Edward Van Halen: A Definitive Biography (22 page)

CHAPTER 25 

One on the Way

The band’s joint business venture—the Cabo Wabo Cantina—was opened on April 22, 1990 with a loosey-goosey performance by the group from the club’s small stage. The opening was pushed by MTV with a contest and full weekend coverage called “Viva Van Halen Saturday.” It was an important media coup for the band that had been inactive for over a year.

The MTV feature was at best lightly funded and showed the band hanging out on the beach and Ed in white overalls rolling through town on an ATV. Ed rocked his classic Kramer on stage for the show and sweat his ass off. Sammy performed with a drink in his hand. There is an excellent clip of the band sitting around in the town square with Eddie cranking through “Cabo Wabo” on an Ovation acoustic guitar. Sammy starts with the lyrics, “
I’ve
been
to
Rome!
” Ed retorts, “Hey! When have you been to Rome?” Sammy replies, “About 1982.
And
Dallas,
Texas!
” “OK, Dallas, I know. We’ve played Dallas,” Ed joked.

There are a few hard and fast rules in business, one being “Don’t go into business with your friends.” For all its initial grandiose glory, the club became a financial disaster far before its eventual long-term success, and Edward and the others eventually sold their shares to Sammy giving him full ownership. This would eventually become amongst the absolute sorest of subjects in the band’s history.

Andy Johns Teams Up with Ed

Around March, work actually started on the new album—their third with Sammy Hagar. By 1990, Hagar had been in Van Halen technically for five years, and the original Van Halen’s reign following the release of the first album was roughly seven years (although they were technically together for twelve years). With the revamped 5150 studio ready to go, apparently having learned his lesson on
OU812
, Edward solicited legendary Led Zeppelin producer Andy Johns to help engineer and produce. He was going to make damn sure the album was going to
sound
good. Musically, it would be a much more experimental record than the previous two.

In an interview, Eddie said they hoped to enjoy the luxury of being able to come up with a stockpile of material and release it when they were ready, which would have been a first for the band had that actually happened. “With
5150
, you know, everyone was wondering what was going on with Van Halen so we released it,” Ed said. “And with
OU812
, we were already committed to the Monsters of Rock tour before the record was even done. We would have preferred to finish the record, put it out, waited a bit, made sure we liked the record, and then booked a tour. That’s what we’re going to do this time.” However, it would turn out Ed had too much on his hands to create a body of material from which to cull new music.

Eddie’s relationship with Andy was an important one. Not only did they get along on a professional level, but on a very personal one as well. Andy wanted to bring in a second engineer but Ed told him straight out that the studio was too small. He came alone and on the first day just spent time setting up microphones and getting to know each other. “What I really appreciated about Andy was that he gave me space when I needed to develop an idea,” Edward said.

Donn wouldn’t be around for this one. “We weren’t unhappy with Donn,” Eddie said, “but we’ve done eight records with him and felt it would be nice to get a different spin on things. It wasn’t any big deal.” Ed said that the band spoke with him about wanting to get a different sound for this album—which is a practical no-brainer considering the fidelity of
OU812
. However, during the discussion, Donn replied, “If you want something else, get someone else.” Edward later said of
OU812
, “In hindsight, I wouldn’t mind re-recording it.”

In comparing Donn and Andy, Edward said, “This is kind of a touchy subject. In the old days, Donn Landee kind of monopolized 5150. He was the only one who really knew how to run anything. It was his gig, so he was very protective and didn’t want anyone else touching the knobs. Andy is just the opposite. He showed me how to run the console and seemed more than happy to receive my input. It was a real relief to finally know my way around…” Although Edward was certainly a grown man, Andy had a fair amount to do with Edward resuming his drinking around the end of the year.

When Ed first contacted Andy and got him on the phone, it happened to be Andy’s birthday. He was smashed and said he’d call back the next day, and he did. About Andy’s personality and propensities, Edward said, “He sounded like Dudley Moore in
Arthur
. . . . Andy is so rock and roll it’s ridiculous. We’re pretty stiff competition in that area, and he makes us look like lightweights.”

The Best News He Ever Got

In May, Ed and Valerie caught Madonna’s show at the Forum and Sinead O’Connor’s performance the following week. That June, the two traveled to Big Sur, and then to Mississippi for Edward’s business meeting with Peavey. When they checked into the hotel in Mississippi, Val let Ed know that there was some work to be done. “I was obsessive about keeping track of when I was ovulating,” she said. “You could set your clock by me. During those months, Ed learned more about a woman’s reproductive system than he ever cared to know.” By the end of June, their new project was proving successful. Valerie was pregnant.

“At home, I jumped up on Ed and gave him a big hug,” she said. “He was over the moon—as he should have been.” She openly counted the blessings of their careers, their dream house and studio, and now a child. Valerie said, “I hoped Ed would be able to use that as motivation to keep healthy. It seemed he might. In the early stages of my pregnancy, he was nearly as excited as I was and pretty much stayed off the booze.” At first, Valerie struggled with nausea and even lost some weight, but she bounced back and was soon healthily pregnant. Later in October, she recalled that she and Eddie caught
Phantom
of
the
Opera
and had a romantic dinner afterward. “Driving home, I rested my hand atop Ed’s as he navigated the dark roads,” Valerie said. “He turned up the music on the stereo to make sure the baby inside me could hear it… . It seemed like we might have finally got our life together in gear.”

Build
His
Guitar and Amp

Ed had another baby on his hands—a newly designed guitar done in conjunction with Ernie Ball. He was ready to move on from his Kramer endorsement and wanted to design a unique sounding two-pickup electric guitar. Edward struck up a relationship with “Biff” Sterling Ball, first on the development of 5150 brand electric guitar strings. Biff in turn approached Eddie about designing a guitar. Ed had two qualifications: he wanted a company that worked out of the U.S. and one that wouldn’t put out the guitar until he had recorded and toured with it first. For the design of the body, Edward said, “I wanted to get away from the whole Strat thing. I wanted my own body. I sat there and drew up things and had Dudley Gimpel computerize it. We collaborated on the whole thing and felt that it looked good.”

To get the guitar neck exactly right, Eddie said they simply copied the neck shape from his original Frankenstein neck. “We took measurements and built the neck. It wasn’t quite right and finally said, let’s digitize the thing and find out what’s going on.” What they ended up doing adapting an ergonomic approach based on how Ed’s hand’s had naturally shaped the neck over years and years of hard playing. Prototypes of the Ernie Ball Music Man—or Edward Van Halen guitar—were built in January 1990. Ed first saw the guitars in April and worked with the company until November before he was satisfied with the final working model of the guitar. He introduced the guitar at the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) convention and production began in 1991. The print ads for the guitar said, “I endorsed the guitar I used to play. I designed this one… Big difference.—Edward Van Halen.” Production was limited to only 1,000 per year and they sold for $1,600.

As for the Peavey venture, Edward said, “Hartley Peavey flew me down to his factory in Medirian, Mississippi, with the intention of getting me to use one of his guitars. I told him I didn’t need a guitar, but it would be cool if they could design an amp for me. They agreed.” Peavey flew engineer James Brown out to California to work with Ed for a few weeks. “He’d tinker away, then ask me what I thought. ‘I’d say, ‘That’s not quite it, how about adding another tube.’ And so on.” Edward said. The research and development of a new amplifier was something that he took extremely serious. And with all of the technical, scientific equipment at his disposal, the only thing Ed used as a point of reference for the development of the amp was his own ear.

The real question a lot of purists were asking was why he would change from his classic Marshall set-up. “I’m not sure whether it’s that my tastes have changed or if the amp has changed, but I think that my Marshall is starting to fade—it just doesn’t sound like it used to,” Edward said. “Even Donn Landee started noticing it. So I guess it was time to start looking elsewhere.”

Recording the Album with the Dirty Title

Once Andy was finally in the studio, he basically set up the microphones for the drums in the brand new isolated drum room at 5150. While it is a niche category for sure, if there is a single person on earth that is the absolute greatest at knowing just exactly how to tune and position drums and set up microphones in the most exact, precise, optimum way, it is Andy Johns.
Led
Zeppelin
IV
 . . . and dozens of other masterpieces. Alex played along with the “live out your Zeppelin fantasy” and played purposefully as Bonham-esque as possible on the tracks. The studio was outfitted with a brand new, warm-sounding mixing board as well.

Just as Andy was possibly the greatest rock engineer of all time, he noticed that something in Edward that few others had. Andy said, “Eddie has this part of his brain which you would call semi-genius. He recognizes things very quickly that would take you or I some time to ponder on, or someone would have to show us, or we would have to go to school.” The truth is, there’s no such thing as semi-genius any more than there is semi-pregnant or semi-dead. In fact, Nuno Bettencourt of Extreme was featured in a column called “In the Listening Room” in
Guitar
for
the
Practicing
Musician
in March 1992. His one-word first response to “Unchained” was simply “Genius?” He added, “Whoever just thinks he was a solo player and only inspired a generation to solo missed the whole light on what Eddie’s all about.”

Once they had Ed’s guitar set up, there was just one problem. He hadn’t prepared, written, or salvaged a single song. At the end of the day, Edward said, “The guys were asking me, ‘Hey, Ed, you got any licks?’ I said, a little panicky, “Hell no! Give me… uh… give me until
tomorrow
.” So he plunged in deep overnight and came up with the first track that became “Judgment Day.” The song only truly came together after extended jamming in the studio.

And so it went, one song at a time, exactly like
Diver
Down
. One difference, though, was that
Diver
Down
was recorded in about two weeks. The album that became known as
For
Unlawful
Carnal
Knowledge
would take a year to record. However, another difference is that this album would have an incredible variety of instruments, instrumentation, effects, and recording techniques. “The whole record was done one song at a time,” Ed said. “We’d completely finish one track before moving on to the next one. That’s why there are so many textures on this record.”

The first song on the album, “Poundcake,” featured one of Ed’s most interesting experiments yet. Ed’s guitar tech Matt Bruck was using a drill when Edward had a brainstorm and noticed that the drill channeled through the pickups at a specific tone. As Ed’s assistant, Bruck said, “Working for Ed is great because he’s a fine human being and he cuts right to the bone. There’s no bullshit. He’s also a great role model, because if Edward doesn’t have a ’tude, no one should have one.”

About the experiment, Ed said, “The motor of the drill got picked up by my guitar pickup just like a microphone. I turned my volume on and it sounded like kick starting your engine… . It was just a goofball little thing.” What’s more though, is that instead of just using it as a stage gimmick, Ed actually played off of the tone that the drill produced, almost like playing two instruments at once.

My lifelong friend and bandmate Mike and I were in college in Austin when the album came out in mid-1991. We were returning from playing an indoor soccer game when we heard “Poundcake” on the radio. I remember wondering what that crazy effect sound was—another “How in the hell did he do that?!” moment. I just thought the sound was huge, although a little compressed and chorusy like the other Hagar albums.