Edward Van Halen: A Definitive Biography (24 page)

Some time after that show, the
band
Van Halen, sadly, fell from the top of my totem pole of awesomeness, although I had not turned my back on Edward at all. My own band was starting to make waves in Austin, and I consciously cut myself off from listening to any music besides The Beatles—old or new. I entered a phase where I was afraid that too much exposure to any outside music would compromise my ability to write tunes that were as original as possible. The funny thing is, that’s exactly what Ed did. He claims to have purchased two albums in all of the 1980s: a Brand X album and Peter Gabriel’s
So
. Grunge was so hot at that moment, I was openly mocked for my VH dedication, given a Jane’s Addiction tape, and told to get with it.

Just four days after seeing the concert in Austin, my brother Brandon and his wife Susan saw them in Oklahoma City. Brandon was attending flight school in Tulsa learning to become a pilot, and Susan was well into an extremely successful career as a DJ. Through Susan’s radio connections, she managed to get on the meet-and-greet list for the February 2 concert. Brandon called me when they got the news and said flat out, “I’m going to meet Eddie Van Halen.” He said the words, but I wasn’t sure I heard them. My emotions flashed. Shock. “Are you serious?” Desperation. “How can I get myself in Oklahoma City in one day to join them? I can’t!” Anger. “Why does he get to meet him and not me?!” Then jealousy, which was ultimately followed by pure awe.

There were three others in their group for the meet-and-greet, but for the photo that was taken, Brandon put himself square between Eddie and Sammy with his arms around both of them. At 6’ 2”, Brandon kind of dwarfed both Ed and Sam. In the photo, Brandon is leaning way down and Sam is on his tip-toes. Edward was dressed casual with a big smile. It was brief, your standard meet-and-greet. About a week later, I got a photocopy in the mail of the picture. Brandon had labeled the photo—“I think you know who these guys are!” Then he noted each person’s name—“Eddie, me, Sammy…”

Over the following years, almost every time I’d talk to my brother on the phone, I’d ultimately end up saying, “Man, I can’t believe you met Eddie… What exactly did you guys say, again?” I wanted to know every single thing that was uttered. Around 1985 when Brandon was 17, he told us all how badly he wanted to drive all the way to Los Angeles and find Eddie’s house in the hills. We all thought he was crazy, and of course it was just superfan talk. But I’ll be damned if his dream didn’t eventually come true. Honestly, Brandon was such a massive Eddie and Sammy fan, I thought he might blow it somehow. But it was very casual. As far as specifics, I can only recall Brandon saying that he told Edward how big a fan he was and how much he admired him, Ed replying with a cool, “Hey, thanks, man. Thanks a lot.”

Edward Van Halen, Brandon Dodds, Sammy Hagar, Susan Dodds in February 1992. Photograph © Susan Wise

The Timeless Refrain of “Right Now”

While sales of the new Van Halen album proved that the band still had enormous economic potential, a virtually inevitable decline of various sorts was about to begin. The tour had caused Eddie to miss Wolfie cutting his first tooth and having his first real laughing fit. The road stretch that started in August lasted all the way until May 1992, with only a few minor breaks.

The band made MTV videos for “Poundcake” and “Runaround,” but it was the video for “Right Now” that became a huge hit on MTV. It was a quirky, commercial-esque interpretation by director Mark Fenske. The video was mixture of text and images, some bizarre and some poignant, depending on how you look at it. A microscopic visual of sperm is accompanied by the phrase “Right now people are having unprotected sex;” an image of a man running is overlaid with “Right now opportunity is passing you by;” and simple text saying things like “Right now, blacks and whites don’t eat together too much,” etc. The video doesn’t reek of Van Halen necessarily. There’s no vibe to it that says “this is classic VH.” It is a decent video (as proven by the multiple awards it would gather), yet it could’ve just as easily been applied to almost any other heady song at the time. Edward and the band are not featured prominently in the video at all, and in fact, Sammy was so disapproving of the video concept as to become uncooperative during shooting. The final shot of the band heading toward the dressing room was completely unplanned. Sammy had enough, so Ed, Mike, and Al headed off, followed by Sammy looking angry and disgusted as he slammed the door. The camera then incidentally zooms in on the word “MEN” on the sign on the door.

It turned out that Edward’s piano riff and Sammy’s “right now” theme—“What are you waiting for?”—along with its advertisement-like video led to new territory. In 1992, there was a brief phase when beer and cola companies figured out a way to remove all coloring from the beverage and make it clear, like Sprite or 7-Up. This was the “crystal fad.” Pepsi paid the band $2 million to use the song to promote Crystal Pepsi—a short-lived product if there ever was one. Eddie agreed, just like the others, and the commercial started airing regularly for a solid month or two. At the time, you were not only hearing the song on the radio (or listening to the CD—or tape) in your car and watching the video on MTV, you would hear it during commercial breaks while watching football or
Seinfeld
.

Well into the 2010s, a band having a song on a national commercial is pure gold. It’s possibly the only remaining avenue in which you can reach so many people at the same time. Nearly every single rock band of any acclaim, old or new, has played a central role in advertising over the past ten to fifteen years. It is a prime spot for bands from The Beatles and the Stones to Stone Temple Pilots to even Rush and Van Halen (yet again in 1996). Back in 1992, it was sort of as if Ed was standing right there when a certain artistic dam broke, especially during the peak of the somewhat faux artistic integrity of the grunge movement with its arguably hypocritical anti-corporate stance.

The truth, though, is that Pepsi simply informed the band that they were using the song, period, which they had every right to do. All they had to do was pay the royalty and have the song re-recorded by session players. “Pepsi told us that they were going to do that… that way all they have to do is credit the artist and pay the studio cats,” said Ed. So the band relented and just charged a high fee for using the actual song. “I ain’t that proud, you know. I’m not going to say—’No, go ahead and rip us off. And keep the money, too!’” he said.

When it comes down to it, it was that piano riff of his. It was just hypnotic, and it still is today. Eddie got half a million dollars for allowing a company to use his song for a 15-second commercial—that is completely separate from all album and singles sales, on top of the overall songwriting royalties. The main piano refrain is one of Edward’s most identifiable pieces of music, played repeatedly during football and basketball games, and chances are 98% of the crowd knows the melody, but only 10% know it’s Van Halen. It’s not a guitar scream, or finger tapping, a tremolo dive bomb, or an Echoplex trick—it is Edward at a grand piano playing a haunting, psychological musical refrain. Straight off of the man’s fingertips rolled a riff and a song that was suitable for a socially-conscious video, a national ad campaign, and major sports events. It was absolutely the closest Ed had come to writing something virtually timeless during Sam’s stint with the group.

The tour wrapped in May with two dates in Mexico City and closed with a three-night stand in Hawaii. After the tour, Ed took some well deserved time off to spend with his two-month old baby boy.

CHAPTER 27 

Awards and Live Overdubs

Once again, MTV would play a large role in maintaining Van Halen’s profile and career. On September 19, 1992, the “Right Now” video won three awards including no small one: Video of the Year. It also brought Mark Fenske an award for Best Director and one for Mitchell Sinaway for Best Editing. The video was nominated in three categories in which it did not win, one being Breakthrough Video. Grunge was white hot at the time, and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was also up for Video of the Year, but ended up taking home only Best Alternative Video (a new category) and Best New Artist in a Video—fair enough.

Ed was wearing a dark red tuxedo jacket with an AIDS ribbon, a white shirt and slim bow tie, jeans and cowboy boots. Upon winning the Video of the Year award, all four band members took the stage. Sammy spoke first and had to be bleeped out, then Alex thanked a few people in management. Ed got up and the auditorium burst into applause. He simply said, “I should say somethin’! I… Yo! Thank you!” Ed then grabbed the MTV award off the podium and walked away with it off stage while Michael Anthony was giving his thanks to the fans. Host Dana Carvey—who had parodied Roth a few years earlier on SNL—spoke immediately after. “Alright, Van Halen. Way to go Sammy,” he said. “For those of you at home he just said ‘clucking.’”

In December 1992, Edward and Valerie attended a Bill Clinton fundraiser. Their photo was featured in
Rolling
Stone
with Edward looking intelligent in eye glasses. Ed had never gone public with his politics before. Valerie is admittedly a liberal Democrat, and although Ed had never said it explicitly, his attending a Clinton fundraiser might give an indication. Sammy Hagar is known to be a Toby Keith-type conservative and admitted to donating $2,000 to the George W. Bush campaign.

Ed’s close friend Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro passed away in August from a heart attack triggered accidentally from inhaling too much pesticide around his home. Edward performed in a memorial show for him on December 14, 1992. “Jeff was the groove master. He was a buddy,” said Ed. Porcaro was also responsible for the drum beat on “Beat It,” along with Steve Lukather’s rhythm guitar, and, of course, Edward’s solo. The list of all of the artists on the bill for the Tribute for Jeff concert was over-the-top. Along with the entire band Toto came George Harrison, Don Henley, Donald Fagen, Michael McDonald (“I’ll Wait” collaborator), Boz Scaggs, and David Crosby, amongst others. Eddie and his pal Steve Lukather held a head-cutting session and jammed on “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love” and “Hold the Line” with Steve. A fantastic photo of Edward with George Harrison appeared in
Rolling
Stone
. Eddie played side-by-side with a Beatle! Ed’s grin in the photo can’t be beat.

A “Live” Album and Serious Tension

Ed Leffler had finally convinced Eddie and the band to release a live album, something Edward had fought against vociferously for years and years. Ed had often said he simply didn’t see the point in releasing a live album. “I’ve never heard a tape that I’ve been completely satisfied with, something always goes wrong during the course of a show,” he said in 1991. “Anyway, there’s really no such thing as a true live album. I don’t know of any live record that hasn’t been doctored in some way… Even Cream doctored their stuff.” And damned if that isn’t exactly what they ended up doing. “They re-recorded everything,” said Sammy.

Sammy’s personal life was in major upheaval at the time, and it spilled into the VH camp. He finally left his wife Betsy of two decades in December 1991 for Kari Karte. At the time of their first meeting, Kari was the girlfriend of NFL quarterback Jim Kelly. She was half Sammy’s age. Sam was spent mentally from his personal battles and so worn out by Van Halen that he simply became defiant. After the tour wrapped in August 1992, he retreated to Hawaii with Kari and wanted to be left alone. He thought the live album would be a no-brainer, but he said, “The dumb-ass brothers decided to take the live album, because they were so bored, back in the studio.”

The bulk of material for the album was recorded and filmed over two nights in Fresno in May 1992 and was originally edited for broadcast on the Westwood One radio network. But Ed and Al went back and started to fix the tapes—every spot that the guitar was out of tune, every place that the beat was off. When Ed fixed his tuning—Sammy’s live vocals were out of tune. When Al fixed the tempo—Sammy’s live vocals were off the beat. All of these edits required Sammy to redo his tracks to suit the edits. “Now I had to go back in the studio and redo all my vocals,” Sam said. “I wanted to kill those guys.” He was not happy about it all. After weeks and weeks of re-tracking, fixing, and remixing, an agitated Sammy flew in, recut all of his vocals in just three hours and took off. Eddie and Alex were peeved by the lack of time and effort Sam put into it. They proceeded to comb through every single syllable and then called Sammy back for more fixes which he again did reluctantly and angrily. “When they found something,” he said, “I went out and fixed it. Fuck you.”

After two months, Eddie and Alex reached the end of what they could do and were burnt. Andy Johns came in to save the day this time. Ultimately, he would pull the best versions of some of the songs from as far back 1986 and 1988 which required some pretty heavy lifting on Andy’s part as far as mixing and editing went. The album and DVD called
Right
Here,
Right
Now
was finally released in February 1993. The title recalled the outro of their smash video, but was anything but an accurate reflection of the material within—which ranged from brilliant to horrific butcher jobs.

The version of “Right Now” on the album is one of the few goose bump-inducing moments on the record—the best of all of the original songs. But the absolute peak was a cover of The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Edward had transposed Townshend’s classic keyboard parts into a delicately brilliant finger-picking guitar part. Once the listener realizes that Ed is actually playing those classic lines on his guitar, you’re simply left with the feeling that “Damn… he did it again.” And much to Sammy’s credit, his voice is perfectly suited Roger Daltrey’s, and his screams on the VH version certainly do justice to Roger’s original performance.

On the other side, Sammy Hagar completely and totally ruined “Panama.” First off, he either refused to or simply did not learn the correct lyrics, period. Instead of “Don’t you know she’s coming home to me,” Sam sings “home
with
me.” Instead of “Got a feel for the wheel, keep the moving parts clean / Hot shoe burnin’ down the avenue / I got an on-ramp comin’ through my bedroom,” Sammy sings “Got a feel for the
road
” and “I got a
freeway
runnin’
through my bedroom.” During the quiet mid-section after the solo, Sammy launched into a non-lyrical diatribe that was as out of place, off-point, and as wildly nonsensical as one could possibly dream up. He said the following over a brutal three full minutes:

I tell ya… We been lookin’ forward to this show. We were off last night, sittin’ around here in Fresno with nothin’ to do. So all I was doin’ was thinkin’ about tonight, you understand. But what happened was I was sittin’ around thinkin’ about tonight, the boys in the band were having a party over at the hotel. They had about fifteen fuckin’ chicks up there and I was sittin’ in my room watchin’ TV. And if that ain’t a bunch of bullshit, I don’t know what is. See, the problem is, and learned my lesson real quick, because I was worrying about tonight last night. Last night, I should’ve been worrying about last night. And the night before that, I should’ve been worrying about that night because worrying about tomorrow is a bunch of shit. Because tomorrow may not never come. Tomorrow—there’s no guarantee about tomorrow. Fuck tomorrow! You dig what I’m sayin’? Because yesterday, shit, yesterday, that’s history. That’s dead and gone. Yesterday ain’t worth nothin’, man, that’s gone, man.
’
Cause all you got to worry about is… right here, right now. Right now! Right now!

“Fifteen fuckin’ chicks?” Alex? Married with children. Michael? Married with children. Edward? Married with a child. “May not never come?” Double-negative—makes no sense. So, what are you supposed to do? Party every single day of your life all day? I can only wonder how many people in the audience had to get up and go to a regular job the next day who were legitimately concerned about “tomorrow.” And while yesterday is indeed history—you are bound to learn from your past to make for a better future. So, yesterday is not “ain’t worth nothin’” in my opinion. Lastly, what in the hell does this diatribe have to do with “Panama?!”

As Edward, Alex, and Michael were performing, one can only imagine what ran through their head when Sammy claimed that they were partying in the hotel with “fifteen fuckin’ chicks.” Was he implying they were having an orgy? Or were the fifteen chicks in the room their collective wives, sisters, and daughters? Probably not. And before he met Kari, Sammy claimed that he was with a different woman every single day.

Staying consistent, Sammy destroyed “Jump” by butchering the lyrics and melody throughout. Instead of “I’ve got my back against the record machine / I ain’t the worst that you’ve seen / Can’t you see what I mean?”, Sammy sings “I’ve got my
ass
against the record machine” and “
You
know
what I mean?” Edward, Alex, and Michael didn’t butcher their parts. Bringing “Jump” back into the set rubbed Sam the wrong way. In his 2011 autobiography, Sammy Hagar—of all people—mocked the lyrics to “Jump”—lyrics he couldn’t or wouldn’t even learn correctly.

Runnin’ into Dave and the 1993 Tour

Just before the February release of the album, the most unlikely of strangers bumped into each other at random on the streets of New York City: Ed and Dave. “I was walking down the street in New York, and literally just bumped into him,” said Eddie. “I said ‘hey’ and ‘good luck’ and I think he was really shocked that I said anything at all to him.” Ed added: “He was kind of hesitant. I shook his hand. I asked him how he was doing, and he looked kind of shocked.” Dave recalled the meeting very clearly in his autobiography:

I’m heading down Madison Avenue, it’s nine in the morning, and somebody walks by and goes, “Hey, Dave.” And I think, that sounds very familiar. I turn and I look and a full block away on the corner is a fat guy waving his arms, he goes, “It’s Ed, Dave.” I didn’t recognize him, he’s gained thirty pounds, you know, and a dozen years gone by… . I walked up, I said, “Ed”—I remember I said the exact same sentence that my grandma said to me when I saw her at the hospital when she was eighty-eight years old. She said, “All my life in front of my eyes, and look who’s here now.” Just popped out. So I said, “All my life in front of my eyes, and look who’s here now. Ed, how are you?” . . . He says, “Oh, I hear you’re playing with Terry… how’s it going?” “It’s going good. I hear that you’re a dad now, congratulations.”

And the two parted. Dave had been working on his latest solo album in New York with Terry Kilgore—an old mutual acquaintance dating back to Van Halen’s club days. The two hadn’t spoken to or seen each other in eight years. Their next communication gap wouldn’t be quite so long.

Prior to kicking off a world-wide tour to promote
Right
Here,
Right
Now
, the band returned to its club roots (although in a different incarnation) by playing a one-off madhouse show at the Whisky a Go Go club in March 1993. It had been a solid fifteen-plus years since VH played the Whisky. Three-thousand fans clamored for just 250 tickets and caused a major traffic jam and escalated police presence.

Following the Whisky show, Ed and the band packed up and returned to Europe for the first time since 1984. They toured for the entire month of April. According to Ian Christie, European fans blamed the “uber-American Sammy for keeping Van Halen away from Europe so long—especially in Holland, where a thirteen-year absence had strained family ties.” In fact, the major European singer Nan Mouskouri was quoted as saying, “I just love Van Halen and David Lee Roth.” The band added lots of fun covers to their sets during the European jaunt including “Won’t Get Fooled Again” (The Who), “Born on the Bayou” (Creedence Clearwater Revival), “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” (The Animals), “Norwegian Wood” (The Beatles), “Waitin’ for the Bus” (ZZ Top), “Crossroads” (Cream), and “All Right Now” (Free) as per
The
Van
Halen
Encyclopedia
.

Following their April 29 show in London, the band took a break until resuming the tour in the U.S. on June 25. For the American leg, Motley Crue lead singer Vince Neil—then a solo artist—joined the tour as the opening act all the way through to the end of August. In Motley Crue’s biography
Dirt
, Vince said that he and Sammy struck up a friendship. Sam took shots with Vince before his set and then they had margaritas before Van Halen’s set. “He ended up with the short-end of the deal because he was always wasted before he hit the stage,” said Neil.