by Ian Christe
To break in the new drum room in 5150, the band brought in engineer Andy Johns, the ears responsible for eighties liquid sugar like Cinderella’s Night Songs, Autograph’s Loud and Clear, and albums by Giuffria and House of Lords. Before glam metal, Johns had also produced rock milestones like Television’s Marquee Moon and Derek and the Dominoes’ Crossroads. From Alex’s perspective, Johns possessed the only qualification that really mattered—he had engineered John Bonham’s monstrous drums on Led Zeppelin’s II, III, IV, and Physical Graffiti.
While Johns and Alex swapped stories and micromanaged the drum set-up, placing upwards of twenty-two mics on his kit, Eddie threw two $100 Shure SM-57 microphones in front of his amps. He already knew the sweet spots by heart—one mic in the center and the other slightly angled beside. He still used essentially the same equipment he had since the first album. So he wouldn’t have to wear headphones while Alex banged away in the isolated drum room, he often recorded his parts from behind the mixing console. The two rigged a closed-circuit TV camera so they could see each other while recording.
In Alex’s opinion, Van Halen’s rhythm section was not the drums and the bassist, but him and his brother. “If you notice on all the records, it is really the drum and guitar that create the turbulence, the movement,” he said. “Mike just carries the bottom down there, providing the sub-sonic qualities. Because Ed’s guitar is very fat, and what Ed plays is very intricate, there’s a lot of stuff to play off of. Sometimes I accent with that, sometimes against it. Interestingly enough, he’s also very rhythmically attuned—everything’s more intertwined.”
As recording progressed, the band gathered for a couple hours each day at 5150 behind Eddie’s house to listen to his new riffs, play video games, and jam on new ideas until they became songs. Beginning with “Judgement Day,” the majority of each track was complete before work started on the next, creating an eclectic compilation effect.
Johns also schooled Eddie in how to really run the board at 5150—in the past, Donn Landee had always done it for him. “Eddie has this part of his brain which you would call semi-genius,” Johns said. “He recognizes things very quickly that would take you or I some time to ponder on, or someone would have to show us, or we would have to go to school.”
Eddie played the intro to album opener “Poundcake” using the sound his guitar picked up from a Makita power drill. “My maintenance guy in 5150 was replacing a piece of gear,” Eddie explained. “He picked up the drill, and my guitar happened to be on—it sounded cool, but it was a total accident.” Thinking like a showman, Eddie later decorated the power tool with red and white stripes and took it on the road.
True to the theme of its title, F.U.C.K. reveled in sexual innuendo and Sammy’s skirt-chasing lyrics. The red-light raunch of “Spanked,” an ode to 1-900 phone sex, wanked with the naughty slink of Tina Turner’s debauched 1984 hit “Private Dancer.” Eddie introduced a six-string Danelectro bass on the song, which he played with an EBow, a finger-size battery-powered device that produced glowing guitar sounds rich with overtones.
For sure, the creative energy that Eddie had dissipated on the past two albums across synthesizer, recording, production, and arrangement was now harnessed more in service of playing electric guitar. Though Eddie’s head went deeper into crafting the album’s sound with guitar overdubs, he bristled at suggestions that Michael Anthony did not play the bass parts. Flashing on his wit, however, Eddie quashed speculation about a solo album by quipping that every Van Halen recording already was a solo album.
Eddie compared himself to Joe Perry of Aerosmith, a “vibe” player who relied on feel more than flash, but Eddie’s work on Unlawful was anything but subdued. His style was now institutionalized, and without abandoning his many signatures, he often teetered on the outer boundaries of his comfort zone. Loosely adapted from a 1977 original titled “Show No Mercy,” the intro tones of “Runaround” rang like something by U2, while “Pleasure Dome” revealed a smooth atmospheric guitar over galloping drums.
Eddie frequently described his solos as falling down the stairs, hoping to land on his feet. The tremolo dives of “In ’n’ Out” were exactly that kind of adventure, tuned to a progression that would not have been out of place on Women and Children First. On that song, Hagar’s lyrics even seemed thoughtful, as he outlined a blue-collar lament about how the little man gets screwed at both ends, paying to be born and paying to be buried. Though this was certainly a familiar barroom lament, Hagar offered in his own survival philosophy: If you can’t avoid getting the shaft, go with the flow and work the game to your advantage. If you can’t change the world, you can at least skim a little change off the top.
“Right Now” was a piano ballad inspired by Andy Johns’s former client Joe Cocker, though Hagar’s wails sounded more wistful than tortured. Eddie had actually written the song before Sammy joined Van Halen, and the piano stabs that herald the song appeared in his Wild Life teen comedy soundtrack. Beneath the main dramatic theme lurked an eerie piano riff that pulled the airhead qualities of the song back down to reality. Another callback from earlier songwriting, “Top of the World” was originally written in 1984, with a stairstep guitar riff that answered the closing notes of “Jump.”
Otherwise, F.U.C.K. did not draw heavily from old unused material. When the album was complete, at least four songs were tossed back in the bucket, including “Numb to the Touch” and “Lost in the Ether,” possibly to resurface in some later form.
Despite Eddie’s gestures to sobriety after his father’s death, the F.U.C.K. sessions were marked by the frequent pffft of beer cans opening—at least half a case a day. “My problem is that I go to the office to drink,” Eddie told Guitar World. “It’s completely ass-backwards. And the only reason I keep doing it is because it still works, believe it or not. It just breaks down the inhibitions. And I’m too inhibited, ordinarily—I get real nervous.”
The album took over a year to produce, and by the end of the sessions Sammy was just stopping by in his trademark Ferrari to pick up dupes of the day’s mixes. “We were a little bit lazy,” Sammy told MelodicRock.com. “We had so much success and we were having such a good time. Fucking Eddie and I were out buying new cars everyday and racing them down Pacific Coast Highway, you know, having a good time and not wanting to go into the studio and work as much.”
Released on June 17, 1991, For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge again landed in the top album spot, defying trends that saw most of the younger-generation Hollywood hard rock bands falling like victims of an epidemic. Van Halen’s third consecutive number 1 album in a row, it remained on the charts for well over a year, despite uncertainty over whether more family-oriented retail chains would carry the album because of its lewd title. Stores like Wal-Mart refused to stock albums bearing Parental Advisory stickers for foul language—let alone a CD whose title itself was a four-letter word.
Immediately, the band was served with a $2 million lawsuit by the devoutly Christian McNutt family of Tulsa, Oklahoma, whose telephone number was supposedly pictured scrawled on a chalkboard at 5150 inside F.U.C.K. The digits had belonged to a friend of Eddie’s, a poor sap who joined harangued victims of late-night rock and roll prank calls like Sam Hagar of Bakersfield, California, David L. Roth of Atlanta, and unlucky recipients of “867-5309” worldwide.
While on the clock, the band’s lawyers also filed a lawsuit against NC-17 rappers 2 Live Crew, who brazenly sampled “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love” for a riff in “The Fuck Shop” on their As Nasty as They Wanna Be magnum opus. Van Halen weren’t too old to understand the nature of rap sampling—they had been using samples and sequences themselves for almost a decade—but after Tone L-o-c bum-rushed the security gates, it was time to get paid.
Musician magazine contributor Matt Resnicoff earned a dubious dishonor by penning a skeptical and faintly insulting article that challenged Eddie’s insularity, lack of self-reflection, and complacency as a musician. Eddie shut off the tape recorder several times during t
he interview, bristling at Resnicoff’s questions. “You would like to see me probably explore different avenues,” Ed said defiantly. “Well, I’m not into it. I’ll explore whatever avenue I want to explore at the time.”
When the unfavorable article appeared, Van Halen manager Ed Leffler—nicknamed “the Club”—responded with Old World muscle, phoning Resnicoff to decry the “cheap shot article” and threaten, “I’m gonna hurt you. . . . You’re a no-good motherfuckin’ kike.” To his credit, Resnicoff did eventually put his money where his mouth was, quitting music journalism to pursue a career as a professional guitarist.
Van Halen’s boosters remained many and powerful. The brass at MTV were still practically married to the band, continuing to support F.U.C.K. as if nurturing one of their own, particularly the zeitgeist-licking clip for “Right Now.” After a decade, Van Halen was one of the last bands from the MTV class of 1984 still going strong.
“Top of the World” pecked the Top 40 charts and along with “Poundcake” and “Runaround” reached the number 1 spot on the Mainstream Rock chart. The album’s other single, “Right Now,” only reached number 55 in Billboard, but its outdoor appeal was immediately apparent at sporting events, where it quickly gained a spot in the jock rock hall of fame. Though one of the tamer tracks on the album, its dark piano tones were one of several notable troubled under-currents on F.U.C.K. that would define Van Halen’s output in the nineties.
Ultimately the album became Hagar’s favorite with the band, with 5150 a close second. F.U.C.K. was the hardest rock he’d recorded with Van Halen, probably what Roth-era fans would have preferred at the outset in 1986. At times it resembled the best possible Sammy Hagar solo record imaginable. Though sounding more vivid, Van Halen did seem to be entering a holding pattern—but nobody was going to complain about circling at number 1.
Several weeks before F.U.C.K. was due, Eddie and Valerie released their first collaboration, Wolfgang William Van Halen, born two weeks late on March 16, 1991. Eddie inserted the quiet interlude “316” for his infant son, named after the boy’s birthday. Now a typical new father, rising multiple times during the night to placate the crying baby, Eddie made fun of his party-all-night reputation. “I’m legitimately burnt instead of just being fucked-up burnt,” he told Guitar Player.
Still flying solo, David Lee Roth claimed to have toyed with marriage, and expressed interest in having children. But so far he was still more interested in nurturing a gigolo image. “I’m a very family-oriented type of guy,” he quipped. “I’ve personally started three or four since January.”
In 1991, he mustered the energy to produce his first album since 1988’s Skyscraper. He spent nearly five months in Vancouver, Canada, recording A Little Ain’t Enough with producer Bob Rock, fresh from recording the Metallica black album, soon to rise to stratospheric heights. During his stay up north, Roth rented the top floor of the $15 a night Nelson Palace Hotel—a seedy locale complete with downstairs strip club. “I don’t think a sleazy lifestyle is any kind of distraction, it’s the rule,” he boasted.
Roth remained the ultimate marketing man, going to greater lengths to remain a topic of discussion. The video for the title track pictured him cavorting in a pink custom Jeep with thirty-six-inch wheels. An old favorite ride was also preseed into action—the vintage red lowrider from Van Halen’s “Panama” video. He believed in his versatile bag of treats and refused to change the wrapper like so many trend-jumping pop stars on the tail end of success. “I’m generally happy,” he quipped. “I’m just never content. People say I live in my own little world—well, at least they know me there.”
Still, something was up—his latest album was rife with end-of-the-road allusions and imagery. “Last Call” was an attempt at a cash cow, an evergreen for every bar to play at closing time. Vocally, the track felt like the final fading moments of a long party that had raged with full force back on 1984’s “Top Jimmy.” Other songs like “Tell the Truth” and “Lady Luck” frequently dwelled on loneliness and farewells.
Roth was one of the first to arrive fifteen years before, and now he looked to be one of the last to leave the Hollywood glam rock shindig, revving out to the sunset in a fruity pink Jeep like an old gunfighter after the law came to town. When the Las Vegas Mercury asked if he was shocked when spandex fell from favor in the late eighties, he set them straight. “It takes an extremely masculine man to look sexy in a pair of pink bicycle shorts.”
His 1991 record A Little Ain’t Enough featured prodigy Jason Becker on guitar in place of Steve Vai. Tragically, Becker was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease one week after joining forces with Roth. Now Roth again needed to rebuild his band with new guitarists before he could tour. He compared the process to the constantly changing roster of an NFL team, but he could no longer afford to hemorrhage big league cash.
On the live front, Roth still flimflammed and bamboozled the crowd with a characteristic mile-a-minute pitch. His inflatable microphone grew a few feet longer and sprouted a shiny saddle so Roth could ride it around the stage like a bucking bronco. The band’s drum set was now positioned delicately above the garter line between a pair of forty-foot drop-dead inflatable legs, while fishnet stockings big enough to catch a white whale dipped tantalizingly into giant cherry red pumps on either side of the amplifiers.
After fifteen years under the bright lights, Roth’s routine was showing wear and tear. His extensive 1991 co-headlining tour with Cinderella played to arenas that were half full on average. Unlike five years earlier when he took Poison on the road, now a glam metal support act was just dead weight. The tour moved westward, and after a few nights pulling 16 percent capacity in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and 24 percent in Bonner, Kansas, the remainder of the shows were called off.
The album cracked the Billboard Top 20 and mustered a gold award. But the loss of the 1980s seemed to be hitting Roth harder than Van Halen. Ten years earlier, after his first six platinum albums, he had spoken of a Roman centurion whose job was to stand next to Julius Caesar to whisper, “All glory is fleeting.” Now he needed to hear that message.
There was one sure way back upstairs—jumping back into Van Halen. Roth sounded wistful for the camaraderie of his former band, perhaps hopeful for a return. “If we could get it on track here, we could make history,” he said. “Barring any act of death or Ferrari, who knows what will happen?”
Roth appeared on Howard Stern’s radio show in July 1992, offering his pitch to be reinstated in Van Halen. Perhaps sensing some weakness behind the band’s protests of continued happiness, he unleashed his cruelest torrent of anti-Sammy abuse yet. “Sammy is a mindless little bridge troll. Everything that comes out of his mouth is word barf. It’s the lowest common denominator. It’s music for children. Jimi Hendrix never made music for children. The fourteen-year-olds may have loved it, but the Beatles never made music for twelve-year-olds.”
Roth claimed that Ed Leffler, who he called “Sammy’s manager,” was blocking all communication, even calling Dave to shout at him that nobody got through to the band unless without his say-so. “The first time Edward graduated Betty Ford I tried to call, and then the second time I tried to call, and then the third time I tried again,” Roth claimed.
He also denied that he left Van Halen to pursue a movie career. “The reason I left Van Halen was they were completely stoned all the time,” he told Stern. “How do you make music with someone who is completely stoned or copping a buzz on a regular basis?”
When Eddie heard the news, he scoffed at Roth’s claims of unanswered phone calls. He wanted no part of any reconciliation. “I’ve had the same phone number since 1980—there haven’t been any messages. For anybody to think he’s coming back is just ridiculous! It was a divorce—and who wants to relive that?”
Van Halen’s song remained the same. “Roth is really more of a comedian,” Alex told The Inside. “Basically, he jumped around a lot. Roth went sideways as fame affected him. He thought he was bigger than life and that he w
as the shit. Watching it happen was actually very sad. You’re very connected with the people you play with, and you’ve got to remain centered. He forgot to remember that.”
Behind the scenes, Roth was carefully reassessing his situation, first by putting three thousand miles between himself and the endless sili-cone and spray-on tans of Southern California. He moved to New York City, where he had first tasted culture and counterculture under the arm of his nightclub owner uncle Manny. “I’m somebody who sees art, color, pathos, and passion in just about everything,” he said. “I’m surrounded by that in New York. Everywhere you go it’s a conglomeration.”
For a brief time, he maintained a low profile, rock-climbing incognito up the Hudson River in New Paltz, New York. He also managed a treach-erous six-week wintertime ascent on a 22,000-foot Himalayan mountain range that made his day job seem almost dangerously unimportant. He prepared for the climb for a year and a half, yet he slipped several times, lucky to live to tell the tale. Afterward, not only did Roth no longer sweat the small stuff, he seemed not to be bothered by his musical career at all. “When I’m gone, I take the Stanley Kubrick approach, and I’m truly gone,” he promised. “I can’t compose under a microscope.”
Roth’s star may have been waning, but as they say in showbiz, he could still get arrested. Fending for himself, he was busted in April 1993 while buying a five-dollar bag of pot in Washington Square Park, sections of which were then an open-air drug market in New York City. Two dozen others were caught in the sweep with him, mostly college students from New York University dorms that ring the park.