Runnin' with the Devil

by Noel Monk

  14

  NO

  PROBLEMS

  (OKAY,

  MAYBE A

  FEW)

  The Hide Your Sheep tour was supposed to end in mid-December of 1982, and would be followed by a long period of rest and artistic rejuvenation. This time there would be no backtracking or succumbing to industry pressure. The band would take some time off and then be given several months to write and record a new album. If I had my way, there would be no touring, no media responsibilities . . . nothing.

  It almost worked out that way, too.

  Shortly after the conclusion of the ’82 tour, after we had all returned to Los Angeles, we got an offer to play a series of dates in South America beginning in mid-January. It wouldn’t be considered a new tour, merely a monthlong extension of the current tour. And then we would break. At first, this offer was met with a mixed response by the members of the band. David, as usual, saw dollar signs: the potential to tap into a market we had mostly ignored in the past (this would be our first tour of South America), while Edward was characteristically trepidatious. He remained a homeboy at heart, especially now that he was married; more than the others, Edward relished the idea of holing up in his newly built home studio, 5150, and crafting songs that would be remembered as more than mere contractual obligations. Although no longer afraid of visiting exotic locales, Edward still was happiest when left alone with his guitar in Southern California.

  Alex and Michael were more pliable and basically said they would do whatever seemed to be best for the band, so I arranged a meeting with the promoter, who did a superb job of selling the tour to everyone, and in the end we agreed to a short and manageable tour: sixteen dates in thirty-two days, with multiple performances in some cities, thus allowing us to settle in for a period of time and actually relax. I wouldn’t exactly call it a vacation, but it had the potential to be a legitimately enjoyable experience, as opposed to the sort of grinding tour to which we had grown accustomed, and which tended to leave us exhausted and at each other’s throats by the end.

  In late December I flew down to South America with our tour manager and stage manager, and we met up with the promoter and did a whirlwind tour of all the different venues under consideration. I always enjoyed the advance tours. They were quieter, less stressful, but obviously important from a logistical standpoint. For example, we visited one place in which we were supposed to set up the stage on an indoor basketball court, and we quickly realized that the weight of our gear would have caused the floor to sink. The advance tour allowed us to avoid these potential disasters well ahead of time and to plan accordingly.

  While the advance tour was usually short on debauchery, it did sometimes offer interesting experiences. On the final day of the advance, when we visited Caracas, a massive, pulsating city I had never experienced before, I was treated to a particularly potent strain of marijuana. Someone handed me a joint after dinner, I took a couple hits as I always did, expecting nothing more than the usual California mellow high, and suddenly found myself wandering around the city alone, stoned out of my mind, half trying to find my way home, and half just content to absorb the city’s beauty and energy. I couldn’t remember the name of my hotel, nor the neighborhood in which it was located, so there was no point in hailing a cab for assistance. Instead, I just strolled aimlessly, hoping I’d see something familiar or my memory would be jolted. Neither of those things happened, until I thrust my hands deep into my jacket for warmth and came across a matchbook bearing the name of my hotel. A half hour later, just as the sun came up, I walked into my hotel room. I had only a couple hours before my plane was scheduled to leave for Los Angeles, so I changed clothes quickly, stuffed everything into a suitcase, and grabbed a taxi for the airport. I made the flight with only minutes to spare.

  Once home I called a meeting with the band, the point of which was to get them pumped up about the South American tour and also to reiterate the plans for the upcoming year. I pulled no punches this time, reminding them that they needed to take their time and improve the quality of the next record.

  They kind of looked at me sideways, and no one really said anything. They knew I was right.

  “So what do you want to do?” David asked. “We’ve tried taking time off in the past; it never happens. You know that.”

  “I understand. But this time it will happen. I promise to protect you guys. If you agree to take your time and make the best Van Halen album you can possibly make, I’ll keep the label off your back. We’ll take the whole year off after we go to South America. No touring. Just write a bunch of great fucking songs.”

  “One question,” Al said.

  “Yeah?”

  “How will we make money?”

  Honestly, money should not have been an issue. We’d all made enough in the previous couple years to be comfortable for a while. Rock stars, however, aren’t exactly frugal, and Al was the least frugal of the group. So I understood his concern.

  “Something will happen,” I said. “Don’t worry about money. We’ll figure it out.”

  WE CALLED IT THE NO PROBLEMS TOUR, and for the most part that’s exactly what it was, although we got off to a bit of a rough start. The promoter, you see, turned out to be an untrustworthy prick, which is not at all uncommon in that line of work but was distressing nonetheless. We arrived in Caracas in mid-January to discover that several dates had been added to the tour, usually in the form of a second or third show added to a particular city and venue. While this made for a more leisurely tour, it also put pressure on us to sell more tickets in a place where we had not yet established much of a foothold. I wanted the band booked into modest venues of three thousand to eight thousand seats, which would ensure sold-out venues and lively performances that would look great on video. But three shows on consecutive nights in a single city meant we had to sell three times as many tickets, and that was a challenge. Right from the beginning the band found itself playing to half-empty arenas. To say this pissed them off would be an understatement.

  “What the fuck is going on?” David asked me during the first few nights in Caracas. “We’re playing to orange seats out there. This is ridiculous.”

  “Orange seats” was a reference to empty seats—as in the color of the actual chair, visible only when it isn’t occupied. It had been a long time since Van Halen played to orange seats. I had several heated discussions with the promoter, who ultimately left the tour and turned everything over to his assistant, who also happened to be his daughter. Fortunately, she was far more adept than her old man, and much better at human interaction. In our last conversation before he left, the promoter had threatened me with the following declaration: “I know Los Angeles, and I know where you live.”

  Now, if I had still been single, I would have said, “Fuck you, I’ll leave the door unlocked,” and let it go at that. But since Jan and I had moved in together and would be getting married in a few months, I no longer took these types of threats lightly. The world was a hard place filled with bad people; I’d met enough of them to know. And this guy definitely fell under the umbrella of “bad”—he had both the means and the temperament to do damage to anyone who crossed his path. When someone threatened me, they were, by implication, threatening the people I loved most. So I did not just casually dismiss it. Instead, I called Jan in LA and told her about my falling-out with the promoter and what he had said. I also told her that she would have a bodyguard available 24/7 until I got back in the States.

  “Don’t you think you’re overreacting?” she asked. “I mean, this guy isn’t dangerous, right? He’s just pissed off.”

  “He’s more than pissed off.”

  “Okay, well, I still think you’re being paranoid.”

  “Yup, that’s me. Regardless, you’re going to have an LAPD officer in plainclothes wherever you go.”

  So Jan had to explain to her family that she would have a shadow everywhere she went—including her brother’s upcoming wedding. Maybe this was excessive, but it gav
e me peace of mind. Security was an accepted expense for the band and any of its family members. And I was part of the band.

  Once we settled in, there were no problems with the No Problems tour. In fact, I look back on that brief little sojourn to South America as one of the highlights of my time with Van Halen, a period during which everyone got along well and had fun and played great shows night after night. There were no fights, or at least none that I can recall. The boys had rarely gotten along so well on the road, and they never would again. How do I explain this? Well, I think it was a combination of factors: lovely, exotic cities; great food and weather; beautiful, endless beaches and even more beautiful women; and above all, the fact that it was a short and sweet tour. When you go out on tour for six, eight, ten months at a time, it can be incredibly daunting. The road loses its allure after a while and you spend a lot of time longing for home and growing irritated with your bandmates and crew. This was one month, after which we all knew we were returning to our homes and wives and girlfriends and families. We had never done this before, and it proved to be a wonderful experiment.

  I used to measure the band’s mood by the amount of damage they did on the road—food tossed, hotel rooms trashed, chairs broken. In South America we didn’t Van Halenize anything. There was no trashing. There was no demolishing, largely because of the guys’ perpetually sunny dispositions.

  So, while I wouldn’t say the boys were on their “best” behavior, they certainly were better behaved than on almost any other tour. Part of this, I suppose, could be attributed to the fact that South America is a unique place in so many ways—not just in terms of its beauty but also its frightening and often violent history. Simply put, you didn’t fuck with the authorities in most South American countries . . . unless you were a complete fool. And while the guys in Van Halen might not have been the brightest of bulbs, they were smart enough to know they didn’t want to spend time in a South American jail. These countries were basically run by military juntas; our protection while visiting there was provided mostly by the equivalent of CIA agents. It was all very dark and mysterious, and we learned quickly to keep our mouths shut and our eyes open.

  “You guys fuck up down here, you’re in big trouble,” I said. “You don’t want to end up in prison here. For one thing, I’m not sure I’ll be able to get you out.”

  The thing is, when you’re not trashing hotel rooms or otherwise attracting unwanted attention, you can do pretty much whatever you want. There was no shortage of quality krell and weed in South America, as you might imagine, and we partook freely. But everyone was in such a good mood that things never got out of hand. Valerie Bertinelli came with us on the tour, and she and Ed were still in the honeymoon stage, so they got along wonderfully, and Al spent most of his time tagging along with them. Michael’s wife, Sue, also made the trip, and they were, as always, just happy to spend time together. David, meanwhile, was off doing the rock star thing, chasing one beautiful woman after another. So it wasn’t like we were all hanging out together every night. But that was okay. We rehearsed and performed and fulfilled media obligations, and then everyone did what they wanted at night. Sometimes we’d all get together for dinner, sometimes not. There was no anger or jealousy. It was just a happy time and, in many ways, the most productive and fulfilling tour we ever did.

  The crew loved the tour, as well, primarily because of the easy access to high-quality weed, but also because they had lots of time to smoke it and otherwise relax. Think about it: instead of setting up and tearing down the stage every night, they’d have three or four days in each city before moving on. This was a luxury rarely afforded our road crew, and they made the most of it. But again, not in a wild or destructive way; it was more like they just appreciated their good fortune and didn’t want to do anything to fuck it up.

  Here’s the thing I discovered in South America: individually, the guys in Van Halen were generally agreeable and friendly people; even David, when separated from the claustrophobia and stress of the band, was at least tolerable. When thrown into the same space, fighting for oxygen, day after day—whether on the road or in the studio—they got on each other’s nerves, and they got on my nerves (and I suppose I got on theirs). But when given room to breathe and time apart, we all got along just fine.

  This helped us deal with a significant degree of culture shock. I think the boys figured that since they were going to South America, there would be a degree of comfort and familiarity, though I had warned them otherwise. Aside from Japan, they had never been to a place where so few people spoke English. I mean, even in the handful of European countries where English is spoken only grudgingly, you can get by without speaking the native tongue. But in most of South America, this was simply not the case. Despite having grown up in Southern California, the guys did not speak a word of Spanish, and even if they had, it wouldn’t have helped them in Brazil, for example, where we spent nearly two weeks, and where the native language is Portuguese. For the most part, the locals would stare at you blankly if you tried to speak to them in English; an exception was if you referred to yourself as an American, because, of course, they considered themselves Americans, as well.

  We also had to get accustomed to the idea that just because a place was beautiful and exciting did not necessarily mean that it was safe. In Rio, the cabdrivers never stopped for red lights, especially at night, because they feared being robbed or carjacked, or simply executed. The city was that dangerous. The first time I took a cab in Rio I found myself in the backseat, clutching the armrests as we sped through town toward our hotel, ignoring stop signs and traffic lights at every intersection. The driver did not appear frightened but merely resolved. This was simply the unwritten rule.

  Do not stop. Ever.

  It was like going back in time thirty years to a beautiful yet almost lawless nation. Not quite like Castro’s Cuba, but it certainly had an old-world feel to it. In most countries, each band member, including me, was assigned a bodyguard. A gun-carrying, hard-core bodyguard. This wasn’t something I demanded or even requested; it was arranged by a promoter. The bodyguards were clearly serious men with military or law enforcement backgrounds, but they were all unfailingly pleasant and helpful. It was different in every city, but they mostly spoke English and were more than happy to accompany us anywhere we went. They could serve as tour guide or enforcer—whatever you needed—and it was comforting to have them with us, since their presence allowed us to enjoy South America with a degree of comfort and security very few tourists would ever have.

  No request was deemed inappropriate. In São Paolo, I was given a tour of their secret, underground CIA police headquarters, which was both fascinating and frightening. This never would have happened in the United States. And it was easy! I said to the promoter, “I want to see what security is like in this city,” and the next thing I knew, I was in a bunker, getting a tour of the nerve center. The equipment looked somewhat antiquated, but there is no denying that they had a very secure system. In a conversation with the head of their version of the CIA, I was informed that he could ensure that the Brazilian portion of our tour went quite smoothly. It would cost only five thousand dollars. I did not ask how that money would be used. I merely wrote the check. And, indeed, we had no problems in Brazil.

  As everywhere, cash is king.

  You have to remember, most of South America had experienced multiple and major revolutions in the previous two decades, and most of them were much longer and bloodier than Argentina’s conflict with Great Britain over the Falkland Islands in 1982, when the mighty Brits beat the Argentineans out of an island of sheep.

  Most of the revolutions were much nastier, and all of them were put down with a mighty fist. Protesters were herded up, tossed into soccer stadiums, and in many cases never heard from again. That sense of control through fear and intimidation was pervasive on much of the continent, and you felt it even when traveling first-class, as we obviously did. We would hear the most callous remarks delivered with dead
pan innocence. As we passed through Argentina into Chile, for example, I noticed a surprising lack of border security.

  “How do you know this is even a border?” I asked.

  The response from one of our bodyguards: “It’s easy. When you start seeing black faces, you know you’re in Chile.”

  From Brazil we went to Uruguay, for a single show at the Cilindro Municipal in Montevideo. We arrived on February 3, 1983, around two in the afternoon, two days before our show. The local promoter was also a general in the Uruguayan Army. Interesting combination, huh? Military officer and concert promoter. The show was sponsored by CX 50 Independencia Radio, which sounds like the name of what should be a liberal, independent entity but was, in actuality, a government-owned radio station. We were staying at the Victoria Plaza Hotel at Plaza Independencia. From these names you get the idea: the Uruguayan revolution of 1973 truly had changed the country, initiating a military dictatorship that endured until the mid-1980s.

  When we were there, it was apparent that the junta was completely in charge of everything. This was intimidating but also somewhat reassuring. As long as we stayed on the right side of the law and generally behaved appropriately, we would be treated very well. We were not citizens, and we were not ordinary tourists. We were rock stars, which made us very special guests indeed. Montevideo was the only place where we had a motorcade waiting to take us from the airport to our hotel: a veritable fleet of open-air limousines so that we could take in the sights on the drive. Montevideo was Nirvana for my boys. For the band and crew, it was just a fantastic place—fun, sun, drugs, women, and all the ingredients to finally make them a happy bunch of road warriors. And I stress that they were happy, because I had never seen them all like this. And I never would again. There was no snipping and sniping and all that other bullshit. We were united in a single cause: have fun and put on some great concerts. If I could have bottled this extraordinary elixir, we would still be touring today.