Edward Van Halen: A Definitive Biography (27 page)

This bout of sobriety would last longer than previous stints, but Ed was about to get sidelined with some serious medical news.

CHAPTER 29 

Shot from the Hip

Balance
was released in January 1995 and the tour started in March in Florida. It was noted that Edward performed “stone-cold sober as a recovering alcoholic for the first time in his career.” The show was filmed by MTV for “Spring Break Rocks.” He looked very different, too. His hair was extremely short and cropped and he was sporting a goatee. One would practically never recognize him. On a
Beavis
and
Butthead
episode, the characters “reviewed” the video for “Can’t Stop Loving You” and at first they started out saying, “Alright, Van Halen! Van Halen kicks ass!” Then after a few moments, Butthead says, “Uh… uh… . oh boy…” Beavis says, “Is this Van Halen?” Butthead responded, “Yeah, but it’s like… where’s Eddie?”

When the album was released, Eddie and Sammy went on the
Jon
Stewart
Show
(his predecessor to
The
Daily
Show
). The entire band acted out a few comedic skits with Jon, and Ed and Sam sat down for an interview. The interview was pretty soft, but in retrospect reveals thinly-veiled jabs. Jon noted that they each drove pretty nice cars to the show. Sammy said, “Eddie’s rich.” Ed responded sarcastically with, “I’m rich? Yeah, you ever heard of General Motors? I own it.” When asked by Jon what kind of a car he drove to the taping, Ed said, “It’s a Ferrari. You know… putt-putt.” Sammy responds, “
Putt-putt?!
” and breaks out in laughter at Ed’s attempt to downplay the car. Ed says, “You should listen to this guy. You’ve got
three
of them.”

In January 1995 (the month that Ed turned forty), hoping to redeem himself, Eddie played the Bob Hope Classic again. This time, one of Ed’s partners was pro Tom Kite with whom he had a friendly relationship. “Hopefully I won’t do any brain damage to the peanut gallery this year,” he said to Kite. Ed’s instructor Ron accompanied him on the course. “We walk to the first tee—maybe 10,000 people are watching, and I’m nervous as hell,” said Ron. “I send Eddie a telepathic swing thought: Don’t shank it and kill someone!” For the most part, Ed played absolutely excellent. On the twelfth hole, “Tom hits a 4-iron about 12 feet from the pin,” said Ron. “Eddie looks at me. Eddie looks nervous. There are an awful lot of spectators around the green. The pin is 180 yards away. So figuring my guy is pumped up, I hand him a 5-iron instead of a 3. He knocks the ball three feet from the hole. The gallery goes nuts.” How Ed played so well with his as-of-yet undiagnosed ailment was a mystery. About turning forty, Ed told
Rolling
Stone
, “I feel 18. I don’t feel any different, except now I’m having a hip problem.”

At the beginning of the
Balance
tour, Ed started to experience an escalation of pain in his hip. At first, he thought he had probably just taken a bad golf swing, but it got to be so intense that he finally went in for an MRI. Eventually, he was diagnosed with avascular necrosis—a loss of blood supply often caused by excessive alcohol consumption. It essentially caused the ball joint of his hip to collapse. Ed at the time claimed that his hip damage was from jumping around on stage for years, which likely didn’t help, but the number one cause of avascular necrosis is alcoholism. Edward said that his situation was exactly the same as athlete Bo Jackson, but that is not entirely the case. Jackson was sidelined by a major blow to the hip in one game, and only afterward was it discovered that Jackson had avascular necrosis. But Jackson was a lifelong athlete playing football and baseball both in college and professionally. The amount of wear and tear on Bo’s hip does not quite equate to Ed’s two or so hours of performing on a given night. Surely, for Edward, the fact that the condition was caused by alcohol must have been personally devastating, and a stark reminder of the warning his father had given him from his death bed.

Because of his hip, his performances on the tour were mostly stock still. Sam said that Ed seemed to be on painkillers. “Eddie walked with a cane,” said Sammy. “He would walk up to the stage, put the cane down, and walk out. Every so often, he would sit on the drum riser or a stool to play a couple of songs, because his hips were killing him so bad.” Ed would put off surgery—that had been recommended immediately—for almost five more years.

On Wolfgang’s birthday, the family went to Disney World while they were in Florida. Ed was not drinking, and Valerie said, “We had several fun weeks together there—though Ed and Sammy were at odds for reasons I didn’t pay attention to.” In Dallas in late March, Wolfie walked out on stage to his first ovation (but not his last). He and his dad kicked a beach ball around to the delight of the crowd. Early the following month, the band was trekking through their home territory for shows in San Diego, L.A., and Oakland.

On the Cover of the
Rolling
Stone

The April 6, 1995 edition of
Rolling
Stone
was the third time Eddie had graced the cover. However, this time, it was Ed and Ed alone. He looked completely different than the image that everyone had of him for the previous fifteen years. He had cropped, highlighted hair, and a smart goatee. He really looked great. The photographs throughout the article by Mark Seliger were exceptional and artistic. There was an excellent family portrait and a shot of Eddie holding his guitar walking through a field with his Dalmatian. The interview, conducted by David Wild, was incredibly revealing. The interview took place on Valentine’s Day 1995.

Reflecting upon the Norelco incident, Edward said, “Cutting my hair off did come at the end of an unbelievably heavy time for me.” He continued, “Our manager, Ed Leffler, died. Then Sammy Hagar was off doing his loony fucking solo career.” The latter Sammy slagging was a sign of things to come. Ed also complained that the band was in the short term managing themselves and found that handling each and every call that came in was overwhelming. They had finally realized all of the crazy requests Leffler had pre-empted and declined for the band. Edward said he actually fielded a call from an agent wanting to know if he wanted to host
Star
Search
.

At the time of the
Rolling
Stone
interview, Ed had been sober for five months—his longest stint yet off the bottle. Valerie said she was confident that this bout of sobriety would last. “If I wasn’t,” she said, “I wouldn’t be here. Fourteen years living with an alcoholic is my limit.” Valerie went out of her way to say that you wouldn’t know it just by simply talking with him for a few hours, but that “they guy has the biggest heart in the world.” About his sobriety, Ed said drinking simply wasn’t an alternative anymore. “Drinking does not work for me,” he said. “I mean, I used to drive drunk. God, that’s a fucked-up thing to do.”

Edward also said that being a father had a profound impact on this sobriety stint. One night, Eddie had stayed up all night partying and stumbled in the house at 8am. A four-year-old Wolfie looked at him and said, “Are you all right, Daddy? What happened?” Ed added, “When your kid knows, it’s time to give it up.”

When asked what Roth had brought to the original Van Halen, Edward said was basically like “an emcee, a clown. I hope this isn’t coming off as slighting him, because he was great at what he did.” When directly asked if he would ever play with Roth again, Edward said it was only if they ever made it into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. “We’re going to have jam together,” Ed said of Roth. He went further and added, “I think it would be hilarious. Listen, I don’t hate the guy.”

“The Gun Thing”

It turned out April was not a great month for Ed. During a show at the Forum on April 5, he had technical difficulties during his solo and threw his guitar to the stage in frustration. Then, just two days later, he made the news with what he called “the gun thing.” Edward was so used to flying charter that when he was preparing to fly United Airlines to Oakland, he forgot to take his fully loaded .25-caliber Beretta out of his carry-on luggage. Burbank Airport security saw the gun when scanning his bag on the x-ray machine. Eddie was immediately detained and taken to a secure area.

Ed then endured 90 minutes of good cop-bad cop. “One of the cops was like Barney Fife, a real young guy with one bullet in his gun,” said Edward. “Thank God Andy Griffith showed up later on.” Airport Police Chief Tony Lo-Verme said, “He was very cooperative. He stated he normally travels by charter, where you more or less do what you like. This time, he traveled by commercial aircraft and forgot to take (the gun) out.” The gun was seized and Ed was eventually released.

By April 11—it was out. “Rock Star Van Halen Faces Charge of Carrying Gun Into Airport.” “Van Halen Caught With Gun.” “Rocker Van Halen to Face Weapons Charge: Burbank: Guitarist says he forgot to leave loaded gun out of carry-on luggage at airport, authorities say.” MTV picked up the story.
The
Los
Angeles
Times
carried the following:

Van Halen Enters Plea On Handgun

April 14, 1995—Vivien Lou Chen

Rock star Eddie Van Halen pleaded no contest to unlawfully carrying a handgun into Burbank Airport and was fined $910 and placed on one year of probation, a prosecutor said Thursday. Van Halen, 40, of Studio City appeared at Burbank Municipal Court to enter his plea Wednesday, eight days before his scheduled arraignment. “He was advised of his constitutional rights, asked how he wanted to plea, and said, ‘No contest,’” said Burbank Deputy City Atty. Robert W. Walters. “He’s human.”

The bottom line is that is was a simple mistake, period. An oversight—a rushed packing job. But it is definitely not the kind of press you want to get. Fortunately for Eddie, this was pre-9/11, otherwise, he could have been a lot worse off. Horrifically though, this wasn’t the worst press he’d ever get. It wasn’t even the worst press he’d get that summer.

Bad News

From late May all the way until the end of June, the band toured Europe opening for Bon Jovi on all but just a handful of dates. Ed’s hip was causing him horrible pain, and on top of that, Bon Jovi was much bigger in Europe than Van Halen was. “It was a total disaster,” Sammy said. “Van Halen had no place on a bill with Bon Jovi, who was huge over there… . It was total oil and water… . It was the worst idea ever for Van Halen. We got nowhere on that tour. I could feel the end coming.”

Shortly thereafter, Andi Remington sold out Eddie Van Halen for a little bit of money to the glamorous black and white newsprint tabloid
The
Globe
(which via deduction means that
The
National
Enquirer,
People,
and
US
Weekly
all gave a “thanks but no thanks” to her story). Remington did all of this just to make a little bit of money, but ultimately the publicity caused extreme embarrassment, and seriously hurt a family with a young child. Within the walls of your own home is one thing; on every newsstand in every grocery store check-out line is another. Once informed, Valerie knew what was coming and made Ed call her agent Jack and tell him exactly what was going on—they had managed to keep the whole thing a secret for a year. In Valerie’s autobiography:

“What were you thinking when you let her take pictures?” [Jack] said.

“I’d had a couple beers,” Ed replied.

“But you’re posing naked with a guitar. And you’re smiling!”

Ed sighed.

The story hit on July 4. Valerie was devastated. Eddie was devastated. Then the gossip TV show
Hard
Copy
picked up the story. All Ed could do was go back out on tour from mid-July through all of August, September, and October, with the touring wrapping in early November. What a horrific few months.

The
Balance
tour was nicknamed the “Ambulance Tour” not only because of Ed’s hip, but also because Alex was forced to wear a neck brace because of three vertebrae in his neck he damaged from innocently lifting up his son. They looked like aging, worn-out athletes.

In early August in Michigan, the band threw “Foxey Lady” and “White Room” into their set for fun, and later that month Leslie West of Mountain joined the band on stage for a rendition of his classic “Mississippi Queen.” In Colorado in September, the band played an outdoor gig in Denver during a freak fall snow storm.

In late September, Van Halen came to Austin and I didn’t go. I hadn’t seen them since 1991. To be honest, I couldn’t get past the song “I Can’t Stop Loving You.” I thought it was horrible, trite pop garbage. The lyrics could’ve been written by a twelve-year-old girl. Cliché after cliché after cliché—again. Writer David Wild referred to the song as “unapologetic power pop.”
Balance
was the first Van Halen album I didn’t buy. I was talking to my brother Brandon on the phone after it came out and he asked me what I thought about it. I told him I didn’t know, that all I knew was what I had heard on the radio and seen on MTV, and I didn’t like it, so I didn’t buy the album. “What?!” my brother said. He put down the phone and yelled to his wife Susan, “Kevin hasn’t even bought the new Van Halen album…” He continued, “What’s your problem with it? It’s still Eddie, man.” I said, “That song ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’ is horrible! I cannot believe that’s even Van Halen, man. It’s awful.” He said, “Man… that’s like Susan and mine’s song right now.” Mine and my brother’s musical taste didn’t always match up.