Read Edward Van Halen: A Definitive Biography Online
Authors: Kevin Dodds
Edward Van Halen: A Definitive Biography (50 page)
The life and times of Edward Van Halen are an incredibly important part of American cultural history. His personality and character traits are complex. He can at times be stubborn and rude, but for the most part—as many have described—he has a huge heart and is a very loving, kind, brilliant, creative, and also quite a funny human being. There were times when I was reading or listening to an interview that Edward made me laugh out loud when I was completely alone. Any time he says “
Yee-haw!”
is absolutely hysterical.
My hope was to capture the essence of the man’s entire life, from his childhood up through the current day. As a voracious consumer of rock biographies, I incorporated elements of what I think makes for the best possible rock biography. One of those elements was to include a great deal of verbiage that came directly from Edward’s mouth. I spent countless hours transcribing interviews in order to bring the reader his exact words. We are fortunate to live in an era when access to media of all types is virtually at your fingertips. By including important, extended interviews and/or diatribes, there leaves no doubt what the man was saying, or trying to say, or what he was saying without saying it. As such, I included commentary throughout many of the extended quotations to clarify and guide the reader through the story. Unfortunately, I was not granted permission to reprint a few of the better interviews. In those instances, I was forced to paraphrase.
This work is the result of a full year’s worth of research aided greatly by 21
st
century technology. I was not able to interview Edward Van Halen: that should be clear. I did come into contact with a handful of people that provided critical information. I estimate that I pulled from easily a thousand sources. The invaluable advent of YouTube accounted for a great deal of those. Yet I also have stacks of
Hit
Parader
and
Circus
magazines from the 80s. The trick was to weave it all together into one cohesive tale.
A good deal of Edward’s story is sad and unfortunate, and even at times flat out disturbing. A friend of mine is apt to say, “Geniuses don’t play well with others.” I agree completely. Charles Cross referred to “the role of madness in artistry” when breaking down Kurt Cobain. This notion is applicable to innumerable artists throughout history: Mozart, Van Gogh, Dali, Elvis Presley, and perhaps, to an arguably lesser extent, Edward Van Halen. “Madness” itself, however, is a vague term. It is ultimately up to an individual to assess its impact on any subject. If “madness” led to the creation of a completely new type of guitar and the introduction to “Mean Streets,” I wish madness for us all. If it led to
Van
Halen
III
and the 2004 tour, that is another story.
However, the balance inevitably falls on the side of the fabulous and wonderful things Eddie Van Halen has brought to the lives of his family, friends, fans, admirers, and the history of music on this planet. His life has come full circle. My sincerest hope is that Edward will live a long, long life and continue to make music into his old age with Dave, his brother Alex, and his son Wolfgang. And of course, we all look to Wolfgang to keep the Van Halen legacy going for at least another eighty years or so.
My own VH necklace from the
1984
concert in Houston.
Photograph © Kevin Dodds
I worshipped Eddie Van Halen. Worshipped him. And I still admire the hell out of him. When people that know me well think of me, the words “Van Halen” will shortly follow somewhere in there. I can honestly say that I have probably listened to each of the songs on the first six albums thousands and thousands of times. Occasionally, someone will ask me why I never get tired of it. I can’t answer that query in less than at least four hours. I have
Van
Halen
II
in my car as I type. I had my first copy of that album at age 11, and I’m still listening to it today, and I will listen to it when I’m 90.
I grew up where Edward grew up—in the suburbs of the United States of America. It was within those suburbs that rock music truly lived and breathed in the 1970s and 1980s. My father was a guitar player, but stuck to mostly fundamental chords and very simple riffs. But with his help, he launched me onto a path that would sometimes cause him consternation.
By the age of eleven, after having watched Edward’s performance at the 1983 US Festival repeatedly, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a rock guitarist, period. After the
1984
concert, my best friend and I embarked on a band project that continues to this day. Our early performances and success in high school only strengthened my resolve to be a professional musician. But my father would not have it and insisted I take the safe route and go to college. I figured I would just do both—go to college and try to make it music, which I did indeed attempt to do.
Unfortunately, the timing of our band’s ultimate rise coincided closely with my college graduation, and instead of diving headlong into the band life and travelling further to play, I was told in no uncertain terms that I was to get a job using the college degree that had just been paid for. So, I did, and the band was forced to remain relatively confined to Austin and the surrounding Texas area, although we did indeed get opportunities to play all over the United States, including Los Angeles—where we had a hilarious chance encounter with none other than Eric Clapton in a Venice driveway. Having always taken care of every single thing ourselves, our only two forays into “professional” management were for the most part eye-opening, disturbing, and expensive. At the same time, my best friend Michael had two children back-to-back. Shortly thereafter, Mike’s wife was diagnosed with an illness that made it absolutely impossible for her to care for the children while we played out of town, or even in-town, for that matter. After well over a decade of full-on dedication, we went into semi-retirement in 2002. However, we still play together a few times per year to this day.
Because of my communications degree, I ended up in publishing. I have been a layout designer, desktop publisher, writer, editorial production manager, managing editor, and ultimately a publishing project manager. It is because of this experience that I had little reservation about my ability to write a complete book. The honest truth is that this happened only because I was simply looking for a definitive biography on Eddie Van Halen and was shocked that one did not exist. The encouragement I was given by author Charles R. Cross (
Heavier
than
Heaven
[Kurt Cobain] and
Room
Full
of
Mirrors
[Jimi Hendrix]) might seem relatively minor to him, but was of incredible value to me. World renowned rock guitar journalist Jas Obrecht—who conducted the very first interviews with Edward himself—cannot be thanked enough. His correspondence and approval of portions of the text, as well as his open allowance of me to repurpose his material was invaluable. Also, the encouragement of my friends and cohorts to dive in and do it myself was priceless. My appreciation of their encouragement cannot be understated.
These days, I am a project manager at a large publishing firm in Austin, Texas and a freelance writer. I still play in a few different bands. I am free from the chains of alcoholism. I am a happily married man with two young sons, aged eight and three. My eight-year-old has already performed publicly several times and it is clear that he has the guitar-playing genes. He even knows the main riffs of “Runnin’ with the Devil” and “Unchained.” My three-year-old appears poised to follow in his brother’s footsteps and is always plinking on a guitar or bashing away on a kid-sized drum kit. My three-year-old even tells me, “Get your guitar, Daddy” as he picks up the drum sticks. They’re going to have to go to college, too, though.
If you the reader find any mistakes of any kind, please e-mail them to me and corrections will be made prior to the second edition of the text. Send e-mail to Kevin Dodds at
[email protected]
.
1. My Toto Story
2. My 1984 Concert Story
3. My Guitar Teacher Story
4. My 1986 Performance Stories
5. My Unabridged 1986 Texxas Jam Story
6. My Unabridged Monsters of Rock Tour Story
7. My Unabridged 2004 Tour Story
8. My Unabridged 2008 Tour Story
9. A Little Bit About My Brother
1. My Toto Story
In 1979, I theoretically came within one degree of separation from Edward when I was only six (just a few weeks before I turned seven). My father’s best friend and business associate at the time was a childhood friend of Bobby Kimball, the lead singer of the band Toto. When Toto came to Houston in March of 1979, their hit “Hold the Line” was absolutely peaking. My mom, dad, brother, and I all got to go backstage after the concert.
It turned out the show was actually on Bobby’s birthday. We got backstage just in time to see their organization present a birthday cake to him. I had a beater camera that my mom had given me and actually took pictures of both Bobby and a picture simply of his birthday cake. I was wide-eyed and in complete awe.
Also backstage was obviously guitarist Steve Lukather, who would become one of Edward’s very closest friends. While I don’t recall meeting Steve, I do recall that we were introduced to the whole band (which included Jeff and Steve Porcaro). Everything backstage was extremely kid-friendly. It was the first experience I ever had that pointed me down a musical path. After that concert, I remember asking my parents if it was okay if when I grew up, I played in a band that played all Toto songs.
I still haven’t founded that Toto tribute band, but I still have that backstage pass and the picture of Bobby’s birthday cake to this day.
2. My 1984 Concert Story
I was twelve years old and Van Halen ruled my world. I let the sports craze of my youth fade away as my love for guitar grew rapidly, especially in 1984. Down came the Roger Staubach posters and up went all of the classic original Van Halen posters of the early 80s, including the classic poster of Ed in his red, white, and black striped overalls wielding the Frankenstein. I was already two years into playing guitar, something I picked up from my father. And the moment at which our interests came together was when my brother Brandon brought home the 45 for “(Oh) Pretty Woman” and both of my parents stood in Brandon’s room while we listened to it. My dad liked it and said, “Hell, that’s my music!” It was immediately after that that my father taught me my first guitar riff on his guitar. The next day, my parents bought both my brother and I our first guitars in the spring of 1982. A few years later, in the summer of 1984, my then 16-year-old brother took his guitar apart and made it into an almost exact Frankenstein replica.
When the word came down that tickets for the
1984
show were going on sale in Houston, Brandon, who was fifteen at the time, me, and a few of his friends went and camped out all night for tickets (this was the
olden
days
). The shows sold out immediately. We ended up getting our tickets in two batches of four each; four were very close to the left side of the stage and the other four were in the upper promenade of the Summit. My best friend Mike and I were relegated to sit with my older sister and her husband way up in the upper prom, with my brother and his friends commanding the close seats. I was none too pleased with that arrangement.
Before school let out that year, my brother and one of his ticket-holding friends had a go at it in the school hallway over one thing or another. Things were so tense that on the day of the concert, my brother sacrificed his two personal tickets and traded them to me and Mike so that he didn’t have to deal with sitting next to a guy he had just had a fight with. Mike and I were ecstatic—actually, it was more than that, we were in disbelief. For about four months, we had prepared ourselves to watch from a mile away and now we would be as close to the stage as almost anyone else in the arena.
My sister ushered us to our seats and told us not to move under any circumstances and that she would come down and check on us periodically. Before we went to our seats though, we bought concert shirts and VH necklaces (I still have both the shirt and the necklace to this day).
When Mike and I sat down in our seats—a mere 40-50 feet from stage right (Michael Anthony’s side)—we were simply in shock. We knew where we were. We knew what was about to happen. We knew that all of these people were here for the same thing. We lucked out and witnessed the opening night in Houston of a three-night stand (the tour closed out with another three-night stand in Dallas). The wait for the band to come on was excruciating and seemed to take forever and ever.
Then the lights went down. Our eyes were as wide as our lids allowed. There they were on stage right in front of us. Even though it was nearly thirty years ago and I was only 12 years old, I still remember the evening as if it were yesterday. The most important thing that will never, ever leave me was the audience response. After the opening “Unchained” was over, the crowd gave a literally unending ovation. They did not start the second song—they just stood there and let the crowd yell. Then Dave summoned the other three to the front of the stage and they simply bowed in unison. This was after the first song! Again, the crowd roar never abated—it did not decay in any way. It was constant; a perpetual noise. We were certainly the two loudest 12-year-olds in the arena!
3. My Guitar Teacher Story
I heard the news about Sammy from my new guitar teacher, Andy—a high school senior surfer dude with long shaggy blond hair and the most incredible white vintage Fender Stratocaster one could possibly imagine. I had taken “straight” lessons—a la the Mel Bay style—for two solid years from a well-meaning but otherwise boring instructor, Bruce. It got to where instead of mastering “When the Saints Go Marching In,” I wanted to know how to play specific rock songs, including a lot of Van Halen (I was ambitious). Bruce consistently refused to take that route with me, and one of the last events was the introduction of a basics of classical guitar book; I clearly could have benefitted, but I was thirteen and had acquired a cheap but playable Eddie copycat guitar—and it was 1985. So I switched to Andy.
By this time, I had learned some of the basic chord progressions for some of the simpler songs like “Runnin’ with the Devil,” “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love,” “Dance the Night Away,” and “Panama.” But “Unchained” eluded me. During my first lesson with Andy, he said, “So what would you like to learn, Kevin?” I said, “I want to learn to play ‘Unchained’ like on the album.” He hesitated, as an instructor, and said, “Don’t you think it’s more important to learn the theory, the scales, and all that, before just learning a song without understanding what exactly it is you’re playing?” I explained rather clearly and somewhat aggressively that I had been taking basic lessons for two years straight, and what I wanted to know from him was simple: “Why doesn’t it sound right when I play ‘Unchained?’ What am I doing wrong? I want
you
to tell
me
what the problem is. That’s what I want to learn here, right now.”
Andy was taken a little aback, but acquiesced and began writing out the chords on a sheet of lesson paper. He also mentioned, “Eddie tunes down to D for this song, and a lot of songs on
Fair
Warning
.” I said, “What the hell is ‘tune down to D’?” Andy laughed and explained that the low E string is tuned down to D, a full step lower, which gives it a much heavier sound. I tuned down to D and played it and said, “It still doesn’t sound right.” Then Andy said, “Oh, well, he tunes a half-step down to begin with, so it’s actually in C#.” He told me to tune my guitar with the song, so I did and had an epiphany. One of the many reasons that you can’t just pick up a guitar and sound like Ed is because of his tunings—they vary in pitch from song to song—from a quarter-step down from E to straight E flat and even a quarter-step below E flat, and then occasionally tuning the low E down a full step to D on top of all of that. That was why it was so damned hard to sound and play like him. But I felt like it was really the first time I had figured out one of his tricks. I would dedicate countless hours—hours upon hours and years upon years—trying to figure out his tricks.
One day I came into the guitar shop for a lesson during the early fall of 1985—a full year after the
1984
concert had changed my life—Andy said, “Man, did you hear that Sammy Hagar’s in Van Halen now?” I couldn’t believe it at first, but after just a few seconds, completely under the Van Halen spell, I said, “Wow! That’s a trip! That’s cool!” I was focused on Edward at the time, not Dave. I wasn’t taking guitar lessons to be like Dave. Andy retorted, “Aw, man, I can’t stand Sammy Hagar.” I honestly recall recoiling in slight horror at the suggestion that Edward would possibly make a bad decision by getting Sammy into the band. I guess I wasn’t too surprised by the ugly press that followed. In fact, I ate it up, and at the time, I took Eddie’s side. He was my idol.
On top of that, my older brother Brandon was a huge Sammy Hagar fan in addition to our mutual idolization of Edward. Brandon lived the Sammy dream, driving a Camaro with T-tops down to Galveston beach with
Van
Halen
II
or
VOA
in the tape deck every weekend—and sometimes during the school week depending on what side of the bed he woke up on.
4. My 1986 Performance Stories
By the end of my 8
th
grade year in the spring of 1986, my friend Mike and I had formed a full band with a bass player and a drummer, with Mike dropping guitar duties and taking on lead vocals, something not many 8
th
graders had the balls to do. My playing had improved greatly, but I was still a few months from turning the corner. Nevertheless, our band played in the cafeteria on the last day of school. Primitive versions of “Runnin’ with the Devil,” “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love,” and “You Really Got Me” absolutely floored our fellow students.
I was bringing the Van Halen love to the people at the intermediate school level. By fall of 1986, we had entered high school and we were the only freshmen at all in the school talent show. My playing improved by leaps over the summer and we debated long and hard about which song we were going to play. We almost played “Best of Both Worlds” but went with “Good Enough.” It was videotaped—we were not absolutely terrible for 14-year-olds.
5. My Unabridged 1986 Texxas Jam Story
The tour continued through the summer and this author had one hell of a life experience the weekend of July 19, 1986. Me, two of my best friends, Dave and Chris, my brother Brandon, and his friend Gary all went to Dallas for the annual Texxas Jam. These festival shows at the Cotton Bowl were absolutely legendary. Van Halen had played several, including one on their first tour, and Sammy had the distinction of being the artist to play the festival the most times. The bill was Keel, BTO, Krokus, Loverboy, Dio, and Van Halen.
At 14-years-old, looking back, we were probably too young to be at a festival like that. My brother and his buddy were full-blown 17-year-olds ready to do some damage, but me, Dave, and Chris were bug-eyed at what we saw and experienced. One of the first was seeing someone take their binoculars and magically unscrew one of the eye-pieces and chug whiskey out of it. That was my official introduction to binocular flasks. We saw fistfights. We were sardined in the hallways just trying to get a Coke or get to the bathroom. I’ll never forget Gary’s yellow “banana joints”—all supposedly rolled using banana rolling papers.
But that was nothing compared the
Up
in
Smoke
-sized joint the group in front of us was passing around. Literally the diameter of a tennis ball, although no more than two inches long, that thing made its way around the entire section. One single puff and you’d hit a cherry the size of thirty joints at once, and coughing fits ensued. No offense to Krokus or Loverboy, but I was literally so high that I partially fell asleep during their sets. Eventually, of course, we all came back around to a happy summer haze by the time Dio came on and we ditched our seats and jumped down to the “floor”—the football field at the Cotton Bowl. We were only about thirty yards from the stage when Dio ended, so we figured we were in great shape for Van Halen’s set.
We weren’t. During the wait for VH to take the stage, the crowd surge was beyond what three 14-year-olds between eighth and ninth grade could handle, so we bailed back to the side sections near the stage, leaving Brandon and Gary, plenty capable of taking care of themselves. Dave, Chris, and I all ended up with great seats right at the bottom of the nearest seated section on Ed’s side of the stage. We had an incredible view when the band took the stage.
The band was honestly on fire and had the crowd of well over 70,000 in the palms of their hands. It was easy to tell that it wasn’t just an ordinary night for the band. Ten, fifteen, twenty-thousand people adoring you—that’s amazing. But tens and tens of thousands of lighters going at the same time is a whole other thing. The electricity was incredible. I was transfixed by Ed’s solo. I will never forget that he played Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” with both hands on the fret board. By the end of the show, my 14-year-old body was convinced I’d seen something that rivaled the
1984
show. But each show had such a different feel, it was apples and oranges.
6. My Unabridged Monsters of Rock Tour Story