Edward Van Halen: A Definitive Biography (14 page)

CHAPTER 15 

1984 Minus One

Eddie had been with the band around nearly the entire world, but had never been to South America before. According to Dave they were “treated like national heroes.” Even though the South American way of doing things was adventurous, to put it lightly, the guys truly enjoyed their one month romp through Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. The band added a handful of fun, old-school covers to their sets, including “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers” by ZZ Top, and “Summertime Blues.” Eddie played the final show in Buenos Aires, Argentina entirely from the right side of the stage for the first and possibly the only time ever. His to desire to just do something
different
was starting to show itself in a number of ways.

Valerie accompanied Edward on the tour and the two spent time with Alex and his fiancée Valeri (no “e”). She noted in her autobiography that they had been warned to leave their jewelry and other such valuables at home, so Valerie replaced her diamond wedding band with a cheap gold ring. In Rio, the two couples returned to their hotel and were attempting to get on the elevator when Valerie was stopped by a manager. He was going to allow Ed, Al, and Valeri up, but not Valerie. When she demanded to know why, the manager said, “You are familiar with the rules. We do not allow prostitutes in the rooms in this hotel.” She pointed to her wedding band and said, “I am married to him,” only to be countered by the manager saying, “We see that all the time from the professional women.” Eddie and Alex cracked up and then intervened and brought Valerie with them and afterward, according to Valerie, they “had a few drinks and passed out.”

Archival footage of several of these concerts shows the band ebbing toward their peak. The band appeared to be getting along famously during this trek. During the Buenos Aires show, Dave gives Edward a big kiss right on the side of his head. Ed was genuinely touched by the enthusiasm of the Argentina crowd—their chants of “EH-DEE! EH-DEE!” was only met with Ed gesturing back toward the audience, as if they were the ones to be applauded.

However, someone back at Warner Brothers started doing the math and sent word down that the European leg of the tour was canceled and the South American tour would end much quicker than was originally planned. Warner insisted they have an album out in 1983. Once again, the band was pressured and forced to get back into writing and recording mode by their record company.

“Beat It” Comes Out of the Closet

The day after their last date in South America, February 14, that one-off solo he did for Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones without any forethought hit the radio, and the video hit MTV the following month. Dave was at a convenience store when he first heard the track. “I was in a parking lot on Santa Monica near Sweetzer, the 7-Eleven, there were a couple of butch Mexican gals with the doors open of their pickup truck and the new Michael Jackson song ‘Beat It’ came on,” he said. “I heard the guitar solo, and thought, now that sounds familiar. Somebody’s ripping of Ed Van Halen’s guitar licks. It was Ed, turns out, and he had gone and done the project without discussing it with anybody.”

When it was discussed, Ed eventually revealed that he had done it simply as a favor, for no money at all, for no points on the record at all. Eddie said, “I was a complete fool, according to the rest of the band, our manager and everyone else. I was not used. I knew what I was doing—I don’t do something unless I want to do it.” Dave actually speculated that Ed was cunningly exploited. Most likely, Edward had only done it as a favor to Steve Lukather, and for Ed it was likely just an interesting evening. About Jackson, Eddie said, “Maybe he’ll give me a dance lesson someday.” Years later, Valerie quipped, “Ed never saw a dime; nor do I believe that he ever thought to ask to get paid. That was Ed.” In a 1990 interview, Ed said, “My brother still won’t let me live it down.”

As for the solo itself, writer Joseph Bosso claimed: “The solo would be Eddie’s most popular and analyzed work of the Eighties. All fired up, whooping and swirling, growling and shrieking, it is the product of the heart meeting the mind and connecting with the unknown.”

“Beat It” was beyond huge. It went to #1 all over the world and the video ran day and night on MTV. Eddie’s participation, along with that of Paul McCartney, on the
Thriller
album is one of the main reasons that Michael Jackson had such a strong crossover appeal, and therefore one of the principal reasons the album became the biggest selling record of all time. Nelson George, a black music critic who wrote a Jackson book, said, “The lead guitar breaks on Shalamar’s ‘Dancing in the Sheets,’ and Lionel Richie’s ‘Running in the Night,’ to name just two, came from Eddie’s work on ‘Beat It.’ You never saw that kind of heavy-metal rock guitar on black singles before that.”

The door for racial musical crossovers was opened wide. Rap pioneers Run DMC made heavy guitar riffs a staple of their sound, and their subsequent collaboration with Aerosmith, which completely resurrected that band’s soured career, would likely have never happened at all had Edward Van Halen not answered the phone that night. The song caused MTV to soften its stance against airing black artists and made way for the huge success of Prince and other artists in the early and mid-80s.

Edward’s contribution definitely opened the door for the later rap-rock hybrid genre of the 1990s and early 2000s. The course of popular music was clearly changed in a significant way simply due to Ed’s unintentional power. But according to Dave at the time, “He went in and played the same solo he’s been playing in this band for ten years. So big deal!” But it was no wonder that the March issue of
Circus
carried the article title “Van Halen: Biggest U.S. Band?,” as if it were up for debate.

The Kramer Endorsement

Despite Ed’s potential loss of income from “Beat It,” he began to endorse Kramer guitars in 1983—his first official endorsement deal of any kind. Ads ran in all guitar magazines and fanzines with Ed’s quote: “It’s very simply the very best guitar you can buy today.” The endorsement and design collaboration deal happened by chance, but once Ed was sold on the instrument, he boldly stated that he would make Kramer the “number one guitar company in the world.” Before switching completely over to the Kramer though, Ed actually just switched out the neck on his Frankenstein before he was completely satisfied with the Kramer guitar body and locking tremolo system that he had helped developed with Floyd Rose, although Rockinger was making the tremolo systems now and paying a royalty to Mr. Rose.

A few years later, at the urging of my hero via the magazine print ads, I convinced my parents buy me the cheapest possible Kramer we could get. It was a Striker, but it said “by Kramer” really tiny underneath it. The guitar was so terrible that we actually took it back and got our money back. And to be completely truthful, buying a Kramer wasn’t the only thing about Eddie that I emulated. Way too young, after reading an article about his early days, I bought a pack of Pall Malls and subsequently nearly choked to death, and snuck a friend’s dad’s Schlitz—the first time I had ever seen one—and promptly vomited. The truth is that when you have a hero before you are fifteen, you cannot help but to deliberately try and emulate them, for better or for worse.

In April 1983, Edward and Valerie took some time off to celebrate their two-year anniversary by taking a trip to the Netherlands. Ed finally had the chance to show Val where he had grown up and told her all of the stories along the way. They took in the historical sites, but the highlight of their trip was a long, solo romantic boat ride down the canals.

Building 5150

Immediately upon return from their anniversary vacation, Eddie began construction on his famed 5150 studio. Valerie’s brother Drew was put in charge of the construction phase of the new building, but Ed and Val themselves demolished the old guest house taking turns on a Caterpillar tractor to make room for the studio.

Eddie’s faithful engineer Donn Landee worked with him on all of the technical parts of the studio construction. But Donn’s input was more critical to Ed than just his technical expertise. Ed said that Donn was “more than an engineer.” The cathartic experience of building the studio was facilitated by Donn’s desire to help Ed fulfill his dream and take control over his art. Edward said, “Donn did a lot to get me mentally healthier, and let all that stuff out and not worry.”

What ended up happening with the construction is that they told the city they were simply building a racquetball court, period. At the time, Eddie said, “All I hope is that the city doesn’t even find out about the studio. They don’t even know it’s here.” He said the building was inspected and approved by the city as a racquetball court. Eddie said, “Then I put some walls up, though I never told them. No more racquetball court now… . They could make me tear the whole place down and start over.”

5150 was where the entire
1984
album was recorded, and nearly every subsequent VH album as well. It was a huge dream for Eddie to have his own backyard recording studio and the subsequent amount of control he would have that came with it. The building would become much more than just Ed’s studio—it would be his absolute sanctuary from the outside world where he would continually disappear for hours—
days
—at a time. From there on, the purely physical space in which Van Halen existed was 5150. Ed built everyone the ultimate backyard tree house.

The name of course, at least Ed thought, was taken from the police code for an escaped mental patient. “Name of my studio is 5150—that’s police code for escaped mental case,” Edward told
Musician
in 1984. In fact, though, 5150 is actually a section of the California Welfare and Institutions Code “which allows a qualified officer or clinician to involuntarily confine a person deemed to have a mental disorder that makes them a danger to him or her self, and/or others and/or gravely disabled.”

The 1983 US Festival

The writing process was coming along, and Edward had a nugget or two of an idea already in the bag, namely a catchy keyboard tune in C that he had developed a few years earlier. Dave had disappeared on one of his Jungle Studs jaunts through South America when he got word that Apple Computers co-founder Steve Wozniak was putting together a second go at the US Festival (as in “us”, not “U.S.”). The Woz, as he is known, put together the first US Festival on Labor Day Weekend of 1982 with some of the biggest names in music at the time: Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Police, The Cars, and even The Ramones. Wozniak was shooting to put the second one together for Memorial Day weekend, at the end of May in 1983. He intended Van Halen to headline one of the four days of the show—the day known as “Heavy Metal Day.”

Edward was perturbed that the process of making the record was being interrupted, but $1.5 million dollars for a single show was a record-setting amount, and they were all in. About the preparation for the show, Eddie said, “That whole US Festival to me was like the world’s quickest tour. We rehearsed for it like a tour. We had to design the amp setup, the lights, everything. It was like a tour except there was only one show. And after we got done with that one show I said, ‘Well, where are we going after this show?’ And it was home. You get yourself psyched up for a show and you want to do more when you’re done. You’re just getting warmed up after the first one.” The entire US Festival would be filmed and condensed down to 90-minute encapsulations of each of the four days and was broadcast on cable. (The entire Van Halen performance was filmed and is readily available to resourceful fans.)

On May 29, Van Halen played before a crowd of 375,000 people. Dave got quite intoxicated before the show, and it showed on the program (Dave actually had to recut vocals in a studio to bring the broadcast version up to par). For those with cable at the time, especially hard rock minded youth of say age eleven, the Heavy Metal Day showing of the US Festival was a bit like a superhero movie. For the author, it was the first time outside of the
Fair
Warning
era videos that we got to see the band in their full Technicolor glory. It was played ad nauseum in our house. We mimicked every single move, jump, facial gesture—everything.

After the show, Eddie told Steven Rosen, “The whole US Festival to me was a pain in the ass. The only thing it received in print was how much we made. All you hear about the US Festival was how many people got killed on our day and the money we made. I’m still wearin’ the same pair of shoes and the same pair of pants… . For the amount of money that we made, we lost more than it was ever worth. A million-and-a-half dollars sounds like a lot, but what you can lose that much in return video-wise and every other way.”

Ed considered the distinction of playing on Heavy Metal Day rather dubious. “I didn’t really even realize what bands played with us, it didn’t even hit me until I was over at Donn’s house watching it on Showtime,” he said. “I’m going, ‘Now I know what they mean by heavy metal.’ . . . I think the only way we really fit in was volume-wise. I don’t consider Van Halen heavy metal at all. I don’t even know what the word means.” He added, “To me, heavy metal is just rock ’n’ roll. I guess the more leather and studs you wear, the more heavy metal it is. So, I wear funny striped clothes… . I sure as hell don’t see us as heavy metal.”

With the festival out of the way and 5150 built, Edward tried to return his attention to the task of writing and recording the upcoming album, only to be interrupted yet again by a radio show. “The US Festival, again, hasn’t stopped haunting us,” Eddie said. “We were committed to do a radio show we didn’t know about and in the meantime we’re trying to do a record. We get a call, ‘Hey, you’re committed to a radio show,’ and we go, ‘Oh, God, not again!’”