Everybody Wants Some

by Ian Christe

  As rumors reached a shrill pitch, on February 2, Van Halen “officially” announced a summer tour—only to run adrift two weeks later. Despite a breaking announcement on Billboard.com, a reunion news-flash on the Drudge Report, and a “99% likely” forecast by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the latest Roth adventure was soon postponed. An unnamed executive from concert promoter Live Nation told the Los Angeles Times that Van Halen’s 2007 tour had “shut down.”

  “We have fragile politics in Van Halen,” Roth said almost sadly. “Please accept that as a partial answer.”

  All eyes turned to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, just a few weeks away at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. If the reunion/renewal lineup of Van Halen with Wolfgang and Roth were in any shape to perform, they would surely unveil themselves that night.

  The question hung heavy: What form of Van Halen would appear at the ceremony? Though a great opportunity, the event was fraught with hazards. Roth shunned Sammy’s overtures toward singing a duet at the event, explaining that the two men played entirely different kinds of music. Meanwhile, the Van Halens reserved a table at the event, though manager Irving Azoff told Sammy they were not planning to attend. “We’re not gonna know until that day arrives,” Alex cryptically told Rolling Stone.

  Eddie didn’t sound very certain. “Alex and I have been doing this for so long that there aren’t very many things that we haven’t won,” he added. “I remember the last award I accepted from Bill Maher, when he was doing Politically Incorrect [in 1996]. They wanted me to get up and make a speech, so I said ‘Thank you.’ But I told everyone from then on to wait until I’m eighty—stick everything in a box, and send it to me then.”

  Then four days before the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was due to induct him, Eddie’s ceaselessly upbeat assessment of the band’s health was countered with a sobering admission of his ongoing alcohol addiction. Instead of touring or accepting any awards, he would be returning to rehab, possibly as a precondition of doing any business with mega-promoter Live Nation. “Some of the issues surrounding the 2007 Van Halen tour are within my ability to change and some are not. As far as my rehab is concerned, it is within my ability to change and change for the better. I want you to know that is exactly what I’m doing,” Eddie wrote in a public letter.

  Alex announced that he would not be attending the ceremony without Eddie, leaving the interesting entourage of David Lee Roth, Sammy Hagar, and deposed bassist Michael Anthony to accept the honor. Roth had repeatedly requested to perform at the induction ceremony, with or without the Van Halens. Though the organizers were set on having Velvet Revolver play Van Halen songs, they offered Roth the chance to sing “You Really Got Me.” He insisted on an original Van Halen song, not the Kinks cover. Velvet Revolver, however, backed away from learning “Jump.”

  His conditions rebuffed, on the Friday before the ceremony Roth decided not to attend. “I don’t make speeches for a living,” Roth told the Los Angeles Times, “I sing for my supper.” In its attempts to please the Van Halen brothers, both singers, and now Velvet Revolver, somehow the Hall of Fame had dishonored an honoree.

  A weekend was a long time in Van Halen’s lives, however. Nobody was sure what would happen at the Waldorf-Astoria ceremony come Monday, March 12. What soon transpired was every Van Halen fan’s worst fear—the validation became a debacle that bordered on tragic.

  First, Velvet Revolver—a celebrity rock project consisting of former Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland fronting the remnants of Guns N’ Roses—read a perfunctory statement listing a few career highlights, nothing surprising or exciting. The band’s botched performance of “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love” proved they were probably the only hard rockers of their age to have never covered the song. The supposed balance—a version of Hagar-era “Runaround”—was much worse, a lackluster abomination consisting of Slash and company repeating a riff while Weiland yelled “round and round” over and over. At least one member of the black-tie audience noticed, objecting loudly as they cleared the stage: “That wasn’t Van Halen!”

  Cheered by their families, Sammy and Mike graciously thanked Dave and wished the Van Halen brothers the best. Sammy specifically thanked the Hall of Fame for including him. Mike recognized Gary Cherone for his contributions. Then they joined Paul Schaeffer and the house band for a squeaky, off-version of “Why Can’t This Be Love?” that wasn’t even saved by the horn section.

  The entire event made Van Halen seem like a slipshod, overpartied footnote on rock history. It was inconceivable that Dave didn’t suddenly appear with an acoustic guitar to sing “Ice Cream Man,” or pop up with inductees Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five for an impromptu mash-up of “Runnin’ with the Devil.” As Michael Anthony told the press afterward, “I was waiting for Roth to come busting through at some point during the speech.” So were we all.

  In the end, everyone in Van Halen has taken a turn as villain. All the band members have bent the truth for convenience and used the media to stall the fans, mask their true intentions, forward their own plans, and polish one side of a controversy. The truth is more muddled by emotion, personal politics, and the haze of altered states than anyone can admit without upsetting whatever tender relationships remain, if any. The only shining side of the coin is that all the players involved have a decent track record for coming clean after enough time passes.

  Thirty-five years after the Trojan Rubber Company rocked its first high school gym, the simple fact remains—Van Halen ain’t over until David Lee Roth sings. His return to Van Halen remains a great unanswered question of rock music. Since stepping down from morning radio, he has remained in the public eye, a constant reminder that one of the great love stories of the hard rock era awaits its proper conclusion.

  Roth never enjoyed a proper number 1 album with Van Halen, but the sales speak for themselves—twice the millions of albums were sold in the United States with him than with Hagar—though time and upgrades to CD from vinyl and cassette allow Roth a head start. An entire generation born after 1985 is already past the legal drinking age. Though they were not alive when Roth led the band, they still buy the music and the $100 vintage T-shirts on eBay. The legacy of vintage Van Halen survives on grainy Internet videos.

  As much as his old bandmates resent his ballhog antics, they need to put the pieces together and reconnect the electricity before it’s too late. A hundred million Van Halen fans still want to live happily ever after. As Roth already stressed when he made his early-nineties push for a reunion, “I want some fireworks! I want some color! There might be some conflict, but maybe that’s what made great music.”

  The failure of the 1996 reunion has dissipated. In 1996, Van Halen were deluded. Now they have a chance to redeem their chips for real. They could take inspiration from Gary Cherone’s midyear 2006 work with Extreme after ten years—start small, rehearse plenty, and play like you want to be remembered.

  A brilliant diamond fell from Roth’s mouth during a 1991 interview: “With Van Halen, you got all five sides of the coin, whereas most musicians intentionally flatten it into a one-dimensional image: easily palatable, instantly digested. We never did that in Van Halen. You would have elements of brooding and great celebration, often in the con-text of the same song, so that you could reinterpret infinitely what you were hearing.”

  Tired and twisted though Van Halen might be, nobody wants to see the band fail. The hope for a reunion is that after all these years, it is possible to go back to a happy summer day in 1977, 1982, or 1984, one of those nights when the perfect swagger came along as if by accident. Sammy Hagar couldn’t come between a love this strong—as he well admits. This is Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor love, Luke and Laura love, Tommy Lee and Pam Anderson love, meant to attract and repel again and again.

  Most frustrating of all, almost everyone involved is currently performing classic Van Halen material. Roth’s recent tours have provided almost exclusively Van Halen-centric playlists, and h
e has strained his voice mightily to deliver his point. He tells long, sappy stories about how the songs were written. He flubs the words. But for a reunion, he can inject whatever steroids into his neck that Tour de France cyclists allegedly use to scale the highest mountains. He must.

  At exactly the same time, Michael Anthony has toured extensively with Sammy as the Other Half, playing Van Halen songs plus his incom-parable extended bass solo. Even Eddie conceded to the demand for Van Halen, when he hosted a late September 2006 bash at his house and got onstage with ex–Mötley Crüe singer John Corabi to play classic Van Halen hits like “Panama” and “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love.”

  Now that the seal has been cracked on the possibility of a new tour with Roth, the ouster of Michael Anthony remains toubling, especially for his replacement, Wolfgang Van Halen. The enormous pressure on Wolfgang if that comes to pass should probably prompt a child services investigation—how can a teenager be expected to patch up the damage done by decades of lawyers, lead singer disease, and unlawful behavior? Yes, there’s a certain amount of logic to Eddie’s declaration. Jan van Halen left Holland and sacrificed to found a musical dynasty. If Eddie never makes another record—and he already hasn’t in ten years—then he passes his son the torch. But doing this now, he’s throwing his only son down an aching chasm. Interviewed by People magazine, Wolfgang has already expressed his doubts.

  First things first—this concept of a Van Halen dynasty lasting centuries can only be built on a refreshed memory of what made the band great in the first place. Sure, all this talk of a reunion is unfair—like asking any forty-something to run a basketball play like he did in high school, clear every board of Pac-Man on one quarter, or jump a BMX bike over the canyon on a plywood ramp. But Van Halen doesn’t need to point the way back to what they were as much as point the way forward.

  The fact is, Van Halen have never suffered irreparable tragedy like so many of their peers. No death in the band like the Rolling Stones, the Who, Metallica, Nirvana, or Ozzy Osbourne. No murdered members like the Beatles or Pantera. So many supporting characters in the Van Halen saga have already passed away—like George Harrison, who jammed with Eddie in the early 1990s, Top Jimmy of the Rhythm Pigs, and manager Ed Leffler. The Beatles reunion never happened, and now it never will. Van Halen should. “We are in this for life—if I hit eighty, I’ll still be making music, blazing on,” Eddie promised after Roth first left the band.

  At the end of the day—a time that is fast approaching, like it or not—the question never goes away, because in the minds of many, the original members of Van Halen are still together. The louder Eddie or Alex protests, the more the fans nod knowingly, insisting that they still love Roth. The first love is always the strongest. The tragedy of Van Halen will be if they wither away without a good-bye kiss—and it’s a slow-burning tragedy already building over the last decade. “What we sell is that we make all the guys feel young and invincible, and all the girls feel young and desirable,” Roth recently reminded the Los Angeles Times.

  Maybe the future of our civilization doesn’t depend on Van Halen reuniting—maybe it does—but “Happy Trails” doesn’t sound right unless David Lee Roth, Eddie Van Halen, Michael Anthony, and Alex Van Halen sing it together. There’s still a lot of Van Halen left in the rest of us, and we need Van Halen to come along with the spark of life and bring it out. At the end of the story, everybody still wants some more.

  BONUS TRACK A

  Eddie Van Halen

  Extended Discography

  Nicolette Larson, Nicolette (Warner Bros., 1978): guitar solo on “Can’t Get Away from You”

  Dweezil Zappa, “My Mother Is a Space Cadet”/“Crunchy Water”: 12-inch single (Barking Pumpkin, 1982): co-producer with Donn Landee, guitar intro

  Michael Jackson, Thriller (Epic, 1982): guitar solo on “Beat It”

  Brian May & Friends, Starfleet Project (EMI, 1983): guitar

  Tim Bogert, Master’s Brew (Accord, 1983): guitar, as “A. Havlenen”

  Original soundtrack (OST), The Wild Life (MCA, 1984): composer, music on “Donut City”

  Sammy Hagar, I Never Said Goodbye (Geffen, 1987): bass, vocals, co-producer

  OST, Over the Top (CBS, 1987): guitar, bass, producer on “Winner Takes It All”

  Private Life, Shadows (Warner Bros., 1988): co-producer

  Private Life, Private Life (Warner Bros., 1990): co-producer

  Thomas Dolby, Astronauts & Heretics (Giant, 1992): guitar

  Sammy Hagar, Unboxed (Geffen, 1994): producer on “High Hopes” and “Buying My Way into Heaven”

  Black Sabbath, Cross Purposes (IRS, 1994): uncredited coauthor of “Evil Eye”

  Rich Wyman, Fatherless Child (Apricot, 1996): co-producer, guitar and bass on four songs

  OST, Twister (Warner Sunset, 1996): guitar on “Respect the Wind.”

  Various, Tribute to Jeff: David Garfield and Friends Play Tribute to Jeff Porcaro (Zebra Records, 1997): guitar, vocals

  Steve Lukather, Lukather (Sony International, 1998): songwriter, bass on “Twist the Knife”

  OST, The Legend of 1900 (Sony Classical, 1999): guitar on “Lost Boys Calling”

  Steve Lukather & Friends, Santamental (2002): guitar on “Joy to the World,” “Greensleeves,” and “Carol of the Bells”

  Sacred Sin DVD (NinnWorx, 2006): videos for Eddie’s solo songs, “Rise” and “Catherine”

  BONUS TRACK B

  Holy Grails:

  Unreleased Van Halen Rarities

  Alex Van Halen told Australia’s Undercover News in 2004 that Van Halen has virtually no finished unreleased material. “There may be two or three songs that were partially completed, but if those songs were really worthwhile we would have released them back when they were written.”

  For that to be true, you have to take “finished” to mean packaged with artwork and UPC code, practically sitting on store shelves. Van Halen has always been prolific, and they are sitting on a mother lode of unreleased recordings that would put Tupac Shakur to shame. Forget about Best of Michael Anthony’s Bass Solos, Vol. I—here’s a small selection of the bounty that will keep rock archivists busy for the next hundred years:

  Live tapes and rehearsals by the “Covers Band from Pasadena,” 1974–1976 Plenty of soundboard and audience recordings remain—why should bootleggers have all the fun? We’ve all heard Van Halen play the Kinks, now let’s have their versions of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and KC & the Sunshine Band.

  The Gene Simmons demos, 1976 Not the first Van Halen tape, this ten-song demo presents the first professional picture of “Woman in Love,” “Fools,” and “Runnin’ with the Devil.” This ten-song demo features early versions of “Runnin’ with the Devil” and “House of Pain,” not to mention some unreleased live standards like “Woman in Love” and “Big Trouble.”

  The Ted Templeman demos, 1977 When the band first met its long- term producer Ted Templeman, he immediately snared two dozen or more well-honed songs from Van Halen’s live set. Most of the tracks surfaced on Van Halen, II, and Women and Children First, but “We Die Bold” and “Young and Wild” are time capsules from the Sunset Strip days.

  Oakland, California, June 1981 The three Oakland shows on the Fair Warning tour were supposedly filmed by Warner Bros. Only a couple songs have ever surfaced, notably the “Unchained” live video.

  US Festival ’83, May 29, 1983 Van Halen were paid $1.5 million not just to play the US Fest but also to mix and edit a radio broadcast and TV special.

  Castle Donington, August 1984 A full hour of fine-tuned Van Halen captured before a frantic British crowd just days before Roth’s final performance.

  The original “1984” The intro to 1984 was cut from thirty minutes of synthesizer swishing sounds concocted by Eddie at his brand-new studio, 5150. This is probably just a fraction of what Eddie recorded while Moog-merized in his studio exploring the possibilities of electronic music.

  Singer tests Eddie likes to use tape, so it’s a fair bet
that the record button was pressed when Van Halen tried out singers like Sass Jordan and Mitch Malloy—especially since they’ve said so.

  Dallas, Dececember 4, 1991 Probably the grittiest Sammy-era show ever recorded, this makeup date performed at midday on the streets of Dallas by a grungy, stubble-faced band was filmed.

  Eddie’s jam tapes Sammy mentions hundreds of cassettes kicking around 5150, ranging from bare electric guitar to full songs recorded with Alex and Eddie.

  Molson Ampitheatre, Toronto, August 1995 The band went to pains to record this stop on the Balance tour, but months later Sammy was out of the band.

  Australia, April 1998 Likewise, this document of Gary Cherone’s brief tenure was filmed for a pay-per-view concert and shelved.

  DLR Revisited, 2002 While the fans clamored for a reunion, the band has been sitting on three or four unreleased new tracks recorded with David Lee Roth in 2002.

  Van Halen IV, 2006 Eddie, Uncle Alex, and Wolfgang Van Halen have been jamming at 5150 for years. Let’s hear this dangerous new band.

  BONUS TRACK C

  Pictures On The Silver Screen:

  Van Halen In The Movies

  Tim Robbins learns to dance in space in Mission to Mars to “Dance the Night Away,” David Arquette screams out “Runnin’ with the Devil” with a van full of nuns in Ready to Rumble, and Van Halen’s music plays during the party scenes of too many movies to name. Here are a few must-see moments of VH-TV: