Everybody Wants Some

by Ian Christe

  20. All the Right Reasons

  When the going got tough, the tough got weird. In June 2005, Paul Anka recorded a version of “Jump” with an eighteen-piece orchestra that accomplished what Roth had been trying to nail for years. With veteran lounge-lizard swagger, Anka confidently strolled down Roth’s velvet carpet, reclaiming the terrain with booming drums, piercing horn stabs, bubbly piano, and vocal ad-libs before the solo break. Anka sounded like Big Daddy come down from entertainment heaven to tell Roth to “roll with the punches.” Around the same time, a novelty band called Lounge Against the Machine took a decent swipe at “Hot for Teacher.”

  Following an aborted attempt to develop a new adult-oriented show in Las Vegas, Roth unexpectedly resurfaced far from the velvet curtains. With little fanfare, he had become a fifty-year-old emergency medical technician, and in late 2004 started riding ambulances in poor neighborhoods in New York City. He went on over two hundred calls just to be certified as a paramedic so he could volunteer one weekend a month. “I was working in neighborhoods that were almost exclusively black and Spanish-speaking,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “Only about twice out of 200 clients was I recognized. I was working in Brooklyn, down in Coney Island. . . . I’ve been in more project apartments than Jay-Z and Diddy combined.”

  When the EMT card was in his pocket, he went to Fort Sam Houston in Texas for training at the site where U.S. Army medics are schooled. Roth certainly wasn’t performing public service for the money—proceeds every time “Jump” was played in some sports arena kept his yacht washed and waxed. Diamond Dave was saving lives and pursuing the family business, following his father and two uncles the doctors, and his grandfather the surgeon—a line of work almost as prone to God complex as rock star.

  After high school, Roth had worked as a hospital night orderly for two years, prepping and cleaning up after surgeries. “I was with the guy before they put him to sleep,” he told Rolling Stone in 1985, “and the last one he saw before he went out, and some of them never woke up again. It had a very striking effect on me. It’s very difficult to disassociate yourself from it once you’ve left. So I’m not as affected by pain and death and misery as I was before I worked there.”

  Less altruistically, Roth was simultaneously threatening to revive his movie-star dreams on the basis of a slew of VH1 commentator appearances that rekindled his love of being on camera. He also played himself as a poker-playing acquaintance of the Jersey mafia in a 2004 episode of The Sopranos. Riffing on accountants and income tax, he delivered his line deadpan: “I used to be able to write off condoms.”

  Then at the beginning of 2006, David Lee Roth showed up large on billboards and the sides of public buses across New York City. Filling the silence left by the departure to satellite radio of his longtime friend Howard Stern, he began a rollicking experiment in morning talk radio that listeners found either refreshingly urbane and unpredictable or just plain annoying. Stern had already predicted the hiring back in July 2005, hoaxing his listeners for the first hour of his show with an arrogant Roth imitator who bebopped and shoobedooed over Van Halen loops.

  Once installed for real, Roth seemed truly appreciative of his new platform. His main experience focusing his boundless energy and free-flowing patter behind the mic was the short-lived Internet radio experiment five years earlier RothRadio.com. His new show seemed to have no producers, as it booked very few guests and left the singer to extem-poraneously improvise for hours each morning.

  While lashing out against the insular culture of “celebutards,” he welcomed Latin listeners and soldiers tuning in via Internet, rocking the limits of both his format and his New York–based market. Though his loosely organized rants seemed ill-suited for high-powered morning drive-time radio, a more nuanced and interesting view of the world’s most eligible and aging himbo emerged. He lectured audiences on the concept of balance, how he would alternate orgiastic backstage excesses with humility exercises like scrubbing a motel room clean with a tooth-brush. He promoted deep album tracks by long-lost funk-rock bands like Mother’s Finest, and his love of his own life showed.

  His envy appeared, though, whenever he talked about modern rock. He tore apart popular bands like Green Day and Linkin Park, bashing their safe choices and lack of sophistication. Of course, he couldn’t help banging the pulpit on the subject of Van Halen. Roth had been ridiculed into silence during the 1990s, but now he could monopolize the conversation. When the radio show was inevitably canceled on April 21, 2006, he came out smiling. “At the end of the day, I sing for my dinner, and I kept my day job,” he told Fox News.

  After a silent period of a few weeks, Roth’s mouth was back on the job. Capitalizing on the profile boost of four months of mostly negative press about his radio show, he immediately booked a summer tour, appeared on Strummin’ with the Devil, an album of Van Halen songs performed by a fast-picking bluegrass band, and sashayed into the talk-show circuit to parade his happy trails.

  Playing with a country band, Roth found his Indiana roots and his relevance to the new conservative, rule-bound America. He swore by his cornfield beginnings as fiercely as he had once played his connection to footloose Uncle Manny and bohemian New York. He appeared onstage in a white fedora and a striped stock trader’s shirt, still kicking over his head in time to “Hot for Teacher.” The attention-stealing, egomaniac frontman was carrying on with the show long after the spotlight banged off—just another human lump with an oversized need to be loved.

  The crowd still shouted for Van Halen. Shouted, shouted, shouted. Of course, the question hovered—whether Roth would rejoin his first love. “Paging Eddie Van Winkle,” he quipped on Fox News. “I think he’s the only one resistant now. I think it’s inevitable. That material is as familiar as ‘My Country’ Tis of Thee.’ How hard is it to sing ‘Dance the Night Away’? To avert that would be a sin.”

  Even if they were fighting on different fronts, David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar had both survived the Van Halen wars. Sammy and the Waboritas were going strong into 2005, playing long nightly sets to crowds of thousands. Hagar’s straightforward act had expanded into a farcical reenactment of spring break in Cancun, complete with sandpit volleyball, bikini-clad waitresses dispensing tequila and temporary tattoos, and a donkey wearing a sombrero. Meanwhile, the Cabo Wabo brand remained literally center stage, painted on a giant hanging backdrop—and permanently tattooed on Sammy’s left bicep.

  “Hagar’s success isn’t because he’s a great singer, a great guitarist, or a great songwriter,” said David Lauser, a friend of Sammy’s since high school. “He’s in touch with his heart, and people will pick up on that. I guess that’s what makes you a great artist.”

  Advertising Age reported that Cabo Wabo was on track to ship over 110,000 cases in 2004, putting the super-premium tequila well behind Patrón but still in the top five high-end brands. Perhaps anticipating the future of the concert business, Sammy announced he was making enough money from tequila sales and merchandise that he hoped to be able to tour for free. “It’s a year or two early from being able to do it for free, assuming the company keeps growing the way it is,” he said.

  When he appeared on Craig Ferguson’s late-night talk show just days after Roth, he fidgeted through questions about Van Halen, pretending to walk off the set after being asked about another reunion. “I would love to if everything could be cool,” Sammy told Ferguson, “but it just ain’t happening anymore. It’s like a marriage that’s gone bad. I’m not going to go back and date my ex-girlfriend.” Badgered by Ferguson about whether Eddie might be crazy, Hagar reluctantly said, “Listen, I’m crazy, too, but I’m user-friendly.”

  Since early 2002, Sammy and Michael Anthony had been working on a semi-supergroup called Planet US, writing music Hagar described as a blend of Led Zeppelin and Tool. Joining half of Van Halen would be Journey guitarist Neal Schon and Journey drummer Deen Castronovo. Former Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash initially agreed to play with the group but never made a rehearsal. />
  Van Halen’s 2004 tour had scotched the Planet US project, but Sammy and Mike still wanted to get a band going. They retooled their party band Los Tres Gusanos to include not just Waboritas drummer David Lauser but also Waboritas guitarist Vic Johnson. Billed as the Other Half, the quartet played an hour of Van Halen songs and resurrected Mike’s epic bass solo. “Van Halen is us four with the brothers,” Mike said, “but if nothing’s happening with the band, the fans want to hear it, and we want to go out and play it. I’m not going to sit around and do nothing.”

  Angry that the pair would dare play without him, Eddie Van Halen offhandedly but cruelly slammed the Other Half on The Howard Stern Show. “They’re both a little chubby, I think they’re both a little wider than they are tall. They’re out there selling hot sauce and tequila, playing all my music. That don’t bother me, just makes them a cover band.”

  Surprisingly, Eddie appeared on Howard Stern’s show in 2006 to say he was “open to anything,” including touring with “Diamond” David Lee Roth—though he rapped him as “Cubic Zirconium.” Eddie called Roth a loose cannon, but said he could deal with loose cannons—and went on to act like one himself, insulting the hell out of Michael Anthony and Sammy Hagar, calling the former “Sauce Sobolewski” and the latter a “little red worm.”

  Eddie claimed to be pissed off at Mike’s forays outside Van Halen, playing bass with Hagar and with Ohio guitar ace Neil Zaza. In any case, like Jan Van Halen gigging with his high school sons, Eddie turned to a sideman he could trust implicitly and biologically. “I’m pretty much open to anything, but what’s going to happen is there’s a new Van Halen member involved, and that’s my son,” Eddie said. “My son is in, and ‘Sauce’ Sobolewski can do whatever the hell he wants. The name Van Halen is going to go on way after I’m gone, because this kid is just a natural.”

  In June 2006, Sammy projected that Eddie would need “an overhaul” before a Van Halen regrouping of any kind was possible. Although something of a gourmand, he also told a reporter he ate in greasy-spoon diners that didn’t demand that he change his clothes.

  “If I was ever a genius at anything,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle, “I found everything I like to do and where I want to live and I rolled it all together. I got a business. I can play music at my business. I love tequila and that whole lifestyle, the Mexican food. I’ve got a Mexican restaurant. I have the tequila that goes with it. I have the whole lifestyle rolled into one.”

  After sponsoring a successful booze cruise to Mexico for his diehard admirers, Hagar was last spotted signing bottles of Cabo Wabo at a Costco—happy as he could be, a true human phenomenon. His gusto was rewarded in June 2007, when Italian liquor titan Campari paid $80 million for an 80 percent stake in the Cabo Wabo Tequila company.

  At the end of 2005, Alex Van Halen and his third wife, Stine, were named Neighborhood Emergency Assistance Team members in their community of Hidden Hills, California, and awarded backpacks and hardhats to use in case of earthquakes or other emergencies. The way things were going with Van Halen, they might need to duck and cover sooner than they thought.

  Speculation about Van Halen’s plans spiked in 2005 with word the band would be seeking a new lead singer on the CBS reality show Rock Star. INXS had successfully humiliated themselves during the show’s first season, and now rumors that Van Halen was next in line surfaced from MTV.com and America Online. Van Halen’s publicist didn’t help matters with the statement, “I’m not denying it. I’m not going to answer any questions about it.” On his radio show, Roth claimed he had been handed an open-call audition sheet from producers. After six months in the news, a “vehement denial” from the band and CBS put the rumors to rest.

  Eddie Van Halen’s presence was needed, but when he appeared the reaction was not entirely a good one. His weary appearance at Elton John’s March 2006 Oscar party underscored the urgency. Drained by divorce, surgeries, and drink, thirty years of eternal eruption had left Eddie a worn, gray-haired fifty-year-old man. Once the envy of millions, he looked like the walking wounded. Heartless Internet wags dubbed him “Smeagol Van Halen,” an unflattering comparison to Gollum from Lord of the Rings. Even in his Dutch hometown of Nijmegen, Eddie only placed seventeenth in a newspaper popularity contest ranking the “Greatest Nijmegeners.” You couldn’t help but hope that all he needed was a return to the precious power of Van Halen.

  The Van Halen brothers kept a jealous eye on all their exes, especially Roth. Weeks after his cornpone bluegrass outing, Eddie and Alex ambled out of the garage to the Home Depot Center in Carson, California, where they joined country star and frequent Hagar sidekick Kenny Chesney in loose renditions of “Jump” and “You Really Got Me.” Mechanical hip be damned, Eddie ran through his old gymnast routines like a wounded bird testing its wings and flying once again.

  Before long, a few of his much-touted 5150 projects finally saw the light of day. He released music videos for two new songs, “Rise” and “Catherine,” written for Goth-porn movies by director Michael Ninn. Embracing the sex movies, Eddie invested money into their production and allowed scenes and a couple of music videos to be filmed at his home. In the fall of 2006 he hosted a launch party for the flicks at his house, now a bachelor pad, playing a slew of early Van Halen songs on a backyard stage.

  The “Catherine” video, directed by Michael Ninn, was an expression of aimless sadness, capturing Eddie alone in 5150 in the darkness, cigarettes in his headstock, shirtless and sweating heavily while he cried out a sustained guitar solo over piano, strings, and drums. Cut-in shots showed him playing the other instruments as well. At the close of the song, he threw down his guitar on the hardwood floor and gulped from a bottle of red wine. The poignant isolation of the three-minute film seemed the clearest picture of what Eddie had been doing since 1999.

  He was rootlessly looking for an outlet but was fenced in by unrealistic expectations that ruled his actions. The optimistic story that began on a boat from Holland had all but turned into Citizen Kane, with Eddie losing his mind like Orson Welles at his Xanadu estate. Instead of a glass snow globe labeled Rosebud, Eddie dropped his red guitar, and his malfunctioning path was just as enigmatic as Charles Foster Kane’s in the movie. He had turned a few guilders and a piano into lim-itless riches and adulation, and had built his American dream house at 5150, yet King Edward had become a prisoner in his castle—a cautionary tale instead of a shining inspiration.

  Encore - Van Halen IV

  Pressing Van Halen back into service at this dark hour, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame came calling a few days before Halloween 2006, nominating the band along with eight other acts for the following year’s five available slots. If nothing else, winning the vote would jolt the flatlining band into appearing publicly.

  Suddenly, in November 2006, Van Halen’s apparent new spokeswoman—a porn publicist who had become Eddie’s girlfriend—announced that Van Halen were rehearsing for a summer 2007 tour. Speculation ran rampant about who would sing, alongside surprise over confirmation that Michael Anthony had been canned and replaced with fifteen-year-old Wolfgang Van Halen.

  At first, the old dance partners Eddie and Roth moved awkwardly. “I’m telling Dave, ‘Get your ass up here and sing, bitch! Come on!’ ” Eddie told Guitar World. “The ball is in Dave’s court.”

  Roth let the rumors simmer. He continued to serve his fellow man as a paramedic, riding an ambulance on New Year’s Eve 2006 instead of hosting a TV party as he would have done twenty years ago. He compared the Van Halen soap opera to a NASCAR race that spectators watch just to see the crashes. Sammy Hagar was less circumspect. “Dave and Ed working together? I don’t see it in a million years,” he told the Cleveland Plain-Dealer.

  In fact, Roth had rehearsed with Eddie, Wolfgang, and Uncle Al during December. Wolfgang had apparently been the unifying force, directing his older bandmates with cues from a Van Halen–loaded iPod. “The chemistry is combustible,” Roth told Rolling Stone. “There’s an explosive sound there that .
. . unless you were there, which most folks weren’t, then you may have forgotten.”

  The road to hitting the highway in a tour bus was still bumpy. Regardless of the latest reconciliation with the considerably wiser Roth, Eddie let it be known that he would not let the band’s former dictator push him around. “We’re not holding out for anyone, and we’re not demanding anyone,” he told Rolling Stone. “We’re not putting our eggs in any one basket. There’s not just one person on this planet that can sing.”

  The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame pressed a decision, however, as Van Halen were chosen for honors in 2007 along with R.E.M., Patti Smith, the Ronettes, and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. From their separate outposts, the band members past and present issued low-key statements of acceptance. “That music is a part of American culture,” Roth commented, “beyond just a stack of tunes.”

  The Hall of Fame simplified matters somewhat by leaving Gary Cherone off the invite. “Nothing against Gary, but I would’ve voted against getting him in,” Hagar told MTV.com. “He was really just a moment in Van Halen. There was questions about me getting in, because I’ve only been in the band 21 years!”

  Ever gracious, Cherone congratulated the five inductees on the honor, downplaying his exclusion gracefully. “To answer the few fans who are wondering whether I should or shouldn’t be included—while, yes, I was a small part of their history, I was certainly not a part of their legend, and that is what we, the fans, are celebrating.”

  For the first time in years, Van Halen seemed to be getting something done. At the January 2007 NAMM convention, Eddie announced a milestone partnership between his own EVH guitars and industry granddaddy Fender, commencing with a top-line run of three hundred precise replicas of his red-and-white-striped Frankenstrat. Obsessively crafted by builder Chip Ellis, complete with cigarette burns, bicycle reflectors, and nonfunctioning front pick-up, the copy of the axe that Eddie built for under $300 in 1976 was priced in 2007 at upward of $25,000. Announcing the partnership and praising the replica guitar as fooling even himself, Eddie seemed distracted and awkward before the adoring crowd. He plugged in and proved he could still play guitar if it ever again became necessary.