Edward Van Halen: A Definitive Biography (2 page)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

Edward Van Halen is the reason for so many great things in our culture and in my life. He is the primary reason that I am a guitarist, and being a guitarist is something that plays a huge role in defining who I am as a human being.

I would like to thank the support of my wife Melanie, my sons Evan and Owen, my mother Marjie, my sister Debbie, and specifically my friends Michael, Brando, Nate, Chris, Brendan, Doug, Lyle, Steve, and Larry for helping me out in any way they could—whether it was playing Van Halen’s music with me as kids, forwarding me a link to a previously unearthed YouTube video, encouraging me to go for it, or handing over a stack of 1980s
Hit
Paraders
. Special thanks to my many back readers including Russell, Matt, Brendan, Wes, Larry, D.J., Dave, Tom, William, and my uncle Lyndon.

I would also like to thank rock guitar journalist Jas Obrecht for his cooperation and assistance by providing access to all of his works. I would also like to give special thanks to author Charles R. Cross for providing encouragement to write my first rock biography. An extra special thanks to Greg Dwyer of the
Dwyer
and
Michaels
radio show for allowing me to use excerpts of the historic interviews they conducted with Edward.

Special thanks to the staff at iUniverse for their assistance in publication of this work.

Thanks to my brother Brandon for getting me into Van Halen permanently. And thanks to my grandmother “Mama Dodds” for getting me “Dance the Night Away” on 45 rpm for my seventh birthday.

DEDICATION 

For
my
brother
Brandon
 
.
 
.
 
.

My brother Brandon made this Frankenstein replica guitar completely by himself in the summer of 1984 at the age of 16. Photograph © Kevin Dodds

INTRODUCTION 

It is July of 1984. He is the most popular musician in the world in the most popular band in the world, the band that bears his own surname. The Summit in Houston is sold out not for just one night, but for three nights in a row.

It’s the first night of the stand. The rockabilly opening act has come and gone without notice. The house lights have gone down and the lighters have gone up. The crowd roar is simply unbelievable—constant and deafening. Thirty to forty seconds go by with swirling white spotlights streaming up from the stage’s edge. And then I hear it. A scream—a scream from a guitar. I know that scream but my brain is laboring in disbelief. “Is this really happening?” And I wasn’t sure it was. This was bigger than Christmas, bigger than a thousand Christmases. The guitar dive bombs on the low E and a few choice licks come pouring out of the sound system.

The spotlights continue along with the butanes. I still haven’t grasped the reality. I feel like I’m dreaming because it’s dark and the lights are trancelike. It continues: the crowd roar, the wailing guitar, pounding drums, the spotlights rotating. The stage announcer steps up, sounding like a WWF wrestler, and delivers the classic Spinal Tapesque “I give you… the mighty…
VAN
HALEN!
” Edward then immediately kicks off the show with “Unchained.” I am still in disbelief because I can only hear it and can only barely see it. Ed is backlit, silhouetted in a tight white spot. The introduction of “Unchained” continues and the opening pattern is repeated twice before the drum fill followed by the entire band kicking in. And when it does—the lights explode, and the first thing you see is Dave at the peak of his “splits” jump coming off the drum riser. It was like sleeping and being awakened by being shoved out of an airplane. The wave of applause that followed the opening hit of the lights was simply thunderous and permanently unforgettable.

The microsecond that my mind admits it
—“Okay,
you
are
at
the
Van
Halen
concert”
—my eyes immediately scan the stage in search of my idol. There he is in a white shirt, patched jeans, a bandana around his neck, and red shoes. And he’s playing a red, black, and white striped Kramer guitar.

“It’s
true,”
I thought.
“He
does
exist.
He’s
real.
I
can
see
him
with
my
own
eyes.”
He is a comic book superhero and here he is saving us, 15,000 people at a time. If the roof of the Summit had caved in, I would not have been surprised if Edward were to hold it up with one hand while continuing to play with the other. Honestly, that probably would’ve just been incidental to the concert.

Permanent After-Effect

Within a week, my best friend Mike and I started a band. The first three songs we learned as a band were “Runnin’ with the Devil,” “You Really Got Me,” and “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love.” My buddy and I still play together to this day. This all really means something to me. Edward inspired me so greatly, I absolutely had to get to the bottom of what makes him tick. My peers demanded I do it. “You were born to do this” and “If anyone was cut out to do this, it’s you” and “You should do it because…”

Edward is one of only a handful of legitimate musical geniuses of the past 200 years. Genius is a blessing, but sometimes a curse. And the two are, unfortunately, intertwined.

My own ticket stub from the first night of a three-night stand at the Summit in Houston (only $13.75). Photograph © Kevin Dodds

PROLOGUE 

“I think a lot of people enter this business with a lot of problems already. It’s just—they’re just couched and they won’t dish them—certainly won’t dish them to you in an interview. They come in with a lot of bitterness and a lot of problems, and then only compound it through drug use, drinking; the stress in terms of hours and responsibilities that are heaped upon them, or that they heap upon themselves through excess, laziness, sloth, egotism…”

—David Lee Roth, March 1985

“I’ve worked with such legendary guitar players as Allan Holdsworth, Ronnie Montrose, Eric Clapton, Lowell George, and Steve Vai, but none of them come close to the having Ed’s fantastic combination of chops and musicianship. I rank him along with Charlie Parker and Art Tatum as one of the three greatest musicians of my lifetime. Unfortunately, I don’t think Ed puts himself in that class.”

—Ted Templeman, September 1991

“Some people tend to take this all too doggone seriously, you know? I wish that we could be articulate enough and poetic enough, and maybe enough like Salvador Dali to paint something of a false reality. The fact is this a rock and roll band, okay? This is… not the invasion of Normandy…”—Alex Van Halen; “It’s rock and roll!”

—Edward Van Halen, October 1996

“I’m very excited, uh, you know, to be makin’ music with my son, my brother, my new brother [Dave] . . . It’s, it’s the shit. That’s all I can say.”

—Edward Van Halen, August 2007

CHAPTER 1 

Life in the Netherlands

There is no doubt that when you think of Edward Van Halen, one of the first things that does
not
come to mind is the Dutch East India Company. But if the roots of one human being’s somewhat miraculous DNA makeup must be traced to a reasonable starting point, it would be with the world’s first megacorporation.

In 1602, the United East Indian Company began colonizing Asia for the benefit of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The principal territory in which the VOC did business was within a string of islands nestled immediately south of The Philippines and just north of Australia. These islands then became known, fittingly, as the Dutch East Indies (or Netherlands East Indies). This was a world away from their colonial pillager the Netherlands, way up in the northwest corner of continental Europe, immediately west of Germany, north of Belgium, with the North Sea on its west and north coasts.

The VOC endured through a nearly two-century rule until things inevitably unraveled beginning in 1780, brought down by the engine of colonialism itself, corruption. Prior to its eventual disbandment in 1800, it was referred to as Vergaan Onder Corruptie (“perished by corruption”). The responsibilities of the VOC fell to the Netherlands in 1800. Rather than pulling back to appease countries like the United States, who obviously had some issues with colonialism, the Netherlands expanded their operations right up until the mid-twentieth century.

Europeans numbering in excess of a million traveled the thousands of ships on trade missions to perform all manner of potentially unspeakable colonial duties on the beautiful tropical island string. Many of these Europeans decided to stay and settle in the islands, a strange new land a half a world away, presenting new and different opportunities—and a major change in lifestyle. Inevitably, race mixing took place resulting in a people known as Indos or Eurasians, or more bluntly, Dutch Indonesians. The ratio of race mixing for people under this blanket description runs the gamut and it is impossible to assess that ratio without taking stock of one’s physical appearance and making a fair judgment based on what physical traits are most prominent.

Thus was born a Eurasian woman in 1914 with the markedly Dutch name of Eugenia van Beers in the Dutch East Indies. Technically, she was the first “van” in the Van Halen family. Her given name gives no indication of the percentage of European genetics. In fact, on name alone, an assumption would practically be uncalled for. In viewing photographs of Eugenia, it is clear that she retained a significant portion of her native island ancestry. A reasonable assessment would be likely something approaching one-third European descent.

Back in Amsterdam, Jan van Halen was born in 1920 shortly after the end of World War I. Jan’s name certainly suited his ancestry without a colonial tint or guesswork; he was a northwest European. Jan was born with the musical gift and was described as a bit of rebel. As a young man, he mastered the saxophone and clarinet so well that he was gigging regularly by eighteen. It’s been said “he worked hard to have fun” playing in a retinue of jazz bands, swing bands, and orchestras across Europe. Jan no doubt enjoyed his pick of opportunities as a young man in the late 1930s, from radio events to a circus troupe, and even political rallies.

He only had a few brief years to enjoy both his early gigging and his youth. When perpetual bad neighbor Germany invaded Poland in September of 1939, Jan, like any other Dutch male his age, joined the military. Jan’s talents came in handy though, landing him in the Dutch Air Force with the task of playing marches.

In May 1940, the Nazis took over their neighbor’s homeland. Starting on May 10, the Germans battled their way all the way to Rotterdam which they bombed into submission in just five days. The majority of Dutch operations were left virtually untouched—they were simply German now.

Hitler’s takeover of the Netherlands was less dramatic than Poland. The Nazis considered the Dutch to be essentially 100% Aryan. The Netherlands was simply to become part of Germany following the war. However, Dutch Jews and Jehovah’s Witnesses were rounded up and sent to the most notorious concentration camps of World War II. Author Linda M. Woolfe Ph.D. wrote:

As Nazi oppression slowly took shape, so did Dutch resistance. Hitler underestimated the Dutch people and the Nazis were unprepared to deal with the primarily non militaristic character of Dutch resistance. In many ways, there are some striking similarities between the Dutch resistance and the spiritual resistance on the part of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Much of Dutch resistance can be characterized as either passive resistance or non-violent active resistance. For example, immediately following the Nazi occupation, American and British films were banned from theaters replaced by German movies including German newsreels. Dutch patrons took to walking out or booing during the newsreels. Thus, new laws were passed prohibiting such behavior. Subsequently, attendance at films dropped. Radio broadcasts under Nazi control consisted principally of propaganda. Thus, while it was illegal to listen to British radio, many Dutch began to listen to the BBC and radio broadcasts from the Dutch government in exile. In 1943, over one million radio sets were confiscated by the Nazis in response to these acts of resistance.

Author Ian Christie reported that Jan, a member of the Dutch Air Force, was captured by the Nazis during the five-day invasion. When the Germans realized Jan was a talented musician, he was forced to perform propaganda music. This is how Jan van Halen spent his early twenties: playing propaganda music during the Nazi occupation. A gifted musician, who could truly play, forced ostensibly at gunpoint to perform a mandated set of material with no room for individual expression. It was simply a strictly tailored form of hell for him.

The Dutch government operated out of Britain during the period of German occupation, and eventually declared war on Japan, in solidarity with the United States, the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Just a few months later, the Dutch East Indies came under the occupation of the Japanese in March 1942. So went Dutch colonial rule of the islands. Japanese occupation through the end of the war in 1945 cannot be described in terms extreme enough to convey the horror and atrocities that occurred. One’s mind need only hear a few—sex slaves, forced labor, random arrests, rampant executions. Worse yet, those of Eurasian descent were specifically targeted and interned.

The end of the war in 1945 had an immediate and profoundly direct impact upon Jan van Halen and Eugenia van Beers. They were each caught directly in the heart of the two locales in the world’s most brutal war.

Post-WWII Love Affair

Upon his release from musical captivity, Jan clearly felt a need to leave the scene and find somewhere far away to recover from the madness of the past five-plus years. When a musical opportunity presented itself in the Dutch East Indies, Jan jumped at the chance to test the waters in this strange and different land with clearly little in common with northwest Europe.

Now free and no longer under the command of the Nazis—and trying to erase the memories of the god-awful music he’d been forced to play—Jan was feeling loose and dandy enough to take an interest in Eugenia van Beers. Things moved fast and the two were soon married. Clearly, Eugenia wanted to get out of what would be known by 1949 as Indonesia and start over in a new and different land herself. The newly married couple resettled in the Netherlands. An interracial couple in Dutch territory would have been absolutely unthinkable during Nazi occupation.

Back in Jan’s home country, he continued to perform at every opportunity that presented itself. The couple’s first son, Alexander Arthur van Halen was born in May of 1953. Edward Lodewijk van Halen followed on January 26, 1955 (his music-obsessed father naming the future prodigy after Ludwig van Beethoven). Jan banked on his boys following in his somewhat bohemian footsteps. Also, like their father, both boys were born in Amsterdam, but the family eventually resettled in Nijmegen. Nijmegen is a city in a province directly on the border with Germany and to this day lays claims as one of the oldest cities in the world at 2,000 years old.

After failed attempts at instruction by Jan himself, where he discovered he did not have the patience to teach his own boys, Alex and Edward began piano lessons at a very young age. “Basically, that’s where I got my ear developed, learned my theory, and got my fingers moving.” It most certainly did get his fingers moving, and Alex and Edward excelled and soon mastered works by Beethoven, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky.

Whenever Jan’s performances were broadcast over the radio, they all gathered around and listened as a family. Jan was always practicing and noodling around the house, often along with records at home. Jan even showed the boys some of the music he performed with pride during his military service: marching songs from the Dutch Air Force prior to the Nazi invasion. As very small toddlers, the kids followed Jan around with pots and pans while he played his proud marches.

As the boys got older, Jan brought them along to his performances around Holland and into Germany. As a result, the boys—neither yet even ten—were exposed to the nuts and bolts, the glamorous and the perverse aspects of the music business and the entertainment industry. Following one of his father’s shows, Alex admitted to losing his virginity at the simply unrealistic age of nine.

As the van Halen marriage progressed, for reasons possibly becoming more and more obvious, Eugenia simply turned sour on the idea of the boys becoming professional musicians like their father. Indeed, it was apparent that, personality-wise, Eugenia and Jan were opposites. According to Edward, “My dad is the person who would cut school and smoke cigarettes, and my mom would be the cheerleader. Complete opposites—the conservative and the screw-up. If you sat there and talked to my dad, he’d make you roll over and laugh.” (The quote featured no secondary comment about his mother.) Alex recalled that he once as a child told his mother he didn’t feel like practicing. Eugenia instructed Alex to place his hands on the table and proceeded to hit them with a wooden spoon.

Jan continued to perform, ultimately developing into a phenomenal clarinet soloist. As noted by Ian Christie in
The
Van
Halen
Saga
, at his peak, Jan’s band, the Ton Wijkamp Quintent, was the top act at the Loosdrecht Jazz Festival, a highly respectable musical achievement. Nevertheless, Eugenia was finally ready for the ultimate change. After years of Dutch colonial occupation of Indonesia, followed by Japanese occupation, then resettling in the Netherlands, the base of her native country’s subjugation… needless to say, she was
more
than ready for a change. Furthermore, she fell under the spell of letters from family members who had emigrated to Los Angeles after the war. These letters were full of stories about the Land of Opportunity and perfect weather, even though they were somewhat fabricated according to Alex.

Coming to America

As winter closed in 1962, Eugenia finally had enough of the Netherlands. Edward said bluntly, “My mom wanted us in the U.S. and out of Holland. She was afraid we’d get into music like my father.” Consequently, the four van Halens prepared to embark on that all too familiar journey, the one where the family from a faraway land decides to start over, yet again, in a strange and different new land, willing to take the risk for the potential reward. Alex noted, “Taking a gamble, my parents sold everything they had and moved over here.”

Except the family did not quite sell
everything
. It seemed the one family possession they could not part with was their cherished German-made Rippen piano. One can only imagine the reception upon boarding the boat: a married couple, two boys under ten, a few bags, and a piano. A piece of the legend also includes that the family only had “fifty dollars” with them. Of course, the amount of money they spent on freight for the piano would have clearly been a fortune, but obviously that was not an issue of particular importance for the family. The piano was a family member. It was coming, period, no matter the cost.

The nine-day trip on the boat is a pauper’s fairytale. Jan played with the ship band to help finance the expedition (and to conceivably help cover the freight cost of the piano). Also, the little boys themselves, likely pushed out as a sympathy act, capably demonstrated their individual piano skills for the passengers. Edward said, “Alex and I actually played on the boat while we were coming to America. We played piano, and we were like the kid freak show on the boat.” Alex added, “It was kind of a novelty to have two kids playing the piano.” Following their performances, the kids would begin their lifelong routine of working the crowd, getting their start by passing a hat amongst the passengers to collect tips to help raise money for the family during the voyage.

Looking back, it is a rather young age, particularly for seven-year-old Edward, to take on the task of passing a hat for tip money to support the family; it surely left a lasting impression upon this already extraordinarily talented little boy. But Eddie noted poignantly, “Music saved our family.” A photo from the journey shows an all-smiles family enjoying dinner on the boat all decked out in paper sailor hats. Clearly, they were a tight-knit group.

The family arrived in New York and promptly had their surname Americanized to Van Halen, because everyone knows Americans would surely just get too confused over van Halen with that funny lowercase “v”. The clan, along with the beloved Rippen, next made a cross-country journey via train straight into Los Angeles. One can only imagine the sights they observed out the window along the way—traversing the length of a country a mere 236 times the size of the Netherlands.