Runnin' with the Devil

by Noel Monk

  “Hey, guys,” he said. “Want to smoke a joint?”

  “Not really,” Jan replied (she hated smoking weed, even if it was the most common thing in the world; it simply didn’t agree with her).

  David pulled a prerolled spliff out of his pocket, held it up to his nose and inhaled lovingly, then walked into the room, though he hadn’t been invited in.

  “Noel?” he said, looking my way.

  “No, thanks, David. Not tonight.”

  He shrugged, pulled up a chair, and laughed. “Well, then, I guess you can just watch while I smoke alone. That okay?”

  This was David at his most annoying but also his most vulnerable. There was something sad and needy about the way he would inject himself into situations where he wasn’t necessarily wanted; and about the way he was unable to form a relationship that could span more than a few weeks. But just as you’d work up some compassion for David, he’d start behaving like an egotistical prick, and you’d understand why he was always alone.

  Although it was, by comparison, a rather trivial and benign encounter, this particular night has stuck with me over the years as a prime example not only of David’s roaring narcissism but of his tone-deafness—not from a musical standpoint, but in terms of interpersonal relations.

  David spent a few hours in our room that night, regaling us with stories that we had heard dozens of times but that he expected would provoke laughter or approval. He positioned himself for most of the evening in a chair that faced a mirror. I do not believe this was an accident, as David’s affection for his own reflection by now bordered on the pathological. And so, as he told his stories and took drags on a joint, he would periodically pause and vamp for himself in the mirror—lowering his eyes, sucking in his cheeks, giggling in a come-hither manner.

  “I’m hungry,” David said at one point. “Let’s order some food.” He called Eddie Anderson and asked him to run out to an Indian restaurant and bring something back.

  I protested, to no avail.

  “David, no offense intended, but I’m not a big fan of Indian food. Can we get something else?”

  He waved a hand dismissively.

  “Nah, you’ll love it. Trust me.”

  I looked at Jan. She shook her head and tried not to laugh. This was David in a nutshell. It wasn’t like I hadn’t ever tried Indian food. For Christ’s sake, I had traveled around the world multiple times. Of course I had tried Indian food! I knew what I liked and did not like.

  None of this mattered to David. He was, as always, unconcerned with anyone but himself. And so, like weary subjects before a clueless and arrogant emperor, we sat in my hotel room all night, eating terrible Indian food (Jan actually got sick from it and stayed away from Indian food for many years afterward), listening to stale stories, and watching David, stoned out of his gourd, fall in love with his own reflection.

  It was tedious . . . it was sad . . . it was intensely weird . . . it was old. And it made me realize how close we were to the end.

  WE WERE WITH THE MONSTERS OF ROCK TOUR as it invaded Sweden and Switzerland and finally Germany. There was a show in Karlsruhe on September 1, and then, on September 2, in Nuremberg, which would turn out to be the last live performance by the original Van Halen lineup. And what an appropriately creepy and depressing venue it was.

  The sprawling Zeppelinfeld complex was a place of enormous historical significance and weight. Originally named in the early part of the twentieth century, after Ferdinand von Zeppelin landed one of his dirigibles on the grounds, the Zeppelinfeld was redesigned and expanded a few decades later by Albert Speer, the favorite architect of Adolf Hitler. The complex included a stadium that could seat nearly 200,000 people, and it was here that the Nazi party held many of its biggest rallies, and where the Führer delivered his hate-filled diatribes. We played at a newer stadium on the same grounds, but the original stadium was still there, although not in great shape, and the sense of history that permeated the grounds was palpable. The place was so acoustically perfect that you could imagine every word being heard from the podium without much amplification at all. And yet, knowing the substance of those speeches, and their impact on the entire world, and the waves of death they inspired, it was hard not to be both moved and hugely saddened.

  There was nothing special about that last show, aside from the fact that it was indeed the last show. Had the band known it was such an important milestone, maybe they would have done things differently; then again, maybe not. As it happened, Van Halen churned through another superlative set, giving no indication that the end was near. Well, almost no indication. The band’s final song was a cover of “Happy Trails,” a song Van Halen rarely performed live, but one that could not have been more appropriate under the circumstances. There was David, at the edge of the stage, his hair matted and his face glistening with sweat, growling out the final verse, as the band played on . . .

  Happy trails to you,

  Until we meet again.

  Happy trails to you,

  Keep smiling until then.

  The following day we boarded a luxury tour bus bound for Paris, where we would pick up our return flight home. It was a long, meandering ride through the lovely and scenic Black Forest of southwestern Germany. But what I mostly remember about that trip was the lack of euphoria and camaraderie that accompanied it. We were all tired—tired of the travel, tired of the tour, tired of each other. The trip home at the end of a tour usually feels celebratory; this time I was filled with resignation.

  At some point on that endless bus ride David sat down next to me and Jan. He’d been drinking and smoking weed, and immediately began holding court—talking a mile a minute, repeating old stories, all to the accompaniment of a Motown mix tape on his cassette recorder. Of everyone on the bus, David, at that moment, was probably in the least foul mood. He was looking forward to getting home and working on the mixing and promotion of his EP. He wanted to talk about this in great detail, but he had no interest in talking about Van Halen, and what the future might hold for the band that had brought him wealth and fame.

  As the bus rolled on, David began drinking harder and faster. He smoked more weed. There was cocaine all over the bus, and David partook of this, too. Eventually, and predictably, his mood began to sour. He got mean and nasty toward everyone on the bus—from his bandmates to the crew. Jan and I eventually made our escape and peeled off to a different section of the bus, leaving David talking to himself; eventually he fell asleep.

  A short time later, Jan informed me that she had to use the bathroom. Having already seen the lavatory, I warned her against it.

  “It’s broken,” I said. “There’s shit everywhere. Believe me, you don’t want to go in there. If you can hold on a little longer, I’ll make sure the driver stops in the next town, and you can find a clean ladies’ room.”

  But this was a tall order, for the distance between villages in the Black Forest can be extreme. At some point Jan made her way to the bathroom, with the hope that maybe the situation wasn’t quite as dire as she had been led to believe. This was a mistake. As she got to the back of the bus, she noticed that the door was partially open, and inside she could see the figure of a man on his hands and knees.

  That man was David Lee Roth.

  Drunk, stoned, and no doubt riddled by motion sickness and bus fumes, David’s head was deep in the bowl. Transfixed by the horror, Jan watched as David vomited into a toilet bowl that had already overflowed repeatedly. With his hands braced against the rim, his back rising and falling with each spasm of retching, he let his hair fall into the foulness of it all. It went on like this for what must have seemed like an eternity. Finally, she turned and walked away. When she sat down next to me, her face was ashen.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “David is in the bathroom getting sick,” she said. “And I don’t feel so good myself.”

  More than thirty years later Jan will sometimes still cringe at the memory of that incident, at the sight of one
of rock’s most famous and glamorous vocalists puking into a clogged toilet bowl in the back of a bus.

  “I can’t get that image out of my head,” she will say. “How long before it goes away?”

  My guess would be forever.

  18

  THE WRITING ON THE WALL

  In January 1985 I got a call from Alex. I figured this wasn’t a great sign, as I had heard very little from him or Edward in recent months. Most of my time was devoted to David, who had returned from the Monsters of Rock tour and immediately begun developing his solo career. He worked every day with me and Peter Angelus on developing a plan for his EP. As for the other guys? Well, they never came to the office, so my entire life, from a business standpoint, was now centered around David Lee Roth.

  It was, to say the least, depressing.

  More than once I found myself thinking, What am I doing here? I mean, the money was good—thanks to 1984, Van Halen was still generating vast revenue—but I was enormously frustrated and bored out of my mind. Van Halen, as an active musical entity, had almost ceased to exist.

  And the guys were so difficult to manage. Sometimes I’d catch myself thinking about what it had been like seven years (or even three years), earlier, when they were straight, or at least half straight, and still hungry and playful, and I’d be overcome with melancholy. Van Halen should have been the biggest band in the world. But it wasn’t. It was a band on hiatus . . . a band with no direction. David Lee Roth and Edward Van Halen were seminal figures in the world of hard rock, and now they were barely speaking to each other. And when they did speak, they didn’t speak politely. They had different interests and different goals. In a sense, they were like parents going through a divorce; they just didn’t know it. And I was like a kid caught in the middle.

  A call from Alex was one of many dominoes that would fall in the ensuing months. I could tell by the tone of his voice that he was uncomfortable—the way someone sounds when they are making a call they have been avoiding for some time.

  “Hey, Noel, we have to do some business,” Alex said.

  “Sure thing, Al. What did you have in mind?”

  There was a long pause.

  “Well, I’d like you to come with me to meet with our accountant. We’re going to go over the books together.”

  Holy shit . . .

  My heart began racing—not because I feared the discovery of any illicit activity (I knew I could account for every penny that passed through our organization) but simply because of what this represented: the first step (and an obvious one) toward having me removed as manager. It was a fairly standard tactic: try to prove financial malfeasance rather than admit you simply want to replace your manager because you’d rather work with someone else. I was intimately familiar with this strategy but tried not to let on.

  “Sure, Al. No problem.”

  The next day Al picked me up and we drove together to the office of our accountant, Michael Karlin, who had been working with us for years. When I got there I was somewhat surprised (although not shocked) to see that Alex had invited Valerie Bertinelli’s financial adviser, who was now apparently consulting for Edward and Alex, too. This could have been a sticky situation, but I knew that I had truth and honesty in my favor. By the time I got there, Michael had everything laid out—expenditures and profits on touring, merchandising, record sales . . . everything. And as he and the moneyman went over the figures, it became apparent that there wasn’t so much as a nickel out of place. Not only that, but when the numbers stare at you in that way, they don’t lie.

  “Wow, you guys have really done well,” Michael said.

  The moneyman nodded in agreement.

  Al just sort of sat there looking bewildered and vaguely unhappy. I’m not sure exactly what he expected would come of this meeting, but he couldn’t have thought they’d be placing a gold star on my forehead. Yet that’s basically what happened.

  We made uncomfortable small talk on the drive home. As I got out of the car, Al smiled and thanked me for my time, as if an unnecessary financial review—which by nature is accusatory and threatening—was no big deal. I bit my tongue and said, “Anytime, Al, don’t worry about it.”

  As he drove away, I muttered under my breath, “You little fucker.”

  The writing was on the wall by now, and I decided to go down swinging. Seven years into my tenure as the manager of Van Halen, I still didn’t have a legitimate contract. Just the same old month-to-month deal under which I had labored since 1978. Every time I thought about this it made me angry. I had gotten them out of an onerous contract with their record label and negotiated a new and lucrative contract that pushed the band to a place of prosperity and prominence. Financially speaking, we had all done very well, but I had no financial security, and after seeing what the guys had done to Michael Anthony, I knew I had to at least try to protect myself. I had my personal attorney write a formal request to the band asking for a new and long-term contract on my behalf.

  I didn’t demand anything unreasonable—just the same share I had always received. What I wanted was security, to ensure, for example, that I wouldn’t suddenly be cut out of the proceeds from merchandising, a venture I had started and turned into one of the most profitable parts of the Van Halen brand. I didn’t ask for a greater percentage of anything. I simply asked for a real contract, one that reflected the industry standard: seven years, guaranteed. That way, at least, I’d be protected. If Van Halen wanted to replace me with a new manager, they’d have to buy out my contract. That much I had earned.

  But the protection would not kick in until after I had a signed contract. Under the current arrangement, I could be terminated at any time, for any reason, on thirty days’ notice. So, if they viewed my overture as threatening or ungrateful or simply an impediment to doing what they really wanted to do—which was to hire a new manager—as it stood, they could simply swat me out of the way. I knew this. I understood the risks. But I figured I was on the way out anyway, so I had nothing to lose. Maybe, I thought, this will prompt a period of reflection, followed by appreciation.

  Or not.

  The truth is, I had lost Van Halen; more important, they had lost themselves. I referred to them, only half-jokingly, as a DEA band: drugs, ego, alcohol. I really wondered how it had all fallen apart. Van Halen in 1978 had all the promise in the world. And the hunger to make good on that promise. They had the most gifted and innovative guitar player I’d ever heard; they had a brilliant front man; and they had a good drummer and a good backing bass player—competent musicians who understood their supporting roles and played them well. It didn’t matter that Alex wasn’t John Bonham or that Michael wasn’t John Entwistle. They didn’t need to be. They simply had to show up and keep time. More than anything else, a bass player and drummer must be in synch; on that level, Michael and Alex were perfect. They were right for each other and for Van Halen. Without Van Halen? Well, my personal opinion is that both Michael and Alex would have struggled. Gifted artists abound in the music business—some of the very best are unknown to the layperson simply because they spend most of their time in the studio, doing session work as independent contractors. These guys neither need nor want the headache and stress that comes with being part of a band, the touring and the bickering and the endless struggle to break through on a major scale. Instead, they go to a comfortable studio every day and work with an eclectic mix of artists. They are handsomely compensated because they know how to do the job right, every time. They live relatively stress-free lives, and they want to keep it that way, thank you very much.

  They are also insanely talented and completely reliable. In sum, they are consummate professionals in every sense of the word. Alex and Michael might have found the session world somewhat challenging. But as long as they were under the umbrella of Van Halen, they were protected. They were solid musicians who found the perfect vehicle and became superstars. I felt bad that Michael had been pushed to the periphery and I worried about what might become of him without
Van Halen. I had a harder time working up much sympathy for Alex.

  While three-fourths of Van Halen sat around waiting for divine inspiration, David Lee Roth proceeded, like a force of nature, with his plans to release a solo EP. To put it mildly, this was not the type of venture that David’s fans would have anticipated, but it was very much in keeping with the sample he had played for me on the Concorde several months earlier, and in fact did not stray far from the flamboyant cabaret act that had long been trying to break through David’s hard rock exterior.

  The four-song EP, Crazy from the Heat, was released on January 28, and almost instantly became a polarizing entry in the Van Halen/David Lee Roth canon. Many fans hated it. Some found it interesting and fun. For David, though, the EP’s primary purpose was not to placate or even entertain the legions of Van Halen fans but rather, to broaden his own audience and expand upon his brand by trying something different, while simultaneously recording the kind of music that he actually liked. David was into high-energy party music, and not just of the pop metal variety. He was a big fan of Motown, for example, as his personal mix tapes often reflected. On that level there is no denying that Crazy from the Heat was an unqualified success. Critical response might have been lukewarm, at best, but the EP was embraced by Top 40 radio stations and fans alike (these things go hand in hand), spawning two hit singles and popular videos that propelled the EP to platinum status.

  In other words, David Lee Roth had very quickly positioned himself as a bona fide superstar solo act—a campy, cheesy solo act, to be sure, but I don’t think that bothered him in the least. The David who pranced around beaches in the video for “California Girls”? The guy who strutted about playfully while crooning a Louis Prima–inspired medley of “Just a Gigolo” and “I Ain’t Got Nobody”?