Eddie Van Halen — Essays

You couldn’t trust the Record Revolution near the Parmatown Mall. At least, not if you frequented the one on Coventry with the day glow punk rock window displays and surly clerks. Yet, there I was in front of a peg board display of “New Music,” weighing an offer from a way older than me golf pro to buy me a record.

The normal signals weren’t there. No interesting posters, stand-ups or displays to point the way. Just a bunch of shrink-wrapped albums, which I kept removing, turning over, assessing. How I got there, I don’t know. But I remember balancing my fear of his annoyance with my own desire to not squander a free record. Or in this case, 8-track, because that’s what his car played.

Pursing my lips, I made my decision. Van Halen. Definitely.

I had no idea what it actually sounded like, but two burnt-out caddies had been raving about it earlier in the week. If it was good enough for them -- and they liked their rock – then it was exactly what I wanted.

The golf pro was non-plussed. “You sure?” he asked dubiously, flipping the album cover over and perusing the titles. Was it “Ice Cream Man” that gave him pause? “Atomic Punk”? “Little Dreamer”? I didn’t know, didn’t care. His pique made me want it more. There was no way this was going to be the Archies or the Partridge Family, so there was no shame in my game.

“Positive,” I said. Marched towards the door of the little strip mall store, paused and waited. He took the bag, his change and headed for me. Passing through and onto the sidewalk, he looked over his shoulder, “This is gonna suck.”
“Awesome,” I said, refusing to cower. “Can’t wait.”

That sound like an oncoming train turning into a space ship, the creeping bass throb made the opening 20 seconds feel like a lifetime. A cymbal strike, then another, and then... then... that guitar tone, swiping, slicing at the space inside that maroon muscle car. It was unlike anything I’d ever heard – and I’d heard a lot. T. Rex, Uriah Heap, Deep Purple, Les Dudek, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, the Stones.
The singer, wide open, vamping, rafting diving, wailing, was like a stripper on a pole. Swinging around the melody, yowling for effect, flexing what he had. It wasn’t power singing, slightly nasal, slightly throwing it out there. Like a javelin thrower, it was all about the moves.

And then the guitar solo started – notes, surges, circles, a definite sense of progression. Whatever the singer was doing, and it seemed to be about howling over a big hook-filled chorus of multiple voices intoning “Running With The Devil,” it didn’t matter: the show was the guitar, and the guy playing it knew no fear.

Proof was in the second track. A tumble of notes, tons of notes, spinning and circling at a ridiculous pace. Like someone had taken a Gregorian organ piece, speeded it up, played it on an electric guitar. It was thrilling, no other word for it. Whomever this was, the dexterity was death-defying. And it wasn’t just fast notes, but someone chiseling a real piece of music out of thin air.
I could feel the smirk crossing my face. Lips pressed together, the corners were repelling against each other, my eyes squinting as I tried not to be a poor winner. I’d been looking straight ahead, not making eye contact, just letting the music move through the car, me, the windows. When the notes were swallowed by something that felt like industrial noise, I exhaled. Turning towards my companion, the stabbing thrash that felt so familiar, that “when the whip comes down” flagellating the melody slapped across the bucket seats – and I realized the familiarity was... the Kinks!

Holy crap! One, two, three. This Van Halen album, bought because two stoners, who were the best kind of bad news, had been talking about them, was yielding in ways that reinforced my authority about music and rock bonafides.

“Well...” I leveraged, letting the smirk turn into a smile. “Well, well, well.”

“Yeah,” he said. It was so good, he couldn’t disparage the record. And good in a way that suggested a brighter, cleaner kind of rock. This wasn’t the heavy metal or hard rock that was so onerous or dark. It almost felt like pop music, something that in another universe reconciled that serious playing of the guitar and a drummer who kept sweeping things along with the idea that big shiny chorus were what it was all about.

“Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” seemed to be the poon hound’s national anthem. Raised around golf pros always on the prowl for something quick’n’easy, I got the rub. This was hormones and want to, the idea that it’s just sex – and why not?

For all the macho posturing, damn that guitar player could play. And it just got better. “I’m The One” was a tangle that was blistering. Sure, there was an a capella “oh, wah, shooby doo wah” section that recalled the Doobie Brothers’ “Black Water,” but it was the guitar that just kept coming.

By “Jamie’s Crying,” Eddie Van Halen was playing with a wanton tone that slithered and swung from side-to-side like the hot chick who knows everyone’s watching her walk. The counter melody, counter vocal part spoke volumes about the intention, the aggression and the control he had over his instrument.

We were still sitting in the parking lot, letting the music pummel us. Looking at the clock, I flinched. Dinner-time! Oh, damn...

“We gotta go.”

But having sat there, consumed by the playing, the swagger, the gusto for something big, loud and hip-shaking, there was something more to it than the guitar riffs, solos and weird ways of attacking the instrument. It was... FUN.

They played hard. But somehow – and not just the over-emoting, over-pouting singer – they didn’t take it all so serious. Yeah, virtuosity seemed to be an anchor, but they got the joke about how torqued up and testosterone-lacquered this was. Indeed, they leaned into with zeal. Who sings “I’m on fire” over and over in falsetto? Just a smokescreen for the spiraling runs, the punch punch pow of certain lines.
Over the bridge, up Carnegie, up Cedar Hill and peeling off to the Fernway School district. The tape kept clicking into the next quadrant, and nobody was saying much of anything. Pulling into the drive, I was a little bit late. I’d have to explain, but the damage could be undone.

“Can I keep it for now?” the golf pro asked, hoping to feel the grooves punch up whatever nocturnal adventures were ahead.

“No,” I replied. “You said it was for me.”

Pulling it from its place in the dash, I smiled. Clearly victorious, I tucked my trophy on one hand, opened the door and hit the driveway. “I had a really good time, and I love this. Thank you so so much.”
The much older golf pro scowled. Thwarted from annexing the tape, the gap was between 20-something and 14 was becoming bigger by the nano-moment. Kid sister, mascot, pain in the butt, I was big fun – and I extracted a big price for my time.

“You’re late,” my mother brayed. “Where’ve you been?”
I slid the tape under the cushion of a living room chair, smoothed my clothes and said, “Oh, I went over to the West Side and played golf with a couple of the pros.”

Knowing to start putting food on my plate and commit to dinner, I lowered myself into the seat that trapped me between the table and the wall. It was a basic dinner, no big deal, but dinner was always a big deal.

“How’d you play?” my Dad asked.

“Okay... Greens were slow, made a lot of putts.”

“Anything good happen?”

“Nope, just another day hustling golf with the hustlers.”

What a lie!

Up to the attic I stole after dinner, breathing in dust bunnies in the airless upstairs. Listening to “Eruption” over and over, trying to figure out how many notes, where they were going, how he was doing that. Finally, hitting the “Back” button over and over, I just let it wash over me like a rush of blasting water. Sinking into it, I drifted to a place beyond words or physical location – just rhythms, twists and tone.

Van Halen, the band that split the difference between rock and pop, had exploded inside a mid’70s muscle car – and taken me away. If Aerosmith felt like the Stones seedy US underbelly, this was something else. For a girl who liked the guitars out front, the rhythms propulsive, so began a love affair and guilty pleasure that would sustain me throughout college.

The next day I saw the two stoners, went, “Van Halen... YEAH.” They looked at each other, then back me and smiled. We all just nodded and smiled.

Springing for the album, looking at the pictures, they were dangerous without being menacing. Carnal, sure, but more the kind looking for volunteers than hostages. And if you were just there for the music – wallflower that I sort of was – that was okay, too. Come, rock, be. Throw your hands in the air, shake your butt, jump up and down. Leave your frustration, put the accelerator down.

Bad days, Sad days. There was Van Halen. It could pick you up, spin you around.

There was nothing profound here, just a cymbal crash, the jackhammer beats. And that guitar – doing things that just kept you moving forward. But always, always with melody.

And if David Lee Roth was that loudmouth guy who couldn’t shut his trap, hair like a lion, peacock strut and an arrogance that was laughable, Eddie Van Halen was cute. There, I said it. That smile, those impish eyes: he was a guitar god, but he was also really adorable.

Having grown up around the nerds for whom girls barely scanned – even their girlfriends seemed like an afterthought – the notion of a guitar hero who was darling was perfect. One more thing he did better than everyone else, yet that wasn’t even the point.

By the time Van Halen II dropped, they were massive. What had been my private stash, my jump around in my tshirt and jeans proposition had injected a Top 40 sort of hard rock sheen into Album Oriented Rock. The pulsing beats, the room on the tracks, the ear worm hooks – more often from the guitar as the lyrics – creating a new ubiquity.

Suddenly, all boys played air guitar. Junior high school dances saw the wall-flowers spill onto the floor, lurching and churning to Alex Van Halen’s “stomp” here crashes. Even the cool Moms were down, turning up the car sound system and bouncing their head in time. It was primal, but polished into a light saber gleam.

They found a way to reinvent “You’re No Good,” a steamy soul song that my friends all knew from Linda Ronstadt’s exhortative version, as a dank sort of trepidation, then emergence. Whatever, whoever she was, the guitar’s ramble spoke more than Roth’s vocal. It was half self-salve, but more the confession of a man felled by love.

Much to unpack from a song all the little girls thought – via Ronstadt’s backbone – they understood. To stare at the block disc turning ‘round was to hypnotize oneself with the turning and the tone. Not that II was a journey to the center of your psyche.

No, they perfected the party on, lust’n’libido notion of rock and roll. Out front, shameless, yet not so threatening for their unabashed celebration of “Dance The Night Away,” “Beautiful Girls” and “Women In Love.”

There was ZZ Top/Tejas kinda boogie with “Bottoms Up,” an acoustic almost flamenco excavation called “Spanish Fly” that dropped into straight into the slice’n’spin “DOA.” Every flavor, every color of rock and roll, it was here. Narcotically infectious, even the rock based upon classical music geeks had to give propers to Eddie Van Halen and his crew.

Van Halen merged being a party band with groundbreaking musicality. So much fun, you could miss the virtuosity – until that one riff corkscrewed by you, took hold, dropped your jaw. Whether you played an instrument or not, there was that moment when you stopped, went “What the...” or “How the...”

Make no mistake, it was always the brothers Van Halen. Diamond Dave may’ve been the sideshow carny and Sammy Hagar the hardcore metal singer, but it was the propulsion of Alex’s drums and the igniting factor of Eddie’s playing.

If “Oh, Pretty Woman” put them squarely on Top 40 radio, “Jump” made them lords of MTV. Even more startling about “Jump,” it was the columns of synthesizer that architected the equally driving single that was feeding on the post-disco new wavery of Men Without Hats and the Thompson Twins with an authority that would one day ooze from Prince’s rock-taut funk.

Yes, the solo – hammer-ons and arpeggios -- was like a jungle gym you could climb all over, but the vision transcended mastery of the guitar. Suddenly, we were all one big musical gumbo, one big party where all elements cooked up hot.
“Panama,” back squarely in the rock lane, worked just as well. Good times, good hooks, good grooves. They conviviality of the band of the band in the video made Van Halen a club you’d want to be part of: the thump bomping you forward, the red guitar with the white tape taking on another level of iconography.
It was all so thrilling, then the tempo dropped. If Roth’s recitation was a little creepy, Van Halen’s guitar – the tossed back and forth downstrokes, slithering licks – was a novella unto itself. A dark and stormy night, a misty roads end, a little bit of musk and misadventure.

And “Hot For Teacher”? After school special took on a whole other, prurient realization.

Diver Down and 1984 suggested a musical omniverse. A place where it all rocked together. But perhaps the greatest unifier had nothing to do with Van Halen at all.

MTV was a bastion of blinding Caucasian whiteness. Like AOR radio, it was filled with the Camara and Trans Am friendly bands. For every wacky Cindy Lauper, boytoy Madonna or British new waver from Banarama to the Clash, there was no Hendrix, no Tina Turner, no soon-to-be-minted Prince of Pop or just Prince.

Eddie Van Halen, whose parents moved to America because of his prejudice his Indonesian mother faced living in Holland with his traveling musician father, understood. Without ever flexing his own family’s experience with racism, he showed up, put up and laid a solo down on “Beat It” that made Miichael Jackson a citizen in full of MTV’s rock hard jungle.
No one doubted Jackson’s talents, that wasn’t the fact. Without words, though, there was a segregation in place that no one wanted to address. With six strings and a whirlwind of dexterity, Eddie Van Halen showed it was all music. Bring the intensity, the creativity and let the best song win.

Like a lot of rock stars, he struggled. Booze, primarily, but drugs. Late nights, party down. But always sweet to the core and chasing a dragon of what could he make the music do, where could his fingers go, his ability to drive deeper into his instruments, his vision, his curiosity.

Hanging with Sam Kinison, the comic/preacher/surprisingly facile musician, they could go for hours, for seemingly days. Talk, laughter, jamming, pressing into all the places people who fly so close to the sun see that elude the rest of us.

Always, always, seeking something more, walking a blade of music and shock, Where could it go? What unspeakable truth could you find?
If Diamond Dave was a flamboyant sideshow barker, Eddie Van Halen was seeking something more. If the party was what drew the masses, it was the playing that fed his soul and galvanized his band as more than one more hair metal act with momentum and a moment.
Three patents. Licks every pimply faced kid who wanted to rock locked himself in his bedroom to learn. A currency of the road is communicated by his solos without ever calling a title.

Having risen from backyard parties and Hollywood’s Starwood/Gazarri’s scene, he understood the commerce of hot girls, good times and loud music. But Eddie Van Halen knew how much more it could contain.

If Roth wanted to fly solo, Sammy Hagar provided a way to take things more seriously. Sure, they’d still pack some leer factor, some brio, some of that rafter-diving vocalese. But “Right Now” suggested a band that could make you think, too.

It was a new day, a new way of rocking hard. Once again, in a whole other way, Van Halen had redefined their singularity. If the exploding reality of another discovery didn’t have the same seismic force, they broke ground wielding awareness with the same “check this out” as Roth twirling some girl’s g-string on his finger.

Eddie F’ing Van Halen.

Like the Michael Jackson solo, heck like the solo on Nicolette Larson’s “Can’t Get Away From You” billed to “?,” he sought to keep his cancer struggle on the downlow. People knew, but had no idea. Word would spread, then be calmed.

It was as if he didn’t want people to lose site of the music in the struggle. He was a vessel of the Gods sent to pour the music out over us. The rest was just a matter of his mortal coil being mortal. Don’t look there, look here! See the sparks fly! Watch me ignite this 18 bar section of song! Hear the twists, swirls, corkscrews – and smile, or jawdrop, or marvel, or scream.

Scream! With delight, pleasure, rapture, awe. He didn’t care. He just wanted to play.

Standing in the grocery store, the text came. Just the TMZ announcement, nothing more. Butt the sender: Kenny Chesney, a kid who had those songs pumped into his veins almost before he was double digits.

Having become real stadium-sized ticket-selling artist, Eddie Van Halen’s represented the blurring of lines in the name of music to the kid from East Tennessee. If Keith Whitley gave him heart, Van Halen was the blood pumping through his heart and his approach to music. The notion country could have real songs, could punch hard, could burn guitar solos into the night as 60,000 people screamed was born turning up Diver Down in his best friend David Farmer’s stereo.

He, who’d made friends with his hero, had shared at least one blistering night with the Van Halens. Not quite a “Wayne’s World” moment, but the pictures show a road band, clearly influenced by the brothers, beaming about the merging of worlds, the kindness they were shown and the moment to share a stadium stage with icons who’d seen and done it all.

The spice aisle blurred. Somehow the heavy whipping cream didn’t seem so important. These moments – so ordinary and uneventful – can knock the legs out from under you, take your breath away. Tears ran down my face, not because I knew him – beyond seeing that smile under those thick dark bangs falling across his face with Sam – but because Eddie Van Halen’s guitar set me free, let me jump into the brink and believe could fly.

Texts flew all night. Emails came and were sent. Back and forth, back and forth. An art director friend passed me a couple of the Gene Simmons-produced demos, bursting with the inevitable.

A couple calls, a lot of tears. For me, Van Halen -- where it all began – played way too loud, but exactly the same volume was when a barely teen found a record in the West Side Record Revolution.

And that’s the thing about Eddie Van Halen: he -- seemingly -- knew no fear. Just higher, faster, squigglier, fuzzier, cleaner. He didn’t care about changing the world, he wanted to press the music as far as it could go. And he did. And we are all the more in so many ways for it.