by Noel Monk
But you can’t create the perfect scenario; it happens organically.
Montevideo was the biggest show of the tour. The Cilindro Municipal was an 18,000-seat arena, often used to host athletic events, and easily the largest venue that we played the entire tour. At the time, I didn’t know that this arena is where they had warehoused the revolutionaries a decade earlier, and where many executions had taken place, so I didn’t have a creeping sense of dread when I walked into the building. In a way, I’m grateful for that. I’m not one to overlook history, but there is unquestionably something daunting about playing in an arena that has such a sad and violent past. And I know it would have freaked out the guys in the band. Sometimes it’s just better to be blissfully ignorant.
The Cilindro was a huge cement circular structure—literally shaped like a cylinder, or a thick grain silo—that seemed capable of withstanding a thermonuclear attack. Or at least an airborne strike. It looked and felt like a massive, round fortress. However, in the opinion of the promoter, backed up by several high-ranking military officers who for some reason were deeply involved in decisions related to our show, was that Van Halen’s sound system would do irreparable damage to the building. That only sounds like a joke; in fact, they were quite serious.
“What the fuck are they talking about?” David said when I told the guys of these concerns. “We’re a rock ’n’ roll band. We’re loud. What are we supposed to do about it?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “But I do know that you don’t argue with the junta. The army has no desire to see this fortress collapse on the audience. The last thing they need is another revolution because of a Van Halen concert. And, frankly, we don’t need that either.”
I tried to explain to the promoter that we had played hundreds of shows all over the world, often in arenas older and less stable than Cilindro Municipal.
“You’re worrying about nothing,” I said. “The building will be fine.”
“I believe you, Noel,” he said, “but I’m sorry. The generals won’t go along with it. And I won’t go along with it. I need proof that the building can withstand this much noise.”
So we gave them proof. On the day before the show we set up all our equipment and cranked up the sound system as loud as it would go. And there, on the left side of the arena, sitting together like statues in the first few rows, were more than a dozen ancient generals, all decked out in their brass-emblazoned uniforms. These guys had enough medals on their chests to make them stoop-shouldered; or maybe that was just because the average age appeared to be roughly eighty. They sat there stone-faced—not a smile among them, which kind of gave me chills—as we filled the arena with white noise. We didn’t get out there and play or anything; we didn’t even run a recording of our music. No, instead we just punished them with . . . sound. Rumbling, whining, high-pitched noise. The kind that would make most people run for cover.
We hit 115 decibels. No reaction from the generals.
Then 120. Still no response.
Eventually we pushed the sound all the way up to 135 decibels. By this time I had retreated to the dressing room with the band. We were all covering our ears and crying out in pain. But out in the arena, apparently, more than a dozen fossilized Uruguayan generals were barely affected. Maybe they were the toughest guys on earth. Or, more likely, they were deaf. Regardless, the Cilindro Muncipal withstood the aural onslaught, and Van Halen was given the go-ahead to play its concert the following night. Hallelujah!
From Uruguay, we traveled to Buenos Aires, Argentina, for a pair of concerts at the Estadia Obras Sanitarias. Great shows, great audiences, absolutely no problems. We were getting ready to go home, and the boys were all in good spirits. After the second show, the local promoter invited me to dinner, along with our state-sponsored security team of CIA agents—or the Argentinian equivalent, at least. Despite the fact that they were uniformly thin and lightly muscled, this was an intimidating and serious collection of men. They all wore black jackets with white shirts and thin black ties. They all had pencil-thin mustaches and ink-black hair that was slicked back with what I can only assume was a good portion of the world’s supply of hair gel, or at least the country’s (no small feat in 1983, let me tell you). They wore blank expressions, as if trained to reveal not the slightest hint of emotion (which I’m sure was the case). There was very little conversation during dinner, in part because of the language barrier, but also because, well, I don’t think these guys were accustomed to making small talk. But at one point, near the end of the meal, the head of security asked me a rather pointed question. There was no prelude to it, just the strangest question that came out of the blue.
“So, Mr. Monk. Tell me—how many men have you killed?”
I expected laughter, but there was none. Instead, every head at the table turned to me, and waited to hear my response. I sat there quietly for a moment, fork in hand, before finally answering.
“None . . . that I know of.”
With that, everybody at the table cracked up. They nodded knowingly at one another and spoke in whispered, rapid bites of Spanish, none of which I understood. But I got the gist of it. I realized then that these were not ordinary security officers but rather the best of the best (or the worst of the worst). These were men who had worked in the death squads; these were men who had rounded up revolutionaries and made them disappear. A chill went down my spine as I forced a weak smile and tried to go back to my meal. But my appetite was gone.
Unpleasant moments like this aside, even today this South American tour stands out in my memory. It wasn’t just that everyone was getting along, it was more that it felt like old times, like a return to what things had been like. Everyone seemed to enjoy things in a way that they hadn’t in a long while. It was a memorable tour for all the right reasons—the sense of camaraderie, brotherhood, and entertainment—but those same reasons were also what made it so fleeting. That tour was a lot of great things, but most of all, it was a high point that we would never return to.
ON FEBRUARY 14, 1983, I flew back from Buenos Aires to Los Angeles, along with most of the band. I say most, because David took a side trip with Ed Anderson to the Amazon rain forest. The road crew, meanwhile, remained in Buenos Aires to load up the equipment and pay for shipment. This was another example of a promoter fucking with us: he tried to keep the equipment in Argentina because . . . well, because he could. I was gone and so he had to deal with only my crew. Eventually we got our equipment back, and while this particular incident left a slightly sour taste in my mouth, it went virtually unnoticed by the band. For them, this truly was the No Problems tour.
Once home, the band casually went about the business of preparing to record its next album. For a while, this mostly consisted of Edward hanging out at home in 5150 and playing with guitars and keyboards and synthesizers into the wee hours. We had no plans to play another live show until the new album was released, presumably sometime in the next year.
Then I got a phone call from Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple and also the money behind a massive concert event known as the US Festival. Maybe it had something to do with his being part of the Woodstock generation (as well as one of the most successful entrepreneurs of his generation), but Wozniak was committed to putting together an eclectic festival that would be “the musical event of the 80s,” as the US Festival was breathlessly billed. In fact, this was the second version of the US Festival, the first having been held in 1982, over the course of three days on Labor Day weekend. This one would be bigger and better, Wozniak promised. Four days instead of three, at Glen Helen Regional Park in San Bernardino, California. Each day would be ascribed a particular theme or musical genre: punk/new wave one day, rock on the second day, heavy metal on the third, and country on the last day.
Van Halen, he said, would be the headliner on heavy metal day.
At first I was not interested. Festivals tend to be a pain in the ass, a logistical nightmare not worth the headache or the financial expense. Moreover, I wa
nted the band to continue to focus on writing and recording the best album they could possibly produce.
“What date are we talking about?” I asked Steve. If it was Labor Day, or even midsummer, we might be able to squeeze it in.
“Memorial Day weekend,” he answered.
I explained that this would not give us a lot of time to prepare, and that we were just getting started on a new album. I didn’t want to be rude, because I appreciated what Steve was trying to do—he did seem to have a lot of passion for the project, which he viewed as a vehicle for blending music and technology to help make society better and more unified. Or some such bullshit. Like I said, he was a child of the sixties. As was I, of course, but I was a bit more practical.
“I don’t know, Steve. I’m not sure this is a great idea for us right now.”
“We’re willing to pay you pretty well for your time,” he explained. “You might want to think about it.”
“How much?”
“A million and a half.”
After five and a half years with one of the biggest bands in the world, I did not think there were many offers that would leave me even momentarily speechless, but this one did. I mean $1.5 million for a single 75-minute show? Sure—why not? You don’t say no to that kind of offer. I mean, you can’t.
I took it to the band and, predictably, they felt exactly as I did—that the money was simply too good to pass up. That said, I thought I’d try and squeeze a little bit more out of the promoters. Call me Icarus, but it paid off. See, what happened is that I decided to slip an unassuming little clause into the band’s contract, called a “Most Favored Nation Deal.” In essence, it said that no band could be paid more than we were. Well, in the following weeks, as more acts were added to the festival, David Bowie’s team hiked up their fee, requesting a cool fifty thousand extra to cover the costs of transporting his equipment across the pond. That’s when my clause kicked in. Suddenly, Van Halen was owed another fifty thousand, as well.
When Steve Wozniak called me up to tell me the good news, I couldn’t have been happier. With the wind beneath my wings, so to speak, I felt like nothing could bring me down. The truth was, I did indeed fly a little too close to the sun. The US festival, it turned out, was significantly more work and expense than we had anticipated, and we were all nearly clipped.
There was rehearsal space to rent, merchandise to prepare, a stage set to design. We couldn’t just show up at the US Festival, in front of a couple hundred thousand people, and simply go through the motions like it was a club date. When you take a record-breaking paycheck, you’re supposed to put on a record-breaking show. Or at least a memorable show. And memorable it was, although not exclusively for the right reasons.
But the preparation was actually kind of fun. We were excited to be part of this event, and not just a part but the headliner on a day that also included Ozzy Osbourne. So that was kind of cool—in just a few short years we had gone from opening for Ozzy to having him open for us (I don’t believe he was paid even half the fee Van Halen received). Everything about my life was pretty fucking great during this short but wonderful time. I was the manager of the biggest band in the world, and for a change everyone was getting along.
For me, it wasn’t just professional contentment. On April 24, Janice Cutler and I got married. We had met a couple years earlier, when I bought a guard dog from a company for which Jan was working. She quickly became my closest confidante and best friend, and the person with whom I would share all (or at least most) of the crazy stories of life on the road with Van Halen. Some of these she lived herself after we got married. The point is, I was happy. We all were happy, relatively speaking. But the band was far closer to breaking up than any of us realized, and while the album that would become 1984 helped set us simultaneously on the road to riches and ruin, it was at the US Festival that things began to turn weird.
Van Halen appeared on day three of the event. The other acts were allowed to sell their merchandise only on the day they appeared, but I negotiated, without much fuss, into our contract the right to sell Van Halen gear on each of the first three days (we didn’t bother with day four—not a lot of overlap between our fans and the fans of Ricky Skaggs). Between merchandise, rehearsal time, and equipment prep, we spent nearly a hundred thousand dollars preparing for the US Festival. In the days leading up to the event, I was confident that everything would go well. Having been off the road for a few months, the guys were relaxed and excited about performing. What could possibly go wrong?
I still felt that way midafternoon, when I wandered over to the center stage to see how preparations for our set were going. I had left David behind in the trailer with our publicist, Steve Mandel. David liked to drink a little before going out onstage, but very rarely had he imbibed so heavily that it affected his performance. There were a few times overseas when David had gotten drunk before media appearances, which made for interesting TV, but in the States he had always been smart enough to keep things under control. So imagine my surprise when I returned to the trailer a couple hours later and found David drunk and krelled out of his mind. I mean, I was mortified; he could barely stand up.
“What the fuck happened?” I said.
Steve threw his hands in the air. He wore a look of utter surrender.
“I don’t know. I just . . . I couldn’t stop him.”
This I did not doubt in the least. If David wanted to get fucked up, he was going to get fucked up, and there was no force on earth that could stop him. The thing is, in the past, David had always known when to pump the brakes. You partied after the show, not before the show. And certainly not before the biggest concert of your career.
To put it mildly, this was not a good night for me or my band. In front of a couple hundred thousand people, and the largest collection of media ever assembled for a concert, Van Halen went out and nearly shit the bed. The best front man in rock ’n’ roll slurred his way through a bunch of pre-show interviews, including, most notably, a nationally broadcast and highly embarrassing conversation with MTV’s Mark Goodman, in which David told a bunch of bad jokes that only he found particularly funny.
Actually, our lead singer was one of only two completely fucked-up Davids I had to contend with that night. The other David was Jan’s brother. He and his wife, an old friend of Jan’s, had been invited for the weekend by us. Since I would be working the whole time, David and his wife were company for Jan. Unknown to me, David had spent the afternoon of the US Festival alternately smoking weed, snorting coke, and drinking the very potent drinks served by the bartender at the backstage party area.
As Van Halen was about to go on, a bunch of us stood off to the side, just at the edge of the stage. I made sure they were safe and comfortable and could see the show, and then I left to check on the band. I didn’t see any of them again until the next day. I missed a lot, as it turned out.
My brother-in-law got completely wasted, to the point where he became sick and had to be taken by ambulance to a temporary clinic a short distance away. He was accompanied by his wife and the band’s attorney, Jules Zalon. Jules had just been to our wedding a few months before and had stayed with us for a fun-filled weekend recently. He was an old and trusted friend as well as a vital part of our merchandising company. He had flown out to California from New Jersey with his wife expressly to be at the US Festival. Needless to say, his weekend did not go exactly as planned. Not only did he miss much of the show, but on the drive to the clinic, David vomited into Jules’s lap. Jan spent the rest of the night doing damage control. She knew that I would ban her brother from future band functions if I found out what had what happened. She also knew that I had my hands full with Van Halen business and, tonight in particular, festival business. So, although she wasn’t one to lie to me or keep the truth from me, she decided this was something I didn’t need to know. Everyone else agreed with her. Eventually, much later, I did find about the incident, which, in retrospect, was a fitting footnote to an altogether horrible
day, one of my worst as the manager of Van Halen.
While the vomit was hitting the fan around one David, I was watching the other David put on the worst performance I had ever seen from him. Now, admittedly, the bar was set pretty high with David. He was not one to simply go through the motions during a live performance. He lived to be onstage, and gave his best effort every night. When you came to a Van Halen concert, you expected to see Eddie Van Halen producing sparks with his fretwork, and you expected to see David Lee Roth dancing across the stage and jumping off the drum riser. It was part of the compact between band and fan. But on this night David did not live up to the terms of the deal. He forgot lyrics, staggered awkwardly around the stage, and for some reason kept saying, “Come on, folks, let’s go across the street and have a drink!”
It was obvious to just about everyone—fans and media—that David was completely wasted. After the show there was a big party, but I was so depressed and ashamed that I didn’t even want to take part. I crawled into our tour bus with a bottle of vodka and drank myself to sleep. My absence eventually went noticed and Jan came to check on me. After declining to join me in my impromptu pity party, she had the smarts to leave me to my own devices for the night.
The next day I didn’t even want to read the trades or the newspapers to see what people had said about the show. I expected to be slaughtered. But when news began to trickle in, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I anticipated. Despite what I had witnessed, it seemed that the band had played well enough to cover for the singer’s inebriation; and anyway, David appeared to be having a good time onstage, which after all was a Van Halen hallmark.
At the end of the week I got a call from Unison, the production company charged with making a concert video for the US Festival. They needed three songs from Van Halen but couldn’t find enough images of David jumping—this was a signature move, after all, and you couldn’t very well make a Van Halen video without repeated images of David soaring through the air, legs splayed like a gymnast’s.