by Ian Christe
The news came as a shock, mainly because the public assumed a former singer of Van Halen would have a much better pot connection. Gossip columns suspected a ploy for attention. “The fine was $35,” Roth countered. “In New York, the fine for letting your dog crap on the sidewalk is $100. If I wanted publicity, I’d have crapped on the sidewalk.”
In 1991, Kramer Guitars declared bankruptcy after losing a royalty lawsuit brought by Floyd Rose. Anticipating the collapse, Eddie gave birth to another baby when after twenty-one prototypes, his new partner Ernie Ball Music Man unveiled the new EVH Music Man signature guitar. Compared to his slapdash Frankenstrats, this was a more refined instrument suiting Eddie’s regal position. Production was limited to little more than a thousand per year, with each one handcrafted to consistently high quality.
The new gear featured two completely different pickups and a bass-wood body with a hard, resonant maple top. The design combined elements of the Fender Telecaster and the Gibson Les Paul, and aimed for sustain and tone quality over fuzzy brown distortion. This axe was clearly the weapon of an older warrior, a far cry from the slipshod kamikaze hand-built model Eddie now derided as a “piece of shit.” “When I first started out, to me the most important thing was how fast you could play and what a technician you could be,” he told Guitar. “It’s all changed. My priorities have changed . . . I think I’m much more conscious of the overall end result as opposed to just being me.”
The elite new guitar helped temper Eddie’s manic outbursts. On F.U.C.K., the band had tuned to conventional E notes, whereas in the past he either tuned a quarter step down or let the tuning stay wherever the guitar found itself. Eddie—who inspired a generation of players to tear out their neck pickups in favor of the attack of the bridge pickup—played most of the album with the mellower front pickup of his Music Man. “The main thing I look for is a sweet, warm sound that isn’t like someone chuckin’ razor blades at you,” he explained.
Along with a new guitar sponsorship came a new amplifier—the Peavey 5150 line. He spooked the engineers during the design process with his “magical” ears and touch. “When Eddie came to us, he sent us his Marshall and his Soldano and other things and told us what he wanted,” Peavey product manager Tony Pasko told WolfgangGuitars.com. “A lot of his amps had something wrong with them and they were always broken as he was always tweaking them, changing transistors, adding juice gooses or what have you. And to us they sounded crappy. Then Eddie would visit and he would play through them and it was like, wow that sounds pretty good. And the point was—it was just Eddie.”
Unlike Eddie’s new genteel guitar, the 5150 amp was a step in a dirtier direction. It offered six gain stages in its circuitry, twice what a 1970s Marshall amp would carry, and while gain stages alone did not make the amp, these were awash in rich, tonal distortion. While a young, aggressive player could be forgiven for not even knowing the expensive EVH Music Man guitar existed, within ten years the 5150 amp would become standard at heavy rock, hardcore punk, and extreme metal shows.
Eddie branched out as a musician around this time, experimenting with different playing styles as well as technical innovations. His circle of jam pals was expanding too, beyond Steve Lukather, with whom Eddie had performed a set of Hendrix and Cream covers earlier that year in a group called Phuxnot. Collaborating with a former new wave rival, Eddie also played rhythm guitar on Thomas Dolby’s 1992 outing Astronauts & Heretics. To promote his new signature guitar, Eddie appeared at the NAMM music retail convention jamming in a booth with future Deep Purple guitarist Steve Morse and British country guitarist Albert Lee—two disciplined heavy hitters who kept the free-floating Eddie in check.
Eddie shared the stage with George Harrison and David Crosby on December 14, 1992, for a performance of “A Little Help from My Friends,” at a benefit concert for the family of late Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro. Eddie the wunderkind was now officially rock aristocracy, nearly fifteen years after winning his first player of the year award. He spread his vitality around, plugging in with supporting act Alice in Chains during their hit “Man in a Box”—surprising guitarist Jerry Cantrell, who thought a soundman had messed up and put a delay on his guitar.
Hoping to shake loose some fresh insight from the band, Guitar assigned Sammy to interview Eddie for the magazine. While the pair was installed in the lobby of the Bel Air Hotel, rehashing their love of Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton, comedian Al Franken strolled past. Sammy egged him to asked the world’s greatest guitarist a question, so Franken asked which finger Eddie would choose to lose if forced to slice one off. “Probably the pinkie on my right hand,” Eddie replied, a rare disarming moment.
Though Eddie admitted he hadn’t bought a new record since Peter Gabriel’s So in 1986, he couldn’t help but see that a new era had arrived in full force by 1992. Metallica, U2, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Guns N’ Roses all registered Top 20 Billboard albums for the year. The numbers didn’t lie—the introduction of Soundscan meant that record sales were now counted at the cash register by actual units, not by the previous system of cronyism that had kept many dinosaurs on life support. Alternative, country, heavy metal, and R&B albums shot to the top, while music industry pet projects like 1991 chart toppers Wilson Phillips and Michael Bolton were walloped.
Van Halen’s hand remained strong. Metallica had benefited from joining them on the 1988 Monsters of Rock tour. The Red Hot Chili Peppers were like Van Halen through a funhouse mirror—cocky lords of Hollywood with a flamboyant lead singer, a virtuoso bass guitarist, and a colorful wardrobe straight out of David Lee Roth’s fantasies. Most of the new breed of hard rock bands still took major cues from young Van Halen’s music, visual style, and reckless approach.
In September 1992, Van Halen cleaned up at the MTV Video Music Awards, as “Right Now” brought home top honors for editing and direction, as well as Video of the Year. Surely some forces of history were grumbling, as Nirvana’s phenomenal “Smells Like Teen Spirit” clip was passed over. Funnily enough, Nirvana leader Kurt Cobain reported that the first-ever rock concert he attended, in 1983, had been to see Sammy Hagar and Quarterflash—and he had worn an oversized concert T-shirt for a week.
Van Halen still represented the American dream, but the dream was in crisis. Rock bands were no longer expected to smile. Politically, the mood was edgy, as a recessionary economy and signs of war in the Middle East left music fans wanting something more than tits-and-ass lyrics. Not to say that Van Halen didn’t reach their share of intelligentsia. After Eddie commented modestly on MTV in 1992 that playing guitar the way he did wasn’t as hard as brain surgery, neurosurgeon Jim Schu-macher from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston got in touch to offer one day of brain surgery training in exchange for guitar lessons.
Van Halen had thus far skated through the storm, but the question remained how the band would adapt to the new realities—whether they would notice and react, go by way of the dinosaur, or simply continue to hover untouchable in their own perpetual success. They often dismissed grunge and rap as updated versions of the punk and disco they had blown past on their initial rise to glory. Yet their true direction in the 1990s remained murky. “A lot of times we reminisce about the clubs we used to play,” Mike said, suggesting a desire to go back to basics. “Those were the good days. It’s kinda neat playing in a little room.”
According to David Lee Roth, Alex Van Halen had always blocked live recordings because Led Zeppelin had never done a live record, just a lackluster soundtrack to their concert film. Now in February 1993, one of the greatest live acts in rock and roll released its first live album, Right Here, Right Now. “It’s kind of like a greatest hits, but it’s not,” Alex explained. “It’s kind of like a live album, but it is,” Sammy joked. The first official answer to hundreds of bootleg releases captured a typical Sammy-era live set in its prime. Included among two dozen tracks running over two hours were four Roth-era songs, the individual solo spots, plus a crowd-pleasing cover of the Who
’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” with Eddie playing the keyboard part on guitar.
Spurred by the radio broadcast they produced for Westwood One, Van Halen started work on the live album by themselves. After a month, however, Alex and Eddie reached “terminal mixing capacity.” They lured Andy Johns back to 5150 one last time to mix and make sense of miles of disorganized tape from remote truck recordings. He reached back as far as the 1986 and 1988 tours for good performances of a handful of songs. Once assembled, the live album peaked at number 5, and went double platinum by September. One of the families whose disaster-stricken home was pictured on the cover threatened legal action but quickly settled out of court.
Michael Anthony’s wish to play clubs was granted when the band booked a March 3 gig at a familiar venue—the Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood. The show was touted as a fifteenth anniversary gig, dating to their signing with Warner Bros. Van Halen had played dozens of dates there in 1976 and 1977, the final year of their stint as a club band. Now prior to launching its 1993 Right Here, Right Now tour, the band put up 250 tickets at $20 each. More than three thousand fans waited for a spot, and when the ticket sales location was announced, a massive footrace began down Sunset Boulevard, stopping traffic and drawing six dozen policemen to the scene. Tickets sold out in fifteen minutes, and the band filmed the mob scene for its live video for “Dreams” from Right Here, Right Now.
During an interview video Van Halen filmed at 5150 to promote the live album, Alex half-jokingly spoke his mind to Sammy. “I have a philosophy—it’s safety of the past. You know why? There’s safety in the past, because it cannot be changed. There’s comfort.” Whether intended as a joke or not, Van Halen were growing more comfortable with putting their past on display.
Venturing to Europe in March 1993 for the first time in nine years, the Right Here, Right Now tour was launched in Munich, Germany, not far from Nuremburg where the 1984 tour had ended. They had never been to Europe with Sammy before, and gained an unexpected publicity bump from fifty-six-year-old international superstar singer Nana Mouskouri, earner of 250 gold and platinum records around the world. “I just love Van Halen and David Lee Roth, or hard rock,” she said.
After seeing his fist-pumping stage presence, Continental crowds blamed the über-American Sammy for keeping Van Halen away from Europe for so long—especially in Holland, where a thirteen-year absence had strained family ties.
Back in the United States, Van Halen picked up erstwhile Mötley Crüe singer Vince Neil as an opening act. This former David Lee Roth clone now had a successful solo act while his former band carried on with a new lead singer. In the Mötley Crüe biography The Dirt, Neil fondly recalled bonding with Sammy through kamikaze shots before Neil’s set and margaritas before Van Halen’s. “He ended up with the short end of the deal,” Neil said with laugh, “because he was always wasted before he hit the stage.”
Van Halen successfully created the extramusical importance they had sought with the Monsters of Rock tour but in an entirely different way. They organized a drive for fans to bring canned food to concerts to be donated to needy families through USA Harvest. Joining a different kind of major-label feeding frenzy, Warner Bros. donated six tons of chicken in Van Halen’s name.
Though they were traveling in jets and limos, Van Halen were tran-scending the trends by remaining normal guys, a band of the people. Stunned concertgoers after an August show in Texas saw Eddie Van Halen laughingly going from car to car in the post-concert traffic jam, looking to thumb a ride back to Houston—his limo was parked by the side of the road with smoke coming from under the hood.
Nodding to Generation X, Sammy grew a goatee and Michael Anthony sported a “Mosh” T-shirt when the 1993 tour ended in Costa Mesa, California in August. During “Finish What Ya Started,” the band members’ wives came onstage at the last show dressed like Playboy bunnies.
Eddie Van Halen met Kurt Cobain later that year, and appeared unimpressed by the new breed of rock star. Eddie stumbled into Nirvana’s dressing room backstage on December 30, 1993, at the Great Western Forum in Inglewood, California, and began badgering towering bassist Krist Novoselic, insisting he was so tall he should play basketball. Then Eddie naturally offered the newest sensation their mark of arrival—he wanted to join Nirvana onstage for a jam. “We don’t jam, we’re not that kind of band,” Cobain said. “Besides, we don’t have any extra guitars.”
Eddie jerked a thumb at Nirvana’s second guitarist, Pat Smear of the legendary L.A. punk band the Germs. “Let me play the Mexican’s guitar,” Eddie suggested. “What is he, is he Mexican? Is he black?”
Then Eddie began sniffing a deodorant bar, leaving white residue on his face. The others in the room didn’t see a shy, half-Indonesian Dutch immigrant whose life had been spent half in seclusion with a guitar—they only saw a drunken celebrity acting like a huge asshole.
“It was horrible! I was just shocked,” said Smear, who counted Eddie as an idol. “I was thinking, ‘God, Eddie Van Halen hates me!’ ”
Pestered by Eddie’s drunkenness and offended by slurs directed at his bandmate, Cobain suggested Eddie go onstage by himself and play “Eruption” after they finished their encore—the kind of smartass insult that slides right over the head of square elders, especially impaired rock stars.
It was not the first time a Van Halen brother’s lack of inhibition backstage had come across like patent racism. In the late 1980s, Alex met Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid after a show, and promptly insulted him by saying he couldn’t understand why a black man would even want to play guitar.
“Feeling pretty ghetto,” Reid told the New York Observer, he nonetheless summoned the nerve to upbraid Alex, saying “Why don’t you go ask your brother? He’s a real musician.” Eddie and Sammy had just praised Reid in the pages of Rolling Stone weeks earlier.
By 1993, Van Halen were cool and cutting-edge only in the most corporate ways imaginable. Their “Right Now” TV spots for Crystal Pepsi, for example, marketed the colorless, caffeine-free cola as “the clear alternative.” Saturday Night Live mocked the ads with “Crystal Gravy” parodies, promising salvation through translucent meat sauce. Though certainly a massive payday for Van Halen, shilling for a failed soda pop was not painting a path to a promising creative future.
Less than four months after meeting Eddie, Kurt Cobain was dead. “I don’t think things are any worse than when I was young,” Eddie told Rolling Stone. “I think there are certain bands that even complain about making music. Hey, if it’s a problem, don’t do it. As much as I loved the music Kurt Cobain made, and as sad as it is that he’s not with us any more, I can’t help thinking that if what you’re doing caused you to kill yourself, I would have stopped doing it. It ain’t worth it. Stay at home and make music in your bedroom for yourself.”
More and more, that seemed to be exactly the direction Eddie was headed. Van Halen started to float adrift after their manager, Ed Leffler, died at age fifty-seven on October 16, 1993, two quick months after being diagnosed with thyroid cancer. “He was more of a friend and a father figure to all of us than he was a manager,” Eddie said. The loss affected the brothers gravely, with Eddie later reporting that he hit an emotional rock bottom.
“To me, death’s always looking at you,” Hagar said matter-of-factly. Ever the pragmatist, he resumed business quickly, organizing a promotional schedule for his Unboxed solo collection that had him away from Van Halen just three months after Leffler’s death. The timing strained the band’s relationships.
For the short term, Van Halen began managing themselves, putting more stress on a group that was tired and emotionally drained. For the first time in nearly twenty years, Alex and Eddie were personally faced with the deluge of phone calls from booking agents, golf magazines, and TV producers asking if they would like to appear on cooking shows and celebrity food fights. Their affairs quickly became a shambles. With every piece of bad news, the pressure on the band increased. “When Ed Leffler died, the band that we cr
eated in 1986 died with it,” Sammy later said regretfully.
14. Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
David Lee Roth’s March 1994 album Your Filthy Little Mouth came calling like a colorful circus barker but left with a whisper. Feeling the metal fatigue, Roth teamed with funk producer Nile Rodgers, mastermind behind disco hits by Chic, Diana Ross, Madonna, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, and others. Mr. “Le Freak” himself, Rodgers had originally signed up to do the music for Roth’s ill-fated movie, and seven years later they were consummating the plan.
The album took the boldest tangent of any Roth solo outing yet. Relying heavily on a horn section and big bass lines, Roth was now a tour guide through an underbelly of night scenes—similar to what David Johansen from the New York Dolls did when he greased his hair and became life of the party Buster Poindexter. Not oblivious to the changing winds of musical fashion, Roth hoped to either outsmart the trendsetters or avoid the issue altogether through his strength of character.
“Everybody’s Got the Monkey” was an improvement on the silly fun that slipped through his grasp on Skyscraper. Roth’s voice had regained its throaty purr, and the big rock sound was fully flushed.
Jumping in and out of genres like an impatient channel-switcher, he also dabbled in country-western music with “Cheatin’ Heart Café,” a duet with Travis Tritt. “No Big ’Ting” nodded to dancehall reggae.
Covering Willie Nelson’s piano blues “Night Life,” a short-haired and moody Roth took a melancholy stroll through the big city, from slick rainy sidewalks to subway train, no company except a cigarette. The grainy black-and-white music video could have done for lost souls what “California Girls” did for bikinis, except that virtually nobody saw it. Roth was becoming a tree falling alone in the wilderness.
None of these dalliances alone should have sunk his career. Roth had gotten away with stylistic murder many times. Crazy from the Heat finally came out on CD in 1992, and remained one of the most popular left-hand turns in popular music history. Roth was versatile to the core, going all the way back to “Ice Cream Man.”