by Ian Christe
Michael Anthony fell over himself laughing when he heard Roth was planning to release a cover of the Beach Boys’ “California Girls.” But that was exactly the idea, to make America giggle.
“I think it’s something he’s always wanted to do,” Eddie told Guitar World. “Put it this way—it’s something I’ve always wanted to do, and haven’t done. I guess, in a funny way, it explains Dave as a vocalist and lyricist.”
Appearing at MTV’s New Year’s Eve show with new bodyguards—a pair of female bodybuilders—Dave rang in the New Year with the video for “California Girls,” the first video from his solo EP, Crazy from the Heat. Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin had just stepped out in a similar way with the R&B-themed Honeydrippers Volume One EP. Likewise, British soul singer Robert Palmer had recently teamed with members of Duran Duran in Power Station. There was a feeling in the air that the most substantial rock singers could check in and check out of MTV video projects without marring their lifelong reputations.
“I think it’s the perfect time for me to do this,” Roth told Creem. “I mean it feels right. You know, use my hand darling, I won’t look.”
In the vein of “Ice Cream Man” and “Happy Trails,” Roth recorded four other covers for the first record under his name, all a bit unusual: the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Coconut Grove,” Louis Prima’s Tin Pan Alley medley of “Just a Gigolo”/ “I Ain’t Got Nobody,” and the jazz standard “Easy Street.” His arsenal of sidemen on the record was impressive—Beach Boy Carl Wilson sang backups on “California Girls,” and towering white-haired saxophonist/organist Edgar Winter of “Franken-stein” fame hammered keyboards.
The material certainly didn’t clash with Van Halen—in fact, they had rejected “Just a Gigolo” for 1984. All the songs were at least twenty years old, hailing from a bygone era—“Gigolo” was a hit in 1929. Roth also went out of his way to make sure producer Ted Templeman didn’t put guitars in the mix, afraid of confusing the fans. The EP was fun adult music about sex and love, still captivating to a teen audience in the hands of this winsome new interpreter.
Some of these lines, Roth had been delivering to the bedroom mirror since he was in elementary school, and they harkened to something much older. “Al Jolson is the classic showbiz model,” he explained to Penthouse. “The white gloves—drop to one knee—the Knickerbocker break—the flatspin—smile! No dead space. I can’t stand dead space onstage. I’ve got a surgically implanted disco beat. My show has to be 130 beats a minute or better.”
The record was assembled in a month and recorded in five days at the Power Station in New York. Roth walked to the studio every day, taking in the action of the city streets. Equally important was the production of the music videos. “Just a Gigolo” lampooned the living history of MTV to date. Roth cavorted through an imaginary backstage video world, shoving Billy Idol into his electric sci-fi stage props and sending Boy George into a schoolgirl tizzy. He was beating video satirist Weird Al Yankovic at his own game and pre-dating the smart-aleck Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. He was mocking MTV even as he became its greatest product. “I wrote and directed those videos,” he said. “Those are Bur-lesque. Those are Vaudeville. I learned it from watching shows back in the ’60s, and from going to the Crazy Horse Saloon in Paris in the 1970s.”
Roth was David Letterman’s first guest of 1985, and while the two self-deprecating Hoosiers sparred comically, Roth denied he would soon leave Van Halen. “I’ve got strong tribal instincts, and we’ll be going to the studio sometime in the next month to start arguing again.” He claimed Van Halen would release a new album in 1985, and he gagged about why Van Halen had never done anything like Crazy from the Heat. When in doubt, blame the drummer: “In Van Halen we kept trying to have a concept, but Alex kept forgetting the concept.”
Van Halen were rehearsing for their next album, trying out tracks “Summer Nights,” “Get Up,” and “Eat Thy Neighbor.” They toyed with the idea of releasing a live album, a chance to showcase unreleased material. Yet progress was tough. Roth was becoming increasingly unavailable, constantly off doing interviews about Crazy from the Heat. After three months, they were making little progress.
The uncertainty started to spread into other important areas. The band let go manager Noel Monk, who had wrangled them since early 1978, encouraging their crazy stunts and leaving no whim unsatisfied, considering no request too irrational. They couldn’t agree on renewal terms for his contract, and suddenly he was gone. “Noel Monk was Dave’s goddamn puppet,” Eddie griped to Guitar World. That didn’t stop Monk from suing Roth in L.A. County Superior Court the following year.
The spring of 1985 found Roth frequently stalling for time, partially because he felt uncomfortable proceeding without a manager. He also wanted Van Halen to postpone the next album and work as his backing band on a movie. The others were just pissed off. Rehearsals became unproductive, as Roth complained that the new songs were too sad and melancholy. He claimed Eddie had already broken the band covenant, putting soundtrack projects and outside guest spots ahead of Van Halen’s seventh album.
In March, Roth claimed the Van Halen brothers presented him with a future career path based on minimal touring. “Well guys, it’s been nice knowing you,” Roth told the crew in the parking lot after a lethal spat. He left the studio and never came back.
Then in April 1985, Van Halen claimed they gave Roth an ultima-tum, feeling that his solo career had brought progress on the new album to a standstill. Roth seemed preoccupied with turning Crazy from the Heatinto a cinematic star vehicle; it was a zany adventure film along the lines of the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, the Osmonds’ Goin’ Coconuts, and Some Like It Hot. Dave was finally on the verge of becoming Errol Flynn, Johnny Weismuller, Bugs Bunny, and Marilyn Monroe.
But Van Halen were not interested in being his backing band, or his backup plan. Eddie’s report on his last conversation with the singer involved driving over for a sitdown at the Pasadena mansion Roth had bought from his parents and shared with his sister Lisa—the same building where Van Halen had practiced for years. “Maybe when I’m done with my movie, we can get back together,” Eddie recalled Roth saying.
“I ain’t waiting on your ass!” Eddie snapped. “So long, and good luck.”
When Dave broke from Van Halen, with him went a major part of Van Halen’s support system, including designers, truck drivers, merchandisers, stagehands, and creative director Pete Angelus, who had been working with Roth on the movie script. To illustrate how the Van Halen organization was gutted by the divorce, Angelus had been the sound engineer at Gazzari’s. He had joined the adventure early and had done everything from lighting design to stage production to drawing storyboards for the band’s videos. Van Halen’s support system was ravaged. They dissolved their in-house merchandise arm, Van Halen Productions, and in the future simply licensed their name to professional manufacturers of memorabilia. The party seemed to be over.
The Crazy from the Heat EP went platinum in June 1985, a promising augur of future success. “Just a Gigolo”/“I Ain’t Got Nobody” rose to number 12 on the singles chart. Roth appeared to have judged his massive appeal correctly and enjoyed being the undistracted center of undivided attention from an adoring public. After all, he had given thousands of high kicks and primal screams for the greater glory of the Van Halen family name for over a decade. Fostering jealousy and tension from his main meal ticket, “California Girls” became a Top 10 single.
For Roth, the urge to excel must have been enormous. He had proven all the high school guidance counselors wrong. He was successful beyond his wildest dreams. The sky was the limit. Yet he was still stuck with the same guys who knew him ten years ago, when he couldn’t get a date because he was too talkative, always on, scaring away the local girls. Now he could have anyone he wanted.
“He treated everybody like a little lower than him,” Eddie said shortly after Roth left, “including us in the band.” And so the five-time guitarist of the year, the older brother, and th
e world’s largest collector of Mickey Mouse watches applied the brakes on their glamour machine, and Roth went flying out of Van Halen, mouth first.
Curiously, even Ted Templeman, one of the band’s closest colleagues, claimed he never saw the split coming. “I never saw any of it,” he told Rolling Stone. “We were in there for seven years, we never had any fights—what was it? They told me they used to fight it all out in the basement before they got to me. So what the fuck’s the matter? So does everybody else!”
Now billing themselves as the Picasso Brothers—part art, part pizza delivery—Roth and Pete Angelus plotted Roth’s ascension to Hollywood stardom, pitching a project about the zany adventures of a fictional larger-than-life rock star, a ninety-minute explosion like the “California Girls” video done coast to coast. They sold the story successfully to CBS Films, and the road ahead for their deal was a short run of green lights.
“I think I can do just about anything as long as it’s within my character’s frame of reference,” Roth told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Everything you’ve seen is part of me. We may have blown it out of proportion so it fits on your TV screen better, but I want to go on and do something bigger than that.”
Roth had already done a boffo job of scripting the look, attitude, and public perception of Van Halen. Now he promised a rocking, whacked-out rebirth of the attention-addled stream-of-consciousness comedy that had made Monty Python’s Flying Circus a household name in dorm rooms.
Off to a flying start, Roth and Angelus posted an open casting call for their Crazy from the Heat movie, seeking actresses and personalities with the following requirements: “If you are a woman, and you think you have an unusual character face and a beautiful body, or if you have an unusually beautiful face and character body, or any combination thereof, you’re perfect.”
Having narrowed down the field to virtually any woman alive, Dave’s TV party commenced. “Let’s find our women on the street, because that’s where I found my music,” he told Joan Rivers on The Tonight Show. “It’s funny, nobody’s ever entrusted a zillion-dollar project before to a couple of schnooks like us, Pete Angelus and myself.” Their script was finished and shooting was scheduled to begin in January 1986.
Roth appeared at the wrap party for Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure making a big noise that he had bet his producer he could make it to the MTV Video Music Awards in New York three days later in his red Mercury lowrider. With fanfare, he headed east, and then ducked into the first desert airport outside of L.A. The night of the awards, Roth wiped some dirt on his face and drove up well rested to the awards ceremony, where he stole the show—a variation on the bait-and-switch parachute stunt Van Halen had pulled in Oakland years earlier.
Up for several MTV Video Awards that night, Roth didn’t win any. He partied with the Go-Gos, while Don Henley and “We Are the World” by USA for Africa notched award after award on the feel-good vote. Roth claimed Michael Jackson called him soon after to say he was “furious when you didn’t win an award”—begging the question of what Michael Jackson looked like furious.
Roth appeared on The Tonight Show in late 1985, breaking the news that he had just ended a relationship with a girl. “When you fall out of a major love affair,” he told Joan Rivers, “that’s God’s way of saying it’s time to buckle down and make a lot of money.” He cast his line out for Princess Stephanie of Monaco, admiring her broad shoulders—he was the “It” boy, he could marry royalty.
Then the unthinkable happened—or more like the typical Hollywood bullshit. Following a shakeup of the brass at CBS Films, Roth was left without a lifeline. He went from a $10 million budget to not having a deal, as the studio shuttered its doors. His only appearance on the silver screen in 1985 was in claymation form during a dream sequence in the John Cusack teen film Better Off Dead, where a heavy metal hamburger based on Roth and Eddie Van Halen holds court over a deep fryer full of bikini-clad French fries.
Roth sued CBS Films the following summer for $25 million, claiming breach of contract over their sudden disinterest in Crazy from the Heat. Ultimately, he missed the brass ring—he couldn’t litigate himself onto a movie theater marquee—but Van Halen hadn’t been signed on the first try, either.
Afterward, Roth dismissed Van Halen’s claims that he left to be a movie star as “a lot of B.S. It’s a lot of excuses that are being peddled because these guys couldn’t get off their butt and make a record. We sat out in front of that backyard studio, in front of 5150, because Mr. Fingers couldn’t get out of bed for four days in a row. And Mr. Sticks was out driving across the country with his new wife, and he wasn’t on time either. And I wanted to make a record.”
Millions of divorced kids listening to Van Halen in 1985 had just accepted that Mom and Dad weren’t going to get back together, and now they were expected to deal with David Lee Roth leaving Van Halen. Against all advice, these playboy musicians were now role models. For many, without David Lee Roth there could be no Van Halen. Sour comments coming from both camps after the split didn’t help. Like the end of every love story, both parties tried to minimize their attraction and the intensity of their relationship. In this case, twenty million interested fans were caught in the middle of the breakup—and the fallout of their emotional stress was toxic.
PART II
Top of the World
The Hagarlithic Era, 1985–1996
• October 13, 1947: Sammy Hagar born in Monterey, California.
• 1973: Sammy Hagar joins Montrose, records two albums, and tours heavily.
• 1976: Sammy Hagar leaves Montrose, launches solo career.
• September 1985: Eddie Van Halen announces at Farm Aid that Sammy Hagar is Van Halen’s new lead singer.
• November 19, 1985: Sammy Hagar’s ninth studio album, VOA, becomes his first platinum-selling disc
• March 24, 1986: Release date of 5150; first “Van Hagar” album sells triple platinum by October.
• July 4, 1986: Release of David Lee Roth’s platinum solo debut, Eat
‘Em and Smile.
• December 1986: Jan Van Halen dies.
• May 24, 1988: Release of OU812, followed shortly by Roth’s Skyscraper.
• Summer 1988: Eddie attempts sobriety while Van Halen tours with Metallica, Scorpions, and Dokken.
• February 1989: Tone Lo-c’s “Wild Thing” reaches number 2, a rap single that samples Van Halen’s “Jamie’s Cryin.’”
• April 22, 1990: Van Halen performs at opening of Cabo Wabo Cantina in Mexico.
• February 2, 1991: Release of David Lee Roth’s A Little Ain’t Enough,
his last gold record as a solo artist.
• March 16, 1991: Eddie’s son Wolfgang Van Halen born.
• June 17, 1991: Release of For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, Van Halen’s third-straight number 1 album.
• January 1991: Eddie debuts the EVH Music Man guitar and the Peavey 5150 amplifier line.
• February 23, 1993: Release of first official live album, Right Here, Right Now.
• October 16, 1993: Van Halen’s manager since 1985, Ed Leffler, dies.
• March 14, 1994: Sammy Hagar releases solo collection, Unboxed.
• October 2, 1994: Fresh from rehab, Eddie Van Halen announces he will never drink again.
• January 24, 1995: Release of Balance, the fourth consecutive number 1 studio album.
• April 7, 1995: Eddie arrested at Burbank Airport carrying a loaded gun.
• April 26, 1995: Van Halen returns to Europe after eleven years, as an opening act for Bon Jovi.
• Fall 1995: David Lee Roth appears in Reno and Las Vegas with a fourteen-piece band.
• November 29, 1995: Sammy Hagar marries second wife, Kari.
• June 1996: Eddie and Sammy fight during phone call; Sammy Hagar leaves Van Halen.
• September 4, 1996: Original members of Van Halen appear together at MTV Video Music Award, leading to renewed quarrels.
• August 7, 1996: Van Hale
n certified diamond for ten million sold.
• October 22, 1996: Release of Best of Volume I, with two new songs featuring Roth; despite the recent split with the band, it is his first number 1 album.
10. It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)
With his torso bent back and striped guitar in the air, Eddie Van Halen had become an electric guitar icon. David Lee Roth, on the other hand, had become something even bigger—a celebrity representing all things rock and roll. Before the search to replace the irreplaceable could begin, Alex had to once again convince Eddie to continue with Van Halen. “During Fair Warning I wanted to quit,” an exasperated Eddie told Guitar World, “but I stuck with it, and that’s what burns my ass even more. If I would have quit then I wouldn’t have spent an extra four years putting up with [Roth’s] attitude.”
Outside the band, the juicy sport of speculation began. Reports emerged that Van Halen would not replace Roth with any one con-tender but a constellation of stars. Eddie’s collaborator Brian May from Queen offered his help. Phil Collins, Joe Cocker, Mike Rutherford, and Pete Townshend were all rumored to be lined up to work with the band, possibly sharing the limelight with several songs each on a glorified Eddie Van Halen solo project. Townshend wasn’t free until the end of the year, however, and the band increasingly felt the need to put a more permanent band together as quickly as possible.
Also thrown in the rumor mill was Australian screamer Jimmy Barnes, a frequent INXS collaborator who had just left his band Cold Chisel. The band liked his unique voice, but “nothing really happened,” according to Michael Anthony. Another candidate was twenty-year-old Eric Martin, who spoke with Eddie on the phone about Van Halen wanting a “soulful rock singer” in the vein of Paul Rodgers of Bad Company. Martin drove to Eddie’s house and spent an afternoon waiting for him in 5150. He left without meeting the guitarist, and never worked up the nerve to return. “I chickened out, totally,” he told Melodicrock.com.