then the roof, pummeling the sheet metal with his boots, until the car looked like it had been attacked with a baseball bat.

  When we finally arrived at our destination, the guys jumped out, laughing hysterically. They offered neither an apology nor an explanation. They were rock gods, and in this state of inebriation exhibited complete and utter disregard for the personal property of others. Though Van Halen had a long history of trashing hotel rooms and dressing rooms, this was different. This was not a Holiday Inn. This was a car owned by their driver; it was his only source of income, and he clearly took great pride in caring for the vehicle. As the band walked away, I could see on the man’s face not anger or even sadness but something closer to defeat. I waited until the guys were completely out of earshot, and then I approached the driver.