by Ian Christe
Still dipping into the fertile songwriting well of their formative years, “Fools” was a thumping track that had been with Van Halen since before Michael Anthony. A basic blues bomp, the song had character, but it was easy to see why it had been passed over on the first two albums. A better early track resurfacing was “Take Your Whiskey Home,” which the band had already recorded as early as 1974—one of the first songs Michael Anthony learned.
Moving beyond his former heroes Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, Eddie now championed the playing of jazz-fusion virtuoso Allan Holdsworth, whose slapping technique was predicated on funk. Eddie had maxed out on speed and flashy technique, and was trying to push his playing in more subtle ways. “I ain’t no extrovert,” he said. “I’m a quiet person. That’s probably why I do all these weird things on guitar.”
“Tora! Tora!”—which Eddie had wanted to call “Act Like It Hurts”—began with backwards guitar before lurching into a Sabbathy dirge that introduced the spastic “Loss of Control.” Though Eddie had written the music the same day as “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love,” Roth’s lyrics were still incomplete, so he improvised a helicopter pilot transmission at the start of the song. MTV was more than a year away from launching in the States, but the band produced a strange concept video for “Loss of Control” in Europe with Roth vamping onstage in a hospital gown and white gloves, groping and grinding with a pretty young nurse. The rest of the band wore green surgical scrubs, and Alex had X-ray films taped all across his drums.
Templeman suggested that Eddie use a guitar slide for “Could This Be Magic?” creating the old-timey bottleneck sound that made this original song sound like a traditional sea shanty. David Lee Roth, whose parking-lot fingerpicking skills remained unsung, joined on second guitar. This neo-skiffle treat also featured harmony vocals by former Linda Ronstadt session vocalist Nicolette Larson. She was repaying a favor, as at the end of 1978 Eddie had stealthily recorded a guitar solo for her hit Nicolette album against Roth’s wishes.
The album ended with an untitled twenty-second muscular vamp that the band referred to sometimes as “Tank” or “Growth.” If the band was not rushed to finish the album, the mystery riff would probably have been developed into a full song. Instead the idea was to let the riff fade out, then start the next album by fading it back into a full song—a plot that was never hatched.
The guitar pictured on the album cover was the Ibanez Destroyer lent to Eddie by local Pasadena guitarist Chris Holmes, later of W.A.S.P., made from highly desirable and resonant korina wood. Not by coincidence, the guitar was a great stunt double for the instrument Eddie used to record most of Van Halen—which he had inadvertently wrecked by sawing halfway apart. Holmes had bought the Destroyer in the first place to emulate Eddie. “When I got it back,” Holmes told The Inside, “the bridge was turned around backwards and all that intonation. It was just backwards to the way I would have had it. I just don’t see how he played it that way, but he did. I’ve been to a few Van Halen shows and I put on Ed’s guitar and it’s just the complete opposite of the way I set up mine. He’d have the strings about a mile off the fret board. He likes his whammy bar so loose that he Super Glues the nut on the back so it spins around.”
Boosted by the two million albums sold before it and Van Halen’s heavy touring, Women and Children First landed in the Top 10 the week after its release on March 26, 1980. Peaking at number 6 like its predecessor, the album went platinum within ten weeks, the band’s third million-plus-selling effort. Eddie and Alex bought themselves jeeps, Eddie invested $10,000 in what he knew best—two vintage Les Paul guitars—and the boys retired their parents from ever working again.
The record was not a critical darling. Even Creem, the black sheep of the mainstream rock press, offered a letter from a reader: “I want to write for your magazine. I hate David Lee Roth. Do I qualify?” The smart-aleck magazine answered, “You and an astonishing number of our readers.”
Roth mercilessly sized up his opponents, boasting that Van Halen platters were designed to spill over the turntable and melt all the other records in the house. As he told Creem and everyone else, “All I got to say is that the reason why so many critics dislike Van Halen and like Elvis Costello so much is because they all look like Elvis Costello.”
Never shirking the responsibilities of a sex symbol, Dave wanted to prove he was more than a himbo with a scream. After cornering photographer Helmut Newton at a Beverly Hills hotel, he participated in an S&M-tinged photo shoot that was out of step with his California-boy image and the band’s party appeal. Shirtless and bound in black straps, Roth crouched chained to a chain-link dog pen in his backyard. Except for the excess hair on his heaving bosom, he looked like a submissive princess from a Frank Frazetta fantasy poster, not a leonine conqueror.
Exactly for those reasons, and to stir up controversy, the photo became a yard-high poster folded into every copy of Women and Children First. “That poster made it to more ceilings than paint,” Roth joked. Thrilled with the results, Newton charged Roth only $45, which he paid to the art students who worked as photo assistants on the shoot.
Traveling to Japan in late 1979, Van Halen appeared on TV lip-synching to “You Really Got Me” with canned overdubs of squealing teenage girls. Smiling for an audience of schoolgirls in uniform, the woozy-seeming band looked surprised that the hosts were mostly interested in the singer. Roth, doused in pancake makeup, was asked about the future of rock. “I think that Van Halen is the future of rock and roll for the United States, and for the world! This is the 1980s—everybody up for the kickoff and fasten your seat belts!”—the end of the message coming in four-part harmony. The 1970s had been a wonderful training ground, but Van Halen couldn’t wait to get out of the decade and into an era they could truly call their own.
The 1980 tour was suitably called “Invasion”—fitting considering the massive resources now mobilizing behind hard rock music. In England and Europe, heavy bands were already invading all aspects of the music scene, and the United States would soon follow. Before hitting the road, the band took over a massive sound system belonging to the Bee Gees. After all, disco was dead or dying—the Brothers Gibb didn’t need a few thousand watts as much as the Brothers Van Halen.
The show typically opened with the upbeat “Romeo Delight,” a hectic pacesetter about taking whiskey to the party every night, looking for a body to squeeze. “Tonight I’m going to teach you how to drink for yourself,” began one of Roth’s new crowd lines. “Next year when we come back I’ll teach you how to drink for other people!” Like the letters scrawled on Roth’s shirt, the backstage passes and Mike’s blood-spattered bass all boasted: “W.D.F.A.”—We Don’t Fuck Around.
To re-create the monstrous Wurlitzer sound of “And the Cradle Will Rock”—which most people assumed was Eddie’s guitar—Michael Anthony snuck to the side and played keyboards. You would think the crowd would notice a band member slipping away to pound on a five-hundred-pound Wurlitzer and a Minimoog, but hardly anybody knew the difference.
Almost immediately, the tour made headlines. In Cincinnati, Roth was ticketed for urging the audience to “light ’em up” in the nonsmoking arena during “Light Up the Sky.” The city was taking no chances after eleven people were trampled to death in the same stadium at a Who concert five months earlier. Roth was cited by police and given a court date a few days later. He pleaded innocent, and the misdemeanor charges were dismissed, but the band got its money’s worth in free publicity. “Police said Roth was charged with complicity to violate Ohio’s fire codes, after many in the audience lit matches and lighters at the urging of the performer,” the national Associated Press wire reported and hundreds of regional papers reprinted the news.
A mishap at the University of Southern Colorado in Pueblo revealed a curious Van Halen quirk. A new shock-absorbent floor on the arena proved a poor foundation for the umpteen tons of stage, amplification, and lighting trusses built for the show. Though the booking contract stated the requirement
s clearly, Van Halen’s gear crumpled to the floor, causing tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of damage. At the same time, the band members had gone ballistic backstage, kicking holes in the walls and smashing mirrors in their dressing room.
Apparently, Van Halen had appended a rider to their standard performance contract asking for a bowl of M&M’s, strictly forbidding any brown ones. When Roth arrived and found the offending candy, he felt compelled to wreak havoc. Given the situation on the main floor, the band was able to claim that their “no brown M&M’s” clause was a type of quality control. The same slipshod operations that would overlook a detail in the candy department would also likely neglect to fulfill obligations in a more crucial department—such as rigging safety, transportation security, or making sure the stage didn’t sink through the floor.
The Los Angles Times had reported in March 1978 on rock bands requesting no yellow M&M’s backstage at the Cal Jam II festival five years earlier. “The thing about not having any brown M&M’s is part of the old tradition,” Roth mused. “I think Caruso didn’t allow anyone to whistle backstage.” Yet press reports sloppily confused the backstage damage with the floor damage, and the band were soon accused of causing $80,000 worth of damage in a tantrum over candy. Pueblo promptly banned rock concerts, and Van Halen’s hatred of brown M&M’s entered into American folklore.
Seeking new ways to attract attention, Roth was now inverting himself before concerts, picking a conspicuous spot backstage to hang upside down like Richard Gere with his gravity boots in American Gigolo. While still presenting himself as an athletic specimen, Roth broke his nose jumping during a photo shoot in Italy. The lights went down and he went up several times without a problem—until his luck ran out and his face smacked into a low-hanging disco ball. He was treated for concussion and slapped some bandaging tape across the bridge of his nose for the next few shows—a rock and roll nose job.
Roth felt that his parents had more respect for the black limo that picked them up before a concert than they did his music, but he was very proud of keeping the mood light. “When you’re on the road for nine months a year and you always have all these cute little chiquitas running around in their halter tops, it’s kind of hard to worry about things like nuclear proliferation.” Forget the topical songs, Van Halen were going for some kind of timeless celebration of life—or at the very least celebrating Roth’s life. “I’ll never have all the women I want,” he quipped, “but I’ll get all the women who want me!”
The spectacle of Van Halen was already eclipsing the genuine furor over their music. As the band became not just rock stars but celebrities, Roth soon opened his boudoir to actresses, older socialites, punk rock chicks, and fledgling models. Now under the athletic supervision of an L.A. Lakers trainer, he attempted to protect his body with a paternity insurance policy from Lloyd’s of London, claiming in his petition that fast and frequent fornication was “necessary to his work.”
Inspired to document some of the carnage with a concert film to challenge Led Zeppelin’s The Song Remains the Same and the Who’s The Kids Are Alright, Van Halen dabbled in filmmaking. They reported hiring a “Dutch cinematographer” supposedly named Snade Krell-mans—an in-joke based on rock-star slang for cocaine. Though the footage never surfaced, it may have inspired the new song “Dirty Movies”—an eerie midpaced narrative about a small-town girl appearing in porn films.
“Van Halen is definitely a ladies’ band, and we’ve got the Polaroids to prove it,” Roth said with a smirk. Still, when defending Van Halen’s appeal, he could go more than skin deep. “When the crowd goes crazy, it’s because they’re actually physically enjoying themselves. It’s as simple as that.” Van Halen’s songs were becoming anthems, as important a piece of the American teenage dream as a chrome tailpipe on a muscle car, latex miniskirts on flirty girls, and a bag of really good marijuana on a summer Saturday.
Offstage, Van Halen behaved like a team of superheroes with separate storylines. In February 1980, Roth explored his Tarzan fantasies during the first of several outback excursions with the Jungle Studs. This pack of self-identified alpha males—CPAs, MBAs, Vietnam vets, research scientists, and with Roth one rock star and his girlfriend—sought out high-impact survival experiences that would justify their massive egos and make them forget the pressure of their day jobs.
On one adventure, the Jungle Studs hired a guide for a thirty-eight-day trek up the steep jungle cliffs of the Hindenburg Wall in the Star Mountains of New Guinea. Roth claimed he started on one side of the island with brand-new combat boots and emerged a month later on the other side wearing rotten scraps of leather. “I get some really dramatic and colorful emotional response out of myself, and maybe I can put that onto plastic when we make a record,” he said. “Your life depends on how many little things you can notice and remember. That to me sends chills up and down my spine. Now when somebody tells me the stage monitor has blown up—it’s really no big deal.”
As a kid, Roth had been fascinated by the Rolling Stones because “they were someplace I couldn’t be.” Now he and Van Halen seemed to have all-access passes everywhere they went.
6. Girls on Film
In Shreveport, Louisiana, during the 1980 “Invasion” tour, TV actress Valerie Bertinelli came backstage with her gaggle of brothers, enthusiastic Van Halen fans who hoped to meet the band using their sister as a giant life-size party pass. She came bearing bags of M&M’s for everyone in the band and before long found herself in the quiet backstage universe of the band’s musical prodigy, Edward Van Halen. Valerie had just ended a miserable two-month publicity relationship with Steven Spielberg. She said she had always thought Eddie looked nice in pictures. She must have been reading Creem and Circus, since despite three platinum albums Rolling Stone had passed over Van Halen for its cover repeatedly in favor of figures like Jackson Browne.
Valerie turned up again the next night in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Afterward the couple seemed inseparable, with Valerie joining the Van Halen tour at every chance. In Phoenix, Eddie came to bed with the news that Guitar Player readers had voted him best player yet again, and so had Creem, but Roth had rubbed Eddie’s nose in the dirt about the kudos. Eddie had been holding back on having sex with his actress girlfriend, but this night he began crying and, according to Valerie, she jumped his bones once and for all. Afterward, the One Day at a Time theme came blaring over the TV.
Eddie proposed to Valerie on New Year’s Eve 1980. The union of these lookalikes had probably been ordained since they met. While they held hands and looked into each other’s eyes for hours that first night under the Louisiana moon, Michael Anthony and one of the Bertinelli boys had trashed a hotel during a drunken fire extinguisher battle.
Eddie Van Halen and America’s sweetheart Valerie Bertinelli were married on April 11, 1981, at St. Paul the Apostle Church in Westwood, California. Roth bought Eddie a white-tailed tuxedo to wear. Now a member of Eddie’s circle of friends, Van Halen collaborator Nicolette Larson sang a song in French she had written for the ceremony. Smiling shyly, the impish newlyweds looked almost like siblings, or Kewpie dolls that should have been standing on the cake.
There was a fantastic feeling to this union of rockers and TV actors. Michael Anthony later joked about being freaked out meeting actress Bonnie Franklin, Valerie’s mom on One Day at a Time. “She was just like she is on the show!”
“I know people hear my name and they think I’m Barbara Cooper, that little girl on TV, and I’m not any more,” Valerie told Entertainment Tonight. Soon after her real-life wedding, the producers of One Day at a Time married off her character on the show to a dentist.
Eddie panicked the day of the wedding, drinking heavily and nearly collapsing into his groomsmen’s arms several times. At the crucial moment, however, he jumped into matrimony happily. Afterward, he moved out of his parents’ house for the first time in his life, moving into a large house in the Hollywood Hills with his wife and his rapidly expanding collection of sports cars.
Michael Anthony followed Eddie down the aisle, marrying his high school girlfriend, Sue, who proposed to him while they were waiting in line at a McDonald’s drive-through window. As a self-professed fan of the most insanely squeaky clean TV show in history, Leave It to Beaver, Mike’s interests were considerably domestic, revolving around pet dogs and a growing collection of Mickey Mouse memorabilia. If he was clinging for dear life to something resembling normalcy, he was in for a shock—Disney and Van Halen were just two rival cartoon attractions in the wonderland of Southern California.
When Roth privately became concerned that wholesome marriages would weaken the band’s image as lust-starved marauders, Eddie sensed a celebrity effect. “I think it pissed him off because all of a sudden I got a whole other side of the limelight that he wanted. The tabloids and People magazine kind of shit—some people thrive on all that attention.” Sure enough, the band bounded in popularity as Eddie-loves-Val stories in the National Enquirer pushed the band’s names into shopping market checkout lines, hairdressers, and doctor’s office waiting rooms.