by Ian Christe
The torch had been passed. When David Lee Roth victoriously opened bottles of champagne over the British crowd, he left Black Sabbath little room but to mop up after Van Halen’s party. The only cloud over the parade was that Sabbath’s British audience was just too male. Van Halen made up for lost time with an old-fashioned romp through the red-light district as soon as they hit Paris.
In Aberdeen, Scotland, the group learned of their first gold sales award. Celebrating both the gold record and their introduction to Glen-morangie scotch, they trashed their hotel room during a six-hour fire extinguisher fight. Since they had little to no Top 40 singles chart activity, the success of the album caught them by surprise. When the foam cleared, baton-wielding bobbies escorted the band out of the country, and Van Halen were not invited back to Scotland for almost two decades.
Van Halen were ushering in a huge change—they were a heavy metal band with obvious crossover appeal. But for all their black leather posturing and heavy metal riffage, they were equally at home onstage alongside the radio dreamboats in Journey. The secret formula was made up of equal servings of rebellious fire and old-time schmaltz like “Ice Cream Man.” The boys came for the guitar solos and flaming drums, the girls came for the bulging trousers and the winning smiles, and everyone went home happy. “Most of our songs you can sing along with,” Eddie explained in his first interview, “even though it does have the peculiar guitar and end-of-the-world drums.”
“I think a lot of Van Halen’s music could be construed as heavy metal,” Roth said. “A lot of it can’t be construed as any specific thing, except what we call ‘Big Rock.’ In essence that’s high-velocity music—we use volume to drive out the evil spirits. I see a lot of these categories as being based mostly on haircuts and shoes. My haircut’s alright for heavy metal, but baby my shoes are all wrong.”
Van Halen trekked to Japan for seven shows in late June, where they were hailed as conquering heroes. Jetting straight back to the States, the band arrived in Dallas, to play the first ever Texxas Jam on July 1. The other bands on the bill were strictly representative of the 1970s—including Cheech and Chong, Mahogany Rush, Eddie Money, and the Atlanta Rhythm Section. Arriving before their equipment, not for the first time Van Halen needed to borrow gear for the show. Funny, considering the later mass obsession over Eddie’s exact setup, Van Halen ripped apart eighty thousand Texas rockers with an early-afternoon detonation using rented equipment. “It was the most awesome show ever,” said Vinnie Paul of the Texas metal band Pantera, then a teenager.
Playing with Boston and Black Sabbath before fifty-six thousand people at Anaheim Stadium in California, Roth conceived a parachute stunt where a quartet of acrobatic skydivers would plummet from the sky onto the stage. During the mass confusion of the moment, the real wig-wearing daredevils ducked behind the amps, and Van Halen rushed onstage to fanatical enthusiasm wearing skydiver suits. Though he didn’t dive from a plane, Alex still managed to twist his ankle during the episode, tripping over a massive cable.
At the Day on the Green festival in Oakland, California, in July 1978, Eddie encountered a rock upperclassman, former Montrose singer Sammy Hagar. Eddie asked him why he quit his band, and Sammy told him that Ronnie Montrose, the bandleader, wouldn’t let him play guitar. “Ronnie Montrose was the type of guitarist who didn’t want another guitarist in the same building,” Sammy said.
After Van Halen’s show that day, Eddie granted what famously became his “first major interview” with writer Jas Obrecht of Guitar Player. Eddie seemed almost unsure that he deserved the attention. “I’m always thinking music,” he said. “I’m always trying to think of riffs, using my head. Like sometimes people think I’m spacing off, but I’m not really. I’m thinking about music.”
Van Halen were assaulting the monsters of rock on their own terms and winning. The other young bands playing Hollywood in 1978 were mostly punks or new wavers like Devo, X, and the Germs, who attacked from below—the punks couldn’t beat Peter Frampton at his own game, so they changed the rules successfully. Van Halen went gunning for the majors head-on. They knew all of Aerosmith and ZZ Top’s tricks—they had been practicing them for years in backyard parties.
In October, Van Halen went platinum, a stunning mark for a debut album. It would remain on the Billboard charts for over three years—a total of 169 weeks. Edward bought a Porsche 911e Targa and practiced not smashing himself into pieces with it.
At the end of the year, Warner Bros. threw a party for their newest platinum playthings at the Body Shop strip club in Hollywood. Newly annointed manager Marshall Berle wheeled out his legendary uncle Milton to present Van Halen with their shiny wall plaques. Afterward, the Van Halen brothers went back to their parents’ small house, where the whole family still lived. Thanks to the amazing math of the record business, where every limo and light bulb is eventually charged back to the band, for their labors Van Halen now owed Warner Bros. close to a million bucks for expenses paid on their behalf.
5. Back in the Saddle
The production plan for Van Halen’s second album was simple: If at first you succeed wildly, retrace your steps and try, try again. The band returned to Studio 1 at Sunset Sound Recorders on December 10, 1978, within a week of completing its first world tour. Eddie was stressed out trying to bring the band down from full party mode. “I was trying to wake the guys up,” he said, “saying ‘Hey guys, we’ve got to chill out a little bit, because we’ve got another record to do’ ”
Within a week the album was nearly finished—despite the success of the first record, their label allegedly gave them a smaller recording budget the second time around. Many of the tracks used were first takes. Though Eddie publicly mentioned his desire to bring electronic synthesizers into the mix, no such drastic changes were made. If anything, the songs were more focused, pointed rockers—probably because the more dynamic songs had been cherry-picked into service for Van Halen.
Van Halen II kept the party rolling at close to full steam. At Sunset Sound they recorded with an old Putnam 610 console, a not at all state-of-the-art mixing desk that dated to the 1950s. Everyone from Frank Sinatra to the Doors to Walt Disney’s animated movies had recorded using that same equipment—a good representative survey of Van Halen’s forefathers and influences.
There were fewer dizzying peaks than the debut, but the debauch-ery was more up front. The record was more fun, showing that the band wasn’t just some lethal-precision hit squad from Southern California. They laughed at themselves during a bebop bit in “Bottoms Up!” and offered a timeless pop single in “Dance the Night Away.” Written on the spot in the studio, the song was inspired by a drunk woman who had sex with her boyfriend in the back parking lot of Walter Mitty’s in full view of the band, then danced for hours in the front row of the club with her jeans put on backward.
Though Roth’s aerial spread-eagle jump on the back cover was supposed to look like just another day at the dude ranch, it was a staged stunt for the photo shoot. On the third try, the singer landed sideways and broke a bone in his foot. The last panel in that Bazooka Joe comic could be found inside the sleeve—a photo of Roth with his bare foot bandaged, holding a cane while entertaining a bevy of nurses.
Released thirteen months after the first album on March 23, 1979, Van Halen II went gold the following month, and platinum the month after that. It peaked at number 6 on the strength of “Beautiful Girls” and the Top 20 success of “Dance the Night Away.”
The record kicked off with Clint Ballard Jr.’s “You’re No Good,” also the lead track on a number 1 1974 album by California soft rocker Linda Ronstadt. Now the boys of noise were repurposing her broken heart for their own needs. Stepping lightly with a volume-swell guitar intro, the track kicked in like a comeuppance to all the feel-good mellow fellows of the West Coast music establishment.
Alex identified “Light Up the Sky” as the band’s true musical direction at the time, or at least his personal preference—a swerving metallic number with a ten
der underbelly, stop-start rhythms, and a flashy guitar solo. He dismissed “You’re No Good” as “somebody else’s idea of a hit single”—presumably Templeman, who remained a record company man at heart, always looking to deliver chart action from the bands he produced.
Eddie’s guitar ran thick through the mix, deftly spinning pirouettes around the thrust of the songs. He still declined to double his rhythm tracks. To thicken his “brown” guitar sound, he preferred to turn up the volume, overdrive the circuits, and let the amplifiers crackle with natural warmth. The beautiful bell-like intro to “Women in Love” would stand as one of his proudest moments.
For “Spanish Fly,” another of Eddie’s high points, he played on an ordinary Ovation nylon-string guitar. An acoustic flamenco-style answer to the electricity of “Eruption,” the one-minute solo still relied self-referentially on tapping. While guitarists were still reeling from his finger-tapping innovations on the first album, now Eddie was admon-ishing his acolytes with tapped harmonics, opening another vocabulary for lead guitar.
The band returned to the demo sessions for the first album, bringing back club-pleasers like “Somebody Get Me a Doctor,” “D.O.A.,” and the Deep Purple–influenced “Bottoms Up!” with its blasting backup vocals. Likewise, “Outta Love Again” was one of the oldest Van Halen songs, dating to before Mike had joined the band. “Beautiful Girls” had also appeared on the Templeman demos under the name “Bring On the Girls”—the album version made the band’s horny teenage approach to courtship a little nicer.
More than on the first album, producer Templeman’s mellow Doobie Brothers chops shone through. Yet according to Roth, “When Van Halen II was recorded and ready to go, everybody at Warners thought it was a failure.” Van Halen were succeeding underneath the radar of their own corporate masters.
From March to October 1979, Van Halen embarked on their first headlining tour, suitably dubbed the “World Vacation.” No longer only along for the ride, they were doing heavy lifting—thirty-six tons of gear were required to get the show on the road. Streamlining their operation, they did lose a little luggage by firing Marshall Berle and promoting Noel Monk to band manager as a reward for his success as road manager.
The band now dressed in striped overload—thin stripes, thick stripes, vertical stripes, and horizontal stripes. “We know that people come to see bands that look and act special,” Roth said, “and that’s why we dress in some outrageous costumes and put on a visual show, live right in front of your naked steaming eyeballs. We’ve got the tightest pants in the business.”
He was right—to kids who switched off the tube ten seconds before heading to a Van Halen concert, the band looked like Charlie’s Angels—two shag brunettes and a feathered blonde with a short, squat Bosley on bass guitar. The Van Halen generation was raised on The Partridge Family, where every family had a rock band in their garage. Now Van Halen were trying to put on a pop spectacle that could compete with The Six Million Dollar Man and Love, American Style. They blessed their crowds with the gracious bounty of everything rock and roll and a little technology could offer, then hoped the fans would provide the rest.
The tour started with a roar, and the second week the band played before 106,000 at the California World Music fest, joining heavyweights Aerosmith, Toto, UFO, Cheap Trick, and Ted Nugent—bands that Van Halen would have stood in line to see just a year earlier. That night, Van Halen and three hundred close friends arrived in a convoy of sixteen limousines. David Lee Roth presided over the backstage, joined by a chimpanzee dressed like him and two little persons hired as bodyguards.
The band concocted an elaborate stunt for the show, at the expense of Aerosmith. On a grassy incline behind the stage, visible to the crowd, a $100 yellow Volkswagen was parked throughout the day. Periodically, someone at the soundboard would make an announcement asking for “someone in the Aerosmith organization to please move their car.” Van Halen had arranged for a Sherman tank to roll out onto the field before their set and crush the “Aerosmith” car, but apparently word leaked to Aerosmith and the caper was curtailed before any military hardware could be deployed. The party still stormed well into the next day, leaving many casualties, including Dave—he fainted onstage in Spokane, Washington, five days afterward. He later blamed a stomach virus.
Their quest for carnage was soon satisfied in July at the Illinois State Armory in Springfield. According to the State Journal-Register, the band destroyed a limousine there and started a fire that caused $2,000 worth of damage. They were stopped overnight for a police investigation, forcing a cancellation of the Cincinnati show the next night.
Tour mishaps became growing experiences as the band struggled to keep up with its success. Backstage sex movies, drug abuse, and clashing egos came with the territory—though the Van Halen brothers remained close, often sharing hotel rooms. “When we started out, the emphasis was on sex, drugs, and rock and roll,” Alex told Guitar Player. “Forget the drug part, we’ll drink ourselves to death. You do your tour—two hours onstage—and then get the hell out of there so you can get laid!”
The band took rock hedonism to new levels. When they found something that made them laugh—like a sex shop in Cleveland overloaded with inflatable love dolls—they shared it with the audience, hanging a full harem of lingerie-laden air hoochies from the lighting rafters. The fans got laid, the band got laid, and their crew and business associates got laid. Even the journalists sent out to cover the band got laid. “What happens after our show isn’t that different than [what] happens on a lot of tours,” Dave explained. “It’s just that we’re the ones who will let you take a picture.”
A Van Halen concert was a constantly shimmying rock variety show packed with as many highlights as imaginable. When you went to see the Who, you had to wait a while to see Pete Townshend’s windmills. At a Led Zeppelin show, Jimmy Page didn’t break out the violin bow for his guitar until the second hour. But with Van Halen, the money shots started the moment Roth made his stage entrance with the bang of the lights and flying aerial splits off the drum riser.
The impact of Van Halen’s early streaks across the United States was tremendous and far-reaching. Kirk Hammett of Metallica saw them play in Oakland in 1978. Henry Rollins—then still Henry Garfield—and his pal Ian MacKaye, the future leader of Minor Threat and Fugazi, watched Van Halen open for Ted Nugent and were amazed. And not only the young minds were impressed. Leslie West of Mountain, a band Van Halen had covered, was deep into drug problems, and claimed he had all but abandoned playing guitar until witnessing Eddie Van Halen opening for Journey in 1978.
Also apparently fallen under the spell of Eddie was guitarist Rick Derringer, who began copying Eddie’s guitar solo while opening shows for Van Halen on the tour. He crossed the line when he began ending his sets with a certain Kinks cover. “After the show, we’re sitting in the bar,” Eddie told Guitar Player’s Jas Obrecht. “I said ‘Hey Rick, I grew up on your ass. How can you do this? I don’t care if you use the technique—don’t play my melody.’ And he’s going, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ The next night he does my solo again, and he ends the set with ‘You Really Got Me,’ which is exactly what we do. So I kicked him off.”
Not everyone appreciated the hot-dog approach to making music. Seasoned rock fans saw all the glitz and powder as a distraction, a sug-ary substitute for the integrity found in rock songwriters like Bruce Springsteen or Patti Smith. “There is a lot of wizardry and technique at work here,” Roth defended himself during a TV interview. “We just don’t bang on it and bang on it to show you how artistic we are. But hey, we’re from California!”
A measure of respect arrived when Eddie was voted guitarist of the year in Guitar Player in 1979. By now, there were legitimate guitar manufacturers betting their entire business on single-pickup models based on Eddie’s homemade Strat. The band celebrated with friends by going out for pizza and beer. Unlike Roth, Eddie was not the type of person to put himself on a pedestal. The world would be glad to do that for him. Billb
oard ’s year-end chart for 1979 placed both Van Halen albums in the Top 40.
For the third album, Women and Children First, the band ran on momentum, even spinning its wheels a little. If Van Halen was an approaching comet, and II was the heat of that approach, then Women and Children First was a kind of afterglow—a chance for everyone to gather their wits and take stock of everything that had happened.
The instrumental tracks were recorded in four days and the vocals added afterward in six days. Inside of a week later, they had a finished record. “I don’t think we’ll ever be confused with Fleetwood Mac or Steely Dan, who spend jillions of dollars and years in the studio just to make one record,” Roth guffawed in Hit Parader. “How boring can you get, man? I like to think that all we’re really trying to do is capture some of our youthful enthusiasm.”
Missing some of the overall energy of the first two records, Women and Children First showed signs of road fatigue. However, the record benefited from three great tracks on side one: the slow-motion power anthem “And the Cradle Will Rock,” the explosive “Everybody Wants Some,” and the frisky “Romeo Delight,” which became the band’s new show opener. Notably, for the first time there were no cover songs.
The powerhouse opener, “And the Cradle Will Rock,” featured the band’s first use of keyboards, an old Wurlitzer disguised by bristling distortion that came from playing it through a Marshall guitar amp. No longer allowed the endless club dates that had honed their past material and defined the songwriting process, Eddie and Alex played the main riff to the song together in Dr. Roth’s basement two hours a day for two weeks to fuse the feeling in all the right places.
“Everybody Wants Some” was a hymn to horniness, with Roth launching off-the-cuff into some trash talk directed toward a woman visiting the studio control room. The song’s subtext was the band blowing off steam about a syndrome they were experiencing of former friends, rivals, and complete strangers hitting them up for handouts. Onlookers saw the silver outfits and limousines and started thinking about what they could get from Van Halen. While the band had recently played L.A. Forum, for example, some scheming stoners had broken into Jan and Eugenia Van Halen’s house and stolen two dozen framed platinum albums, thinking the awards were cast from precious actual platinum.