Runnin' with the Devil

by Noel Monk

  That guy was the real David Lee Roth.

  A great many Van Halen fans might have found this version of Diamond Dave repellent, but I honestly think it was liberating for him to finally unleash his inner lounge singer. And while I hated every song on the EP, even as I promoted the hell out of it, there is no arguing with success. Whether David had deliberately sabotaged Van Halen or merely planned properly and judiciously for a post-VH future, he had successfully taken the next step toward independence, and had done it in a fashion that was at once shameless and sly. Consider, for example, the winking third-person reference: “I’m just a gigolo, and everywhere I go, people know the part Dave’s playing!”

  Or did they? Was this just a temporary version of Dave? An experimental side project to fill time between Van Halen projects? Or a big fat, feather boa of a fuck you to the band that had made him a household name?

  If it was the latter, David never let on. Whenever he was interviewed—and that happened a lot during the six months after the release of Crazy from the Heat—he repeatedly insisted that his heart still belonged to the band from Pasadena. He was merely flexing his creative muscles, trying to avoid typecasting, because, you know, Diamond Dave doesn’t like to be put in a box.

  Or some such nonsense.

  Who the fuck knows? I was with David all the time in those days, and I had trouble separating the sincerity from the shit. The guy was impenetrable.

  In some ways it was easier to deal with Alex, whose alcoholism could make him angry, vindictive, and manipulative, but also rather transparent. David was much harder to read. Which is why I did not know what to make of the call I received from David in early February ’85. Most of my conversations with David in those days naturally revolved around his solo career, but this time he wanted to talk about Van Halen. He said the band wanted to have a meeting with me. The topic, he said, was my role as Van Halen’s manager.

  “The guys want to talk about the offer you’ve made,” he said. “Is that okay?”

  I said that it was, and suggested we have the meeting at my house, since it was easier than going to our office in LA. David said fine. Before he hung up, however, he informed me that Michael would not be part of the meeting, since he was no longer a full partner.

  “Okay,” I said, trying to sound calm, though for some reason that small piece of news struck me as ominous. But not nearly as portentous as what he said next.

  “Noel, I have to tell you something,” he said. “You’d better watch out for Al.”

  “Really?” I said, feigning surprise.

  “Yeah. I can’t tell you any more than that. Just be careful.”

  Now, you might reasonably ask why David would give me any advance notice about what was to come, and the answer was simple: at the same time that my departure was being engineered by Al, David was planning his own exit. And, frankly, he wanted me to be part of that strategy. He figured if I was fired by Van Halen, I’d be eager to help orchestrate his career. In other words, he was sort of working both sides of the street. A more generous reading of the situation would be that David honestly felt we were friends, which only speaks to how deluded he really was.

  The next day we got together at my house. Al and Edward drove over together, while David, as usual, rode his bicycle. It was the first time in several months that I had been in the same room with Alex, Edward, and David. Hell, it was probably the first time the three of them had been in a room together. It felt weird to be conducting official band business without Michael present, but clearly the parameters of our organization had changed. We were no longer a family; we were a business entity that was breaking apart.

  It’s funny the way certain events in your life become not just memories but something closer to archival footage, forever playing on a loop in your mind’s eye. All you have to do is press play. Sometimes you don’t even have to do that. The video just starts on its own, whether you want to relive it or not. And it never loses clarity. I can still see Alex and David sitting together on my sofa, Al appearing grim, and David looking like he wanted to run out of the room. I see Edward lying on the floor directly in front of them, his eyes glassy, as usual, but his ever-present smile strangely missing. Edward used to remind me of Pig-Pen, the Peanuts character forever surrounded by a cloud of dust. In Edward’s case the cloud was white and stemmed from his intractable use of cocaine. As he shifted his weight from one arm to the other, tiny little puffs of white powder rose like talcum from his shirt. He was obviously high, but not happy. But then, “happy” was a word that rarely applied to Van Halen at that time.

  For what seemed like an eternity, we sat there in silence, no one willing to get the meeting started. I felt like I was hosting my own execution—in my own home. So, what the hell? Why not just pull the trigger myself?

  “Okay, boys,” I began. “What have you decided?”

  They all exchanged glances. Obviously, they hadn’t developed a strategy for the meeting. To my surprise, Edward spoke first.

  “You know I love you, right, Noel? And I’ll always want you around . . . to be part of this.”

  I shrugged. “Thanks, Ed. What does that mean?”

  Edward looked at the floor, then at his big brother. Ed’s reaction was so sad and weak that I almost felt bad for him. On cue, Alex assumed the role of enforcer.

  “Noel, here’s the way it is. We’re not going to give you a long-term contract.”

  There was a pause . . . an opening for me to speak . . . but I opted to remain silent. I didn’t want to make this any easier for Al or for any of them. Moreover, I had nothing to say. If this was indeed my execution, I would not go down screaming and crying. I would leave the world of Van Halen rather stoically.

  “In fact,” Alex continued, “we’re not giving you a contract at all. We’ve decided we’re not going to give you any of the merchandising, we’re not giving you any of the publishing. We’re not giving you any royalties or touring revenue. All we want you to do is book our tour.”

  Another long pause as Alex waited for me to say . . . something. I did not. I just stared at him.

  “Noel,” he finally said, “we’re getting new management.”

  I had been staring hard at Al, but the sound of someone trying to catch his breath caught my attention. I looked at David. There were tears rolling down his cheeks.

  Come on, Dave! Get a grip!

  I’m not sure what was going through David’s mind at that moment. The silence in the room eventually prodded Al into offering a few vague and feeble reasons for my dismissal—it’s time for a change, we want to move in a new direction, that sort of thing. The only specific thing he mentioned regarding my performance was his disappointment over losing the Sparkomatic endorsement to Supertramp. I didn’t even have time to respond to that bit of nonsense; David beat me to it.

  “That . . . that wasn’t Noel’s fault,” he said, his voice hiccupping through the tears. “That was my fault. I fucked it up.”

  Alex gave David a hard and quizzical look, and I realized then that Alex was hearing this news for the very first time.

  Holy fucking God. . . . David never told them what really happened!

  Anyway, water under the bridge, or over the dam, or wherever the hell it is that water goes when the damage is done. It might have been nice for David to demonstrate some accountability before they had decided to shit-can the manager, but I’m not sure it would have made much of a difference. There were personal factors in play here that rendered any reasonable arguments about performance superfluous. That much was obvious. The contract I negotiated on their behalf had doubled the band’s income, and would continue to do so for many years. Apparently, that had been forgotten. So, too, had the fact that these guys weren’t even interested in a merchandising venture until I put it all together for them and showed them how much money we could make.

  And now they were going to cut me out of that very same business? As if I’d had nothing to do with it?

  This was a very cold r
oom, indeed.

  After all I had done for Van Halen—after dedicating my entire life to the band for the previous seven years—I was left with virtually nothing. I was no longer the band’s manager. I wasn’t even the road manager. The small and meatless bone they tossed my way was a meager stipend to book their next tour and then get the fuck out of the way. In retrospect, it seems incredible. And yet, at the time, I wasn’t even surprised.

  As much as I disliked Al by then, he was the only member of the group behaving somewhat like a grown-up in this particular meeting. David sat on the couch with his face buried in his hands, unable to speak after coming clean about the Sparkomatic endorsement. And Edward? Prone on the floor, hungover and coked out, he could barely muster anything more than utter passivity.

  “Ed, would you care to weigh in on any of this?” I said at one point, though I’m not sure why. I guess it’s because Edward was the one member of the band for whom I had always felt genuine affection. On some level I wanted to hold him accountable for what was happening. But Ed was much too weak and too far gone to get involved.

  “Whatever Al wants,” he said, his eyes brimming with tears. “I can’t fight with him anymore.”

  A few minutes later it was over. The last thing I said, as I walked them to the door, was, “It’s been a pleasure, guys.”

  There was no response, just a nod from Alex and muted sniffling from Edward and David. As the boys walked away, Jan came out of our bedroom. We stood together and watched out the front window. For a moment they stopped at the end of the driveway and began talking to each other. The conversation quickly became animated—it looked like David and Alex were arguing, though I can’t be sure. But it ended quickly. David hopped on his bike and pedaled away, and the brothers Van Halen got into their car and drove off into the California sunset.

  I never spoke with any of them again.

  A few weeks later Jan went into the hospital. She’d been sick for some time, and had finally reached the point where surgical intervention was required to remove adhesions in her abdomen. It was a painful procedure and an even more painful recuperation, but she tolerated both with courage and good humor, as she did just about every inconvenience in her life. I was sitting by Jan’s hospital bed one day, holding her hand, when a nurse entered the room carrying a large vase filled with roses and other flowers. It was beautiful, and the very sight of it brought a smile to Jan’s face.

  “Who are they from?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Let’s take a look.” There was a small envelope on a plastic pitchfork in the middle of the arrangement. I plucked it from its perch and removed a card. Inscribed on it was a brief message:

  “Get well, Jan!”

  It was “signed” by Van Halen. Not individually, by each member of the band, but rather by the band as a sterile corporate entity.

  I looked at Jan and tried to muster a smile. She shrugged, squeezed my hand tighter. Neither of us knew what to say. On one hand, it was nice of them to at least acknowledge Jan’s illness, even in this small and perfunctory way. On the other hand . . .

  Fuck you guys.

  A half hour later, as karmic support of this response, I got a phone call from my attorney. We exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes, he asked how Jan was doing, and then he got to the reason for his call.

  “The band just sent over your termination letter,” he said. “You have officially been fired.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yeah . . . They’re giving you thirty days to clean out your office and turn over all band property. I’m sorry, Noel.”

  There was no reason to apologize. The news was hardly unexpected. Still, to receive it in the same hour that flowers had been sent to my wife’s bedside? That was harsh. And it couldn’t have been merely coincidental. Someone in the band, or a representative of the band, had sat down that morning with a “to-do” list, and among the items on that list were the following:

  Send flowers to Janice Monk

  Fire Noel Monk

  If it weren’t so sad and utterly lacking in compassion, you’d almost have to laugh. Actually, go ahead and laugh anyway. I know I did.

  Predictably, the band went on the offensive at this point. It wasn’t enough simply to fire me; they had to challenge my reputation as well, starting with a demand that all financial records for the past seven years be thoroughly and painstakingly reviewed. Through my attorney I heard that Alex was behind all of this, which did not surprise me in the least. He demanded a line audit to trace every penny spent on the band since I had taken over as manager. Adding insult to injury? I was required to pay for one-fifth of the audit. But that’s okay. I knew I had nothing to hide. Whatever else I might have been, I was as honest and diligent a manager as you could hope to find. And, after some time and expense, that is precisely what the audit revealed. Not a single dime was deemed missing or poorly invested.

  I had been vindicated.

  That was small consolation given all that I had lost: my band, my livelihood, my raison d’être. I had waited years for a band like Van Halen to come along, and when it finally did, I gave every ounce of my being to the cause. For it to end the way it did was nothing short of heartbreaking.

  For a while I didn’t do much of anything. I still believe that David wanted me to be his manager and expected me to call. Together we could have ridden his solo career for a while. But I had no interest in that, so I never picked up the phone, and David never reached out to me. The EP was followed by a solo album and finally, in August, the news Van Halen fans already suspected was confirmed by Edward in an interview with Rolling Stone: David Lee Roth had left the band.

  Over the years, it has been rumored that David left Van Halen on April 1, 1985—a supposed nod to his skewed sense of humor (you know—April Fool’s Day). But that story is somewhat apocryphal. The truth is, as with most such breakups, it happened over a period of months and after much discussion and acrimony between the principals. In addition to the obvious personality conflicts, there were two primary issues: Edward’s desire for a slower recording pace and less time on the road, and David’s desire to be King of the World. It wasn’t enough for David to be the voice of Van Halen; he wanted to have a solo career, he wanted to be a movie star! Indeed, this was perhaps the final straw. David had plans to develop and star in a movie that would share the title of his EP (and, later, his autobiography), Crazy from the Heat. He sought not only Ed’s approval for this vanity project but also his creative input: he wanted Edward to help score the movie.

  And therein lies the fundamental difference between the two major personalities behind Van Halen. Edward likely viewed this overture as an affront to both Van Halen and to his own personal integrity. David, on the other hand, no doubt thought that Edward should have been flattered.

  The term irreconcilable differences comes to mind. And the funny thing is, I understood both sides. It’s actually amazing that they made their partnership work for as long as they did.

  As for me . . . I went through the various stages of grief, which included the filing of a lawsuit, the purpose of which was to recoup lost revenue and—as with any lawsuit—to exact at least a small measure of revenge. In neither case did it help much. Shortly after I was fired, the band began liquidating assets, including the building and all equipment associated with our merchandising operation. This was a deal worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. I did not receive a penny. Based on this deal and the forfeiture of proceeds from Van Halen revenue going forward, I sued for several million dollars. We settled “amicably” for a fraction of that amount. Among the conditions of that settlement were that no one reveal the exact dollar figure, but trust me, it was a pittance. Moving forward, I was not allowed to profit from anything associated with the band’s name or logo, and I was specifically forbidden for an extended period of time from publishing a book or producing a movie related to my time with the band.

  Fortunately, the statute of limitations on that one has expired, so no
w I can tell my story, and the story of Van Halen, as it really happened.

  Okay, I know what you’re thinking. Van Halen did not end in 1985. David left the band, and Sammy Hagar was brought in as a replacement. To me, that band was not Van Halen; it was, as others have said, Van Hagar. No offense to Sammy; I’ve not heard bad things about him, and he is a decent vocalist, certainly more versatile and blessed with a broader range than David Lee Roth. But it was never about technical proficiency with David; it was about attitude and showmanship and ego—the ability to will yourself into the spotlight, to take a song and own it. David knew how to do that like few singers in rock ’n’ roll history, and if his arrogance and ego sometimes brought out the worst in his bandmates . . . well, it also brought out the best in them.

  Van Hagar sold a few million albums and filled arenas for a while, but the band lacked the sound and swagger that made Van Halen unique. I know Van Hagar has its supporters and critics, and both camps can be extremely passionate and voluble. I fall into neither camp. I simply don’t care.

  I’ve not spoken to anyone in the band since we parted ways, although I nearly crossed paths with David a couple years later. Jan and I spent the better part of 1986 traveling around the world—a delayed and very extended honeymoon, you might say. After we came home, I thought about getting back in the business. One night Jan and I went to the Roxy to see a new band. After the show we went backstage to introduce ourselves, and there, waiting in the wings, was Van Halen’s former security chief, Eddie Anderson.

  “Noel!” he said, pulling me in for a bear hug. “How have you been?”

  I had always liked Eddie and we had enjoyed a great relationship. It was nice to see him. We talked for a few minutes, and then Eddie excused himself. He returned quickly while Jan and I were still backstage, waiting to meet with the band. I could tell that something was bothering him.

  “You guys know I love you, right?” Eddie said, his voice shaking.