Edward Van Halen: A Definitive Biography (5 page)

As the band, and Edward himself as a player, became more popular, they set their sights on the Starwood. The difference, which presented a rather pressing challenge to the band, was that the Starwood was an all original club. As Dave bluntly put it, “You didn’t play cover tunes at the Starwood.” Fortunately, Edward’s relentless creativity gave Dave a well of material to choose from to add lyrics and melodies to. It would take them until mid-1976 to pull it off.

DeVry or Rock Music?

Eugenia attempted one more serious attempt to dissuade Edward from following in his father’s footsteps and being a “nothing nut” musician. She attempted to persuade Edward to enroll at DeVry in Phoenix to take computer classes. Jan on the other hand supported the boys and “Van Halen” all the way. Edward had done well in school, and he got into and did well in college. One wonders what gave her the inspiration that DeVry held the keys to Edward’s future. Possibly a television commercial? Nevertheless, Ed carried on as he had been, although his and Alex’s both still living at home was likely getting awkward. Who knows what shape the tree house was in. Or if it was still there, and it was being used, what was it being used for?

It was well past the time that the boys had come into contact with a little more than Schlitz, vodka, or Pall Malls. As blunt an introduction to the topic as can be given comes from Ed himself: “Back in 1972, I OD’d on PCP, thinking it was cocaine.” There aren’t a whole lot of people that went through something like that at seventeen.

The band had an operation in place for whenever the backyard parties would inevitably get raided by the cops. After pulling a “we’re just the band” routine, they’d be free to collect their gear and leave. When the cops had everyone cleared out, the guys would get down and their hands and knees with flashlights and collect ditched joints, booze, and what-have-you. “After combing the grounds, we would just sit up on that stage until four in the morning just samplin’ everything,” recalled Dave. The times, the place: L.A., Hollywood, Sunset Strip—mid-70s. Edward in his late teens, early twenties. The Schlitz were the steady old friends, but now, anything even found on the ground was fair game.

Nevertheless, Edward continued on with his classes at Pasadena City College and found kinship with a professor. Dr. Fisher apparently instilled in Edward a trait that would benefit his creativity for the rest of his life. According to Gordon Mathews:

Dr. Fisher made it clear to Eddie that that were rules to music but that those rules were meant to be broken. This actually got him into trouble with another teacher, who felt an arrangement Eddie had done on an assignment was incorrect. In a show of personal conviction, the normally shy musician addressed the class, asking them to decide whether or not the piece he had written (sic) was good. As legend has it, Eddie played the piece on piano, and when he was through, the class burst into applause.

Later, in 1982, Edward said, “You know, I think it’s funny. If there’s something that, that I wanna do, I won’t give up until I can figure out some way to make it sound similar to what I really can’t do. Does that make any sense?” It definitely makes sense to a musical rule breaker.

CHAPTER 6 

Critical Years

By 1975, the Van Halen engine was already chugging at full speed. And the vehicle was not just too terribly far from what it would eventually look like three years later. The band played practically non-stop at Gazzari’s all year long. To truly give an idea of the band’s work ethic at the time: they played Gazzari’s alone fifty-eight times in 1974 and forty times in 1975—nearly 100 times in just two years at the same Hollywood club.

Existing recordings from this period include an original called “Brown Sugar”—not a cover of the Stones song. Ed’s riff is played with a phaser throughout. It is essentially just a vamped up blues riff. Ed has a very lengthy solo that highlights many features of his playing that would become signatures of his playing style throughout his career (fast right-hand picking and tremelo dive-bombing). Dave’s vocals are reminiscent of his delivery on “Atomic Punk.”

Mostly though, the band waded through covers performing live, including “Waiting on the Bus” by ZZ Top. Existing audio reveals an extremely vamped-up version—it is loaded with fills by Edward throughout—the song is simply a vehicle for his fills. At the right times, he is dead on doing the riff note-for-note, but then goes into totally and completely uncharted territory and is just absolutely killing. His right-hand attack and vibrato are over the top.

Another amazing recording from this period is a version of “Man on the Silver Mountain” by Dio-era Deep Purple. Dave starts out the song saying “The very gentle, the very delicate… Van Halen.” Ed then launches straight into the mean-ass riff and they fucking
murder
it. Dave and Mike both sound great on vocals. If it weren’t a Deep Purple song, it would be an absolutely excellent candidate for any of the first three Van Halen albums. The pre-chorus and choruses are excellent. The solo pulls out every jaw-drop inducing trick in the arsenal. From start to finish, their version is just absolutely over the top kick ass. Another cover recording that exists from around this time is The Edgar Winter Group song “We All Had a Real Good Time.” Ed’s solo is quite impressive and specifically features some intense right-hand picking.

In February of 1975, the band played the first of their own self-promoted mini-concerts at Pasadena High School, the brothers’ former alma mater. Michael Anthony’s band Snake was also on the bill and when Van Halen’s PA went kaput, Mike stepped in and let them borrow his PA for free. Shortly after the show, Ed, Dave, and Al sat down with Mark and let him go. Mark was a straight-A student who was headed elsewhere in life. “He was going to school to be a pharmacist—swear to God,” said Edward. “He spent more time at home building LSD molecules. We were playing parties with a repertoire of a hundred songs, and he wouldn’t remember stuff.” Michael Anthony was given the business during an audition but was ultimately given the job as bass player and back-up vocalist.

The fully-formed Van Halen returned to Pasadena High School two months later in April. Both shows were held in the auditorium of Pasadena High School. Recordings of both of these shows include seminal versions of the
Women
and
Children
First
classics “Take Your Whiskey Home” and “Fools.” Thrown in is a simply killer version of Joe Walsh’s and his James Gang classic “Walk Away.” Ed basically holds the same few chords together while the verse vocals are going, but otherwise completely dominates the song with over-the-top fills and solos.

One listen and you can already hear that he is completely ready to go the distance. The casual listener would not necessarily know immediately that Michael Anthony was
not
present at the February gig, but is quite obvious he
was
present at the April show. For the rest of 1975, only one other non-Gazzari’s gig took place in June at the Pasadena Hilton Hotel.

Determined to succeed, Edward continued his high creative output over the next year, coming up with as many killer riffs and parts and pieces he could muster. In spring of 1976, the band played their first non-Gazzari’s club gig of their career at Walter Mitty’s Rock and Roll Emporium in Pomona, and they also opened for UFO, a high-profile gig, at Golden West Ballroom in Pomona. Finally, in June, Van Halen scored their first gig at the Starwood. Upon a return to the club later that year, a twenty-one-year-old Eddie and his band played a seemingly regular gig in November. Except that it wasn’t a regular gig.

Thanks for Nothing, Gene

A competitor of Van Halen’s was a band called Boyz (beating N.W.A. to the whole “boyz” thing by about fifteen years—in L.A., nonetheless). Two members of Boyz, George Lynch and Mick Brown, would later be half of Dokken in the 80s. Boyz played a Halloween gig at Gazzari’s where the majority of the costumed crowd arrived dressed as members of KISS, whose popularity was absolutely soaring at the time. Specifically, that very Halloween, the band was guests on the
The
Paul
Lynde
Halloween
Special
, which was the biggest national television exposure they had gotten up to that point.

To appease the crowd, Boyz closed their set with “Firehouse” (a KISS song also covered by Van Halen). After the show, out of the crowd walked Gene Simmons. He was impressed by the band and told them that their record label Casablanca was looking for new artists and asked when their next show was. The following week, Gene brought some label reps out to the Starwood and Boyz completely stilted. However, Van Halen was on the bill completely kicking ass, and Gene’s interest turned.

Edward was absolutely gleeful. Gene Simmons of KISS liked his band. Eddie said, “He’s goin’, ‘You guys got a record deal? You guys got a manager?’ We’re going [acting stupefied and awestruck, scratching his head] ‘No. What’s a manager?! What’s a record deal?!” Gene moved quickly and booked the band into Village Recorder Studios in Los Angeles off of Santa Monica Boulevard. Ed’s songwriting over the past year paid off and they were able to lay down a dozen-plus original tunes. Four of those would go on to be classics: “On Fire,” “Runnin’ with the Devil,” “Somebody Get Me a Doctor,” and “House of Pain.” Additionally, a track called “She’s the Woman” would be reworked first into “Voodoo Queen,” and then eventually into “Mean Streets.” The former three tracks were reworked significantly before they finally appeared on early VH albums.

These tracks show that Van Halen certainly had their identity down by 1976—hard-driving guitar, incredible fills and solos, thumping bass, “end-of-the-world” drums, high-harmony backing vocals. The only thing about “the Gene Simmons demo” that might throw off the classic Van Halen fan is Dave’s voice; it sounds as if it had not yet filled out completely and at times comes across a bit thin, and was, in fact, not well mixed or produced. Also, the guitar sound on these recordings is layered with a slap-back echo rather than a huge reverb; the latter would be a signature of the
Van
Halen
album soon to come.

Following the Village Recorder sessions, in an attempt to wow the band, Gene funded a group trip to New York City. The first thing they would do upon arrival in Gene’s hometown was take the tapes to Electric Lady Studios—the famous studio built to Hendrix’s specs which opened just weeks before his death in 1970 (it is still run by Jimi’s engineer Eddie Kramer). Edward would record only a few overdubs in the studio. These overdubs come across as extremely un-Van Halen. There are parts where Ed attempts to play a guitar harmony line with himself over a pre-written solo (as opposed to improvised which would be the only way he work from there on out). It sounds awkward and cluttered. Since Gene was 100 percent at the controls, it’s possible he wanted to see how Ed would sound playing along with a second guitar. After a few overdubs, the session was mixed and completed.

The most important reason for coming to New York was not to throw a few overdubs down at Electric Lady; it was to play a showcase performance for Bill Aucoin, KISS’s manager since their start in 1973. Bill passed on signing Van Halen. This has gone down in rock music lore as the equivalent of Decca passing on The Beatles and has followed Aucoin to this day. The truth is that Van Halen in late 1976 would simply not be the same Van Halen in late 1977. A lot of the songwriting was still a bit disjointed, the lyrics were not great, and Dave’s lower timbre wasn’t quite there (it sounds as if he couldn’t yet pull off the Elvisesque “to satis-uh-fy” line at the end of “Ice Cream Man”).

During the final “big meeting” with Bill, which took place on the top floor of a Madison Avenue skyscraper, as Bill had his shoes shined he told them, “Guys, I think the music is great but the vocals don’t hold up. I just don’t hear the melodies.” He suggested to the band, “Maybe another vocalist would work. But otherwise, Gene has his own career, and barring any other permutations, I don’t think I can work with you.” This clearly left Edward and Alex reeling back to their original dismissal of Dave as a singer, and Dave embarrassed and guilty.

Not long after the debacle in New York City, Gene called up Eddie and Alex to have them back him on three tracks he was demoing for the next KISS album,
Love
Gun
. Working as a trio, Ed and Al played with Gene on the tracks “Christine Sixteen” and “Got Love for Sale,” both of which ended up on
Love
Gun
(another track, “Tunnel of Love,” was shuttered for a Gene solo record). According to Gene, “I liked his [Edward’s] solo for ‘Christine Sixteen’ so much that when the band recorded it for
Love
Gun
, Ace pretty much copied Eddie’s solo note-for-note.”
Love
Gun
was released a few months later in June of 1977.

Dave was highly suspicious of Gene’s activities from the start. According to Dave’s autobiography
Crazy
from
the
Heat
, he claims that Gene came to check out Van Halen based on word of mouth, and that it wasn’t just a chance meeting as implied by the boys in Boyz. He also asserts that the whole Gene-scenario was an attempt to get Eddie, and possibly Alex, into KISS one way or another given the ongoing problems with Ace Frehley and Peter Criss. Upon Gene’s demo-cutting invite, fiercely protective and possibly fighting for his life, Dave showed up with Edward at the studio. He said, “Simmons would look at me with horror.
Horror
. ’Cause I was on to his game way early.” In August of 1977, Dave also claims that Gene invited the band to the KISS show at the Forum in L.A.—that is, everyone but Dave. “The Van Halens would be inside, comfortably ensconced in the back room with Gene and his pals,” said David.

Gene Simmons is an interesting person, to say the least. Dee Snider recently claimed that Gene still thinks Elvis owes
him
for inventing rock and roll. It is common knowledge that Gene loves to take credit for “discovering” Van Halen. In fact, all he did was mix them a demo tape of debatable quality, fly them to New York City, and inject disharmony into a group that already came with conflict and tension as part of the main course. Ed called the recordings “the world’s most expensive demo tape.” Gene did take some bands under his wing—like Rush (perennially managed by their high school friend Ray Danniels) who toured with KISS during much of 1974 and 1975—and others he discovered, such as Casablanca label mates Angel. Gene’s involvement in Van Halen eventually petered out.

Finally Getting Signed

Van Halen shared the bill with The Ramones at the Golden West Ballroom on March 13, 1977. Joey Ramone was later photographed for
Creem
magazine wearing an original, black Van Halen logo t-shirt. That May—the same month as the release of
Star
Wars
—the band was playing what was a fairly crappy Monday night show at the Starwood complete with rain. Through their Starwood shows, they got noticed by Marshall Berle (indeed, the nephew of the late Milton Berle), a well-connected talent scout who would become the band’s first manager. Marshall convinced Ted Templeman to come out. Ted said, “I thought David was the first singer since Jim Morrison to have that kind of attitude.” Ted in turn then convinced Mo Ostin to come out. Ostin was then the president of Warner Brothers; and Ted’s studio production credits to that point included five Doobie Brothers records, as well as Carly Simon, Van Morrison, Little Feat, and Montrose. Ted was especially impressed and urged Mo to sign the band.

Edward told Jas Obrecht: “We were playing the club one rainy Monday night in 1977, and Berle told us that there were some people coming to see us, so play good. It ended up that we played a good set in front of an empty house and all of a sudden Berle walks in with Ted and Mo Ostin. Templeman said, ‘It’s great,’ and within a week we were signed up. It was right out of the movies.” As a result, Dave would be sticking with the band or Van Halen was stuck with Dave, however you want to look at it. To Edward it was a thorn in his side. But the album Ed and Dave delivered on would eventually sell
10
million
copies and counting.