Back during the height of the shutdown, I wrote these blog entries about my introduction to the world of Edward Van Halen amidst the backdrop of being a teenage metal guitar player growing up in Nashville, Tennessee.
It's a five-part behemoth and a few people have told me it's hard to navigate so I'm putting it all in one place.
Rest in peace my hero...we are going to miss you big time.
-Mikey
*********
Part One: 1978 B.E.
Van, Fucking, Halen.
There is so much about this band that affected me as a teenager and aspiring musician.
Edward Van Halen’s immense influence in the guitar zeitgeist is undeniable, but there was way more to it than that.
Van Halen was the soundtrack to my coming of age in the late seventies and early eighties.
They were the house band in my life as I struggled to find out who I was and what the fuck I wanted to be.
Ritchie Blackmore inspired me to learn guitar.
Van Halen inspired me to live the guitar.
They were my fucking band.
It’s easy to take Van Halen for granted today, especially if you weren’t there when they exploded on the scene in 1978.
It’s easy to criticize and minimize as everyone does with every fucking thing in the world these days and to lose sight of the fact that, for those first few years, they could do no wrong.
They fucking ruled.
I’m so grateful I was around.
******
Look, I know I was an idiot when I was a teenager, okay?
But, I know I wasn't the only one.
We did stupid shit.
That's actually in the dictionary, next to the word teenager. You know, towards the bottom, where they use the word in a sentence.
"Little Johnny is a teenager, Little Johnny does stupid shit."
Some of us were just more of an idiot than others.
It's not like I was a complete dumbass, though, I read books, and I did well in school if I wanted to. I was even beginning to develop deeper concepts of God, consciousness, the universe... and my place in it.
Even so, that shit would go out the window in a heartbeat if there was some potential fun to be had.
Having survived the idiocy of my childhood, luckily I can look back today with a tad of self-awareness and I’m grateful to be alive.
Every time I wanna get mad at a kid, or an intern, or a millennial, because of some stupid shit they are doing, I have to remember the time I blew up the engine in my killer VW camper van, my first vehicle. It had been given to me on my sixteenth birthday. It was such an awesome first vehicle. It had a fold-out sleeper in the back, a small refrigerator, a table that would pop up, I mean, what were my parents thinking giving me that thing? It was a party machine!
We did many family vacations in our cherished bus when we were kids, but we were older now.
My buddies and I nicknamed it the "Darvon," because it looked like one of our favorite pills.
I can’t believe I’m telling this, it’s embarrassing as fuck, but what the hell.
I’d been driving my van for almost a year. I was very familiar with all of its little quirks by then.
I knew the van needed oil, the light had been flashing red when I took a hard curve, that's how I checked the oil level.
It wasn't that I didn't know how to take care of the van, no... My dad taught me well.
I knew where the fucking dipstick for the oil was, I was just a dipstick, too.
I could even fix the shitty gear shift when it popped out of the thing, I was good at that kind of stuff.
But no, I had to push it.
I think part of it was the complete self-obsession I suffered from.
I did most of my stupid shit when I wanted what I wanted when I wanted it... consequences be damned.
"Little Johnny liked instant gratification."
My buddy Jeff and I were over in Donelson, because his girlfriend Tessy, had one joint, and we drove from Edge-O-Lake over to Donelson to smoke it with her. If you were broke, and it was dry, (no weed to be had,) all you did was sit around wishing you had some weed. So, even if you had to do the six or seven-mile drive in your van with a broken gas gauge, then that was what you did, by God. Risking a long walk was part of it, too, because I never knew exactly how much gas I really had.
(I don't think I ever filled that thing up in the few years I had custody of it.)
We get there and smoke the damn thing, it was the size of a toothpick, and of course, it was shit weed, so I needed a beer.
We pulled in Kwik Sak to get some gas on the way back. I had two dollars, and I got a dollar’s worth of gas.
I stuck the stick down the gas hole, so I knew we had enough gas to get back. We went in to pay.
Jeff said, "Dude, you might wanna get that oil."
I looked at a cold Bud tallboy, there were beads of condensation forming on the can as it lay in the pile of ice, and said, "Fuck that oil, I need a beer."
I whipped out my trusty fake ID, and we were on our way.
Not for long.
It was the summer between tenth and eleventh grade, I was about to turn seventeen, and I never had any money. I had quit my first real job, about a month earlier. I loaded trucks at the Genesco shoe factory, and when I showed up for my shift, shit faced, after partying with Jeff and Joey all day, the foreman pointed at this huge pile of boxes that I needed to load. I said, "Okay, lemme pee first."
I snuck out, got in the van, and went home to crash.
My last check came in the mail a week later, and it was gone the first day.
School was about to start soon, it was late August. I was not looking forward to that shit. All I wanted to do was smoke weed, and play guitar.
Weed and guitar were cool.
Jobs and school sucked.
As we rolled down McGavock Pike, the VW started to jerk, then choke, then it made a whining noise I had not heard before.
I could almost hear the poor vehicle crying, "Miiiiiiikkkkeeeeeyyy.....youuuuu duuummmmmmb fuuuuucccckkk......I'm dyyyyyyyying! I hoooooope thaaaaaat beeeeeer issss gooooood!"
In a cruel twist of fate, it died right in front of McGavock High School, my school.
We were on a downhill, so I rolled into the empty front parking lot, and we came to rest in a smoky, final, lurch.
"Mother...Fuck." I said.
Dad was gonna be so pissed.
Jeff looked at me, concerned. He'd better not say it.
"I tried to tell..."
"Dude! NO!" I said, holding my hand up, "Just... go call Randy. He will come."
Jeff looked over at the East office area of the school.
"You think anybody is in there?" He asked.
"Yes," I said, tersely, "There's always someone in there."
I knew, I'd been to summer school the year before. Jeff went to call. I needed a minute to process this heinous turn of events, and try to come up with a good lie.
Randy True would come and rescue us in his green Ford Torino.
Randy was like our "Wooderson," the character Matthew McConaughey played in the movie, Dazed and Confused. He was the older dude who just couldn’t let go of his teens. He bought us beer, scored us weed, drove us around... we loved him. He was good people. He was an idiot, like us, just older.
I turned the radio on in the van, and waited, at least it was still working. I rarely listened to the radio anymore, so I had missed Van Halen's first single, You Really Got Me.
That's too bad, because the first time I heard Van Halen, It was Runnin' With The Devil on that shitty car radio on the bus. "That was Runnin' With The Devil, by Vaaaannn Halen," the DJ announced in his dumb DJ voice.
The solos in Devil are cool, in the context of the rest of the first album, but the magic of Edward Van Halen is not on display there. The solos are very sparse, almost like another chorus in the song. They didn't grab me during that first listen, like Highway Star, or Lazy.
I was like, whatever.
I thought, "Van Halen? What kind of name is that?"
******
Eleventh grade was weird, man.
Luckily, I had not totally fried the engine on the Darvon. Yes, dad was pissed, but being a guy who was the father of three boys by the time he was twenty-four, he took it fairly well. He was used to the stupid shit by then. Plus, he had other problems. He and mom were on the verge of splitting up.
I had to get another job to pay for the repairs, which was part of the deal for me to keep the van.
This job was pretty cool. I went to work for my neighbor, Bobby, at his print shop, Papermill Press, in downtown Nashville.
Bobby hired me as a bindery person, which was basically taking the printed stuff, and doing whatever needed to be done after, folding, cutting, making pads, collating, and cleaning up after the press guys.
My favorite thing about working there?
At five o'clock we would lock the doors, and everybody would meet back in Bobby's office where we would smoke down! He always had the good shit, too!
I loved him. He was a cool ex-biker, he was at Woodstock in 1969. He had great stories and wisdom.
He taught me a lot of things, one being the printing trade, which I would fall back on for many years when guitar wasn’t paying the bills.
I was still in school, so I worked it out with my guidance counselor to do half days, and leave to go to work after my first three classes. I could do my last two years of high school like that and still graduate with my class.
I had to wear a uniform for the job, which was fine with me because they did the laundry. I would just wear my green army jacket around school anyway, so nobody really knew.
Even though I was over the whole "school work" part of school, McGavock was still cool because it was very loose. I was able to bullshit most of the teachers and pass classes with the minimum of effort.
It was 1978, shit was way different then.
We had a smoking porch!
In between classes, everybody would flock out there and fire up. There was always a teacher that was assigned to keep an eye on things, but when you had a couple of hundred kids crammed into a hundred-foot covered porch area, there were plenty of ways to discreetly take care of biz. Many joints were bought, sold, and traded, there.
I took guitar class from Mr. Crowder, and I always had my Gibson J45 with me, as I walked the halls of McGavock High. Having guitar class was the perfect excuse to carry my guitar everywhere I went. It was a great way to hide a stash, as well as keep up the newly developing chops.
Ironically, I barely passed guitar class. I would never do my assignments, and I always had a group of dudes in the back of the class, showing them the latest cool Metal licks I had learned.
It would piss Mr. Crowder off to no end!
“Simmons,” he would say, in front of the whole class, “The rock stuff is fine, but you need the fundamentals! Do the damn assignments, Simmons! Don’t think I’m gonna pass you, just because you can play Deep Purple, Simmons.” But, he did pass me, barely.
There were many times I was supposed to be in various classes, but I would blow them off, and stay out in my van in the West parking lot, practicing on the J45. Or, I would find an abandoned corner in the library and show friends Rush songs or Ritchie Blackmore licks.
I had a great, cream-colored Fender USA Strat by then, (just like Ritchie,) and a Fender Super Six Reverb with the pull out knob for extra gain. I fucking loved my electric rig, but truth be told, the J45 was my pride and joy.
You wouldn’t know it by the way I banged it around, I had no case for it. I had no idea how much it was worth, either.
That was a magic guitar. It was given to me by Tom T Hall's brother, Hillman.
(There is a story about that too, of course.)
It was beat to shit, had been through a fire, and repainted. It rode shotgun in whatever situation I was in, gaining scratches, nicks, and gouges along the way. It was my best friend. I wrote most of my songs on that thing and then transposed them to electric, later.
I was starting to feel pretty damn good about my guitar playing. After being in the band with Robbie, Joey, and Jeff, and being mainly a rhythm player, my lead playing was coming along nicely with the stuff Robbie showed me, and the stuff I figured out that summer studying Blackmore's live solo in Child In Time, from Made In Japan.
Looking back, it's hard to believe that I had not been exposed to the Van Halen record by that fall. Again, it was a different time, and I did not listen to the radio, there was no internet or Facebook, and I had only been to two real concerts at Municipal Auditorium.
Plus, we were in Nashville.
Van Halen had already been to Nashville once, opening for Journey at the War Memorial Auditorium. I had no clue, I was still a kid, and as much as I wanted to be cool, I was not in the loop yet when it came to the latest killer bands. We were always a year behind around here.
I may have seen a blurb about them here or there in Circus, or Hit Parader, but I remembered Runnin' With The Devil and thought they were just, meh. I didn't even read the articles.
I was a full-blown Ronnie James Dio disciple too, at that time, and the only thing I had heard from David Lee Roth left me uninterested.
My mind was made up about Van Halen. It was gonna be a no for me, dawg.
I didn't know.
I was in my own little world of guitar, and I had no idea how much that world was about to change, on a fateful night, in November 1978.
Bobby, my boss, actually gave me the ticket to the Black Sabbath concert, the day of the show. Something had come up, and he couldn't go. I think it said, "With Van Halen" on the ticket, but I didn't give that a second thought.
I thought, "Sabbath, cool." My friend Drew had turned me onto Sabbath a couple of years back. I really loved the Masters Of Reality record. I thought Sweet Leaf and Children of The Grave, kicked ass. Drew loaned me the record, and never got it back. I listened to it regularly.
My shift went until 7 pm, but Bobby said I could leave a little early as long as I had my shit done, and get down to catch Van Halen, the opening act.
"They are fockin killer!" He said, in his Jersey accent.
Even he knew!
I thought, "Ahh, what does he know, he's like, forty years old."
I left Papermill Press on Capitol Boulevard, next to the Hyatt Regency Hotel, on foot. I was in my uniform, had my work hat on, and the army jacket pulled up against the cold, damp, November night.
It was just a few blocks from there, to the Municipal. I fired up a roach Bobby left for me, and headed to the show by myself, with no clue what was about to happen.
*********
Part Two: How Did He Do That?!
I had no problem going to the show alone. I loved walking through downtown Nashville by myself, I had been doing it ever since I started skipping school in ninth grade.
I attended Cameron middle school for my ninth grade year. It was super weird because I was bussed there with ninth graders from many other districts, it had to do with the desegregation movement at the time. It was just one grade, ninth grade, so all of my ninth-grade friends from Edge-O-Lake were there, but there were kids from all over the Nashville area. The place was at maximum capacity, and I pretty much hated it there. It was an old, dilapidated building from the early 1920s that was re-purposed when it needed to be refurbished.
Cameron was located very close to downtown Nashville, so I figured out how to sneak away as soon as I got off the bus in the morning and take the half-mile walk into the nearby metropolis. It was so cool! I was able to blend into the background and explore all the little nooks and crannies of the area downtown. You probably wouldn't wanna do that these days.
By the time I started working at Papermill Press, I knew downtown Nashville like the back of my hand. I was in my element.
As I walked through the streets on the way to the concert, headlights, and storefront lamps reflected in the puddles and wet pavement. I smoked the roach down until it burned my fingers, and I tossed it in a pothole.
I liked walking through Printers Alley, the legendary club lined alley that housed the Bourbon Street Blues and Boogie Bar. (There were strip clubs there too.) I cut through there on my way to Municipal Auditorium. I loved to stop there whenever I walked past, and listen to the blues guitar blasting out of the front door from the stage. There was always some unsavory character barking invitations to come on in there. I never tried, being underage, but they probably would have let me slide. I loved blues guitar, it always felt comfortable to me, like an old pair of jeans.
Ritchie Blackmore had a lot of blues in his playing, but he also had a lot of speed and minor scale shit that I loved, so it was the best of both worlds.
I had never heard anybody who played with the kind of fire and attitude that Ritchie had. I aspired to be able to play with that kind of confidence and precision.
I had never seen anyone I liked better.
Plus, he was a rockstar. He wore black clothes, white boots, did outrageous stage antics, and had Marshall stacks. Ritchie was the baddest.
He was my hero.
After studying his playing, I thought I understood the electric guitar.
The scene in front of Municipal was exciting. All of my people were filing in to see the rock show.
By "my people," I mean the long-haired, pot-smoking, beer-drinking, Metal loving people. I may have looked nerdy in my uniform and hat, but I was right there with them.
This was only the fifth concert I had ever attended. I saw KISS in '76, The Eagles in '76, ELP in '77, and Rainbow open for REO in '77. I was with Paulie at KISS, Dad for ELP, Eagles, and Rainbow, but this time it was just me.
I was stoked about it. In retrospect, I see it as divine intervention because when you go to a concert with someone, especially your younger brother or your dad, there is no way to focus on the business at hand, one hundred percent.
That business is, being in conscience contact with every second of badassery going down on that stage. I loved the concerts so much! It was the absolute best thing there was for me.
I couldn't wait to see Sabbath.
I knew there was no way they would be better than Rainbow, but I was sure it would still be cool.
I went through the turnstile, got the old pot pat-down, and sped walked into the floor area to get as close to the front as I could. I was able to get kind of close for Rainbow, like, right next to the mixing console, but now that I was alone, I was going to go for the rail if possible.
There was already a substantial crowd on the rail, right upfront, but I was able to get within fifteen or twenty yards from the stage, so I was happy with that.
The first thing that struck me was the guitar amps on stage left for the opening band. It wasn't the wall of Marshalls that you were used to seeing, it was a row of 4x12 cabs that had no logos and no black Tolex, they were just plain wood. They were beaten up looking, with torn grill cloth and everything, but they actually looked fucking cool. Next to those was a huge black bomb, with some kind of electronics in it. That was fucking cool, too.
People were still streaming in, but I was thinking, "This is great, I'll just hold my position here, and I'll be golden for an excellent view of Sabbath. Nobody will crowd me during Van Halen; they are just the opening band. I'll probably even be able to go take a piss and come back right here."
I'm glad I didn't have to pee.
Right then, the lights go down. No matter who is about to play, this is one of my favorite times at a rock-show. There is always excitement and anticipation in the air.
I see movement in the shadows on stage and hear some "kunks" and other noises...then...BAAAMMMMP!
One quick test chord from Eddie... It about blew my head off, it was so loud. I was directly in the line of fire from the row of beat-up 4x12 cabinets.
"Whoa," I whispered to myself.
A dude began an introduction, "Blah blah blobbity blah blahhhh...VANNNN HAAALLLLEEENNN!"
The band immediately tore into On Fire, the opening number, as the stage lights and spotlights illuminated the stage.
Goddamn.
The sound of the fucking guitar...what was that? I had never heard tone like this. The super loud, creamy goodness of the guitar player's rig permeated the auditorium with those simple opening chords, then...
The harmonic pings he does to set up the verse leaves me going, "Wait a minute, what was that? Holy fuck!"
This reaction was repeated over and over for the next hour.
I felt a smile form on my face.
As they kicked into the verse, David Lee Roth starts singing, moving, screaming, and bouncing around like he's a rodeo cowboy with long blond hair. I immediately liked him. Dude was in charge!
The whole stage came alive; literally, it became a living, breathing entity.
As fun as Dave was to watch, I couldn't take my eyes or ears off Edward Van Halen. Just banging through the verses of On Fire, he was playing this super-tight rhythm pattern while taking his hand off the fretboard super fast and wiping the E string up and down in perfect time with the groove atop the fretboard. I had never seen anything like that before. Ritchie did some pick slides, but this cool WHIIIIIP, WHUUUUUP, type sound he was making between chords was crazy!
"Who the fuck is this guy?" I thought.
I focused in on this dude, something was definitely going on here.
He had his black and white Strat, with the black tape applied in a cool racing style motif, but different. There was a chain guitar strap with a locking clip into an eye screw on the strat. He was wearing a striped rocker shirt and bell-bottoms, with cool shoes, like dancing shoes or something. He had the hair that would spawn a generation of hair farmers, myself included, and a smile that exuded pure joy while he was mowing us down with his insane guitar pyrotechnics.
I took all of this in as the first two verses of the song went down, and I remember thinking, he looked so natural up there. His body moved in a way that flowed with the music, the very definition of Metal.
It was clear that the band was kick-ass, bass, drums, vocals, all hitting the mark entirely, but the spark at the center of this band was Edward.
I didn't even know his name at that moment.
When the solo for On Fire went down, I did that double-take, again.
Holy shit!
He did this incredible muted stream of licks that kept ascending up the neck, building the anticipation, then the band stops on a dime, and he does the tag to the solo perfectly.
Then he does that wicked intro harmonic break setting up the last verse.
"What the fuck!" I yelled, and this guy next to me goes, "Yeah!"
How did he do that? What did he do?
He had the whammy bar going too, just teasing us with it so far.
By the time On Fire came to an end, they had the crowd.
I let out my best, "Hell, fucking yeah!" and I meant it.
They tore right into Feel Your Love Tonight. I locked in on Eddie again. He was all over the stage, hamming it up, playing the hell out of his guitar, making it look so easy. The sound guy was killer, it just sounded better and better as they went along.
It dawned on me that although he was playing a Strat, his sound was full and thick, not the kind of piercing tone that a Stratocaster can have. I had struggled with that with my Strat.
That's when I noticed the humbucker in the bridge position on his black and white strat.
This motherfucker! Another thing I'd never seen before. It made total sense.
No wonder his Strat was so beefy... but there was still something else going on with his sound that defied logic, what was it?
BAM! Another stellar solo rips by, leaving me baffled and amazed.
He ended that solo with a pick slide, but not just any pick slide, this was the best goddamn pick slide you ever heard, better than Tom Sholz, even better than Ritchie!
(I've tried to duplicate the EVH pick slide for forty years, and I still can't do it like him.)
I'm like, "Man, he's giving it all away early."
Little did I know.
I stood there in wide-eyed amazement, thinking, "I'm going to get this record tomorrow!"
I was already sold on Ed.
I was an instant fan, and I hadn't seen anything yet.
We were just two songs in, on a set that was going to go way longer than anybody expected, even Van Halen.
I wasn't even thinking about Sabbath anymore.
*********
Part Three: Sorry Ritchie
I stood in the crowd, transfixed, adrenaline pumping, with an overwhelming desire to be closer. It was like a force was pulling me towards the stage.
I moved in closer, within two or three rows from the rail, pushing my way in, using my elbows to gain a foothold in front of this goddamn unreal guitar player.
I could not tell what his amp was; it was hard to get a look at that side of the stage, the sound system blocked it. The monitors blocked his pedalboard, so I couldn't tell how he was getting that badass whooshing sound, either. The same thing for the bomb, there was no way to understand what the fuck was in there.
This shit was mysterious! How was he getting this unbelievable sound?
Runnin' With The Devil made sense to me now. I found myself grooving with the beat, throwing my fists up and down, in time with the bass. I was entirely under the influence of Van Halen now, just like the rest of the crowd. The place was going wild! I had never felt this kind of energy at a show before. The girls were screaming for Dave, and the dudes were riveted by Eddie. Michael and Alex were doing their job as the unsung heroes of the band, laying down a rock-solid foundation, so Dave and Eddie had the freedom to do their thing.
In the deafening roar of the crowd after Devil, a sound began emanating from the guitar that put jaws on the floor again, the intro to Atomic Punk. I watched with wonder as Edward stood in the spotlight and moved his hand quickly over the pickup of the Strat; He seemed to be using his palm, rubbing his strings. Combined with the power of his amps and whatever effects he was using, it was like a space-age jet plane was about to take off.
Whaasshhaaa Whaacckah Whaasshhaaa Whaacckah Whaasshhaaa Whaacckah!
Then, they kicked into the groove of the song, and we were on a high-speed journey down the kick-ass highway.
I had never heard anything so fucking good. I stopped trying to figure out what was going on and surrendered to the moment.
Another blistering solo shattered my sense of reality and the esteem in which I held my other guitar heroes.
This was driven home even harder when I'm The One unfolded before me, in all of its live glory. It was an uptempo boogie-woogie number that brought new meaning to the term boogie.
The solos in I'm The One drove the nail in the coffins of all my previous guitar gods, one smoking note at a time. This song was the first time I noticed him do the two-handed tapping on the neck, but we didn't know it was two-handed tapping, at that moment, it was just...Fokkinnn Jammmmin'!
So much killer guitar shit was going down; there was no way to keep up with it.
Then they stopped in the middle and did the "Bop bada, shooby doo wah!" part in perfect vocal harmony... what planet were these dudes from?
Eddie broke his bar off at the end of the song, showed it to Dave, they started laughing, then Ed threw it into the crowd. They were having so much fun, it was infectious.
Subconsciously I knew the show must be coming to a close soon. I did not want it to, I could care less about Sabbath now, I would have watched Van Halen all night.
I took a breath, I had been cheering and screaming along with everyone, surely we'd seen it all, what else could they possibly do?
This next bit is burned in my memory like few things I have ever experienced. As many of my guitar nerd and musician friends know, there are times your life is changed in a heartbeat by a musician, making music in the moment.
Recordings are great, but nothing compares to the communal vibe of being connected in the moment at a live show, nothing.
The stage goes dark, and then David Lee Roth shouts, "Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, EDWARD VAN HALEN!"
They hit the lights, and Edward joins the drummer in a pounding introduction to the guitar solo, Eruption.
I stood, astounded, mouth open, holding my breath, as the most incredible piece of electric guitar wizardry I had ever seen and heard unfolded before me.
It started off with power chords, and then he flies into a barrage of rapid-fire double picking, muted legato runs, and whammy bar flailing. All this while running back and forth from his amps to the front of the stage, body writhing as beautiful noise filled the auditorium. The sound dude had to know history was being made...it was loud and proud.
After a minute of whammy bar armageddon with feedback, crazy siren sounds, and the sound of atom bombs destroying a city, the fastest double picking thing I ever heard goes flying past. I watched his wrist moving, defying the laws of nature, then the band comes in, "BOMMM BAMMM BAAHHHMMMM...."
If the first half of Eruption wasn't enough, here came the knife, dealing the fatal blow.
The stage lights go black, a lone spotlight burns on Edward as he plays the last set up part, and then goes into the finger-tapping fugue, which is the climax of the solo.
There was no way this was a guitar!
But there it was, right in front of my eyes, going down in real-time.
Just like the calendar was split at B.C., the time before Christ, there was a new split in my calendar; B.E., Before Eruption.
(Now don't be getting your panties in a wad thinking I'm comparing EVH to Jesus, you know what the hell I'm talking about here, don't be dumb.)
The spirit of Mozart reverberated amidst Municipal Auditorium through a Marshall amp, and a hot-rodded Stratocaster. For a brief moment, there was not one noise other than Eddie's guitar as we all stood and gazed in wonder, spellbound.
I mouthed, "Wowwww..."
I probably looked like a caveman the first time he saw fire.
He finished the tapping part, did an ungodly dive bar drop, and then ran to the bomb and turned some knobs, which brought a fleet of aural flying saucers in for a landing.
I let out a stream of expletives that would make most of the shit I've already subjected you to in these pages, seem tame. (I'll give you a break.)
Everybody was freaking the fuck out.
I believe I literally went into a kind of shock. Laugh all you want, but you have to realize here, nobody had ever seen or heard anything like this before.
Edward (I knew his name now) laid his Strat against the speakers and let it howl while his tech brought out the "Shark" guitar, and they kicked into You Really Got Me at maximum power. We were putty in their hands now, ready to follow Van Halen off the edge of a cliff if that's where they wanted to go.
"I went to the edge, I stood and looked down..."
Van Halen played a lot longer than they were supposed to that night. Unbeknownst to them, Ozzy Osbourne had never made it to the gig.
Every time I would get bummed, thinking it was about to be over, they would convene over at stage left, talking to someone, and then come out and do another one.
I know they played everything from the first album, and they also played DOA, and I think Somebody Get Me A Doctor, but I'm not absolutely sure.
I know we brought them back for a few encores too.
When they finally did play their last song, and the final notes echoed in my brain as the house lights came up, I felt like I did when I was twelve years old and a tornado had ripped through our neighborhood, leaving us all bewildered as we stepped outside to check on our friends.
Stunned is the proper description, stunned and dazed, but euphoric.
After milling about a while, and exchanging lively recounts with a few dudes, I walked back toward the exit of the floor area to see if I could find a place to sit, and re-group.
I needed to process this shit. I also wanted to remember everything I picked up on watching Edward, so I could go home and try some of it. I was seriously contemplating doing that very thing when some poor bastard came out and said that Sabbath was not going to play.
He was immediately showered with cups, popcorn bags, and other various trash as the crowd that Van Halen had worked up into a frenzy, now had nowhere to focus their energy, except on that poor guy.
He ran for his life off the stage.
I turned and walked away, I really didn't give a shit.
If I was Ozzy, I would hate to follow that juggernaut night after night, too.
As I exited the Municipal, guys were yelling and screaming, knocking over trash cans, beating on windows, it was full-on pandemonium. I was maybe about a half-block up 5th avenue when I heard one of the large glass windows of the auditorium crash down. Who knows what they did to it, goddamn.
All I wanted to do was get home and play my guitar.
I was fucking inspired!
I'm sure Edward Van Halen put the fear of God in many a good guitar player the first time they saw him, but not me.
I knew I was never going to be able to play at that level, but I was going to try, dammit.
I was too green to be discouraged.
I walked back towards Papermill Press, mind racing.
I needed that Van Halen album, like, now.
My Strat did not have a whammy bar, I needed one.
I also needed to figure out how to get my amp to sound like that. (Sounds easy, but this was the beginning of a chase for guitar tone that would last for years.)
"Maybe I could get Fish to paint my guitar with a spider web!" I thought.
I walked on, replaying the event in my mind.
What did I just witness?
Just like that, I had a new guitar hero.
Sorry, Ritchie.
It was cold, I pulled my jacket tight and lit a cigarette.
I walked on as the yells of pissed-off rednecks deprived of their rock show echoed through the streets. They obviously didn't see the same show I just saw, or if they did, they were not guitar players.
*********
Part Four: Metal Perfected
I listened to Van Halen 1 on the way to work this morning. I was feeling it after writing about the first time I saw Edward in 1978. If you can't tell, I get immersed in it, I know it's over the top, but I don't care, it's fun, and it brings back those memories so vividly when I get in the zone writing about it.
Even after all these years, I never get tired of that record.
It's one of those rare albums that I can listen to from top to bottom without skipping a song.
I have my favorite songs, but the whole record is killer.
Many guitar players laid the groundwork for Metal guitar, from the old blues guys to Clapton, Beck, Hendrix, Page, Blackmore, and Iommi. There were others too, but those are the main guys.
It's good to know your electric guitar history, I even teach a class on it, but we are talking specifically about Metal guitar here, in case you are just tuning in.
Maybe I'll make a PowerPoint out of this. (Can you say "fuck" on a PowerPoint?)
Metal is guitars. Just like there is no light without stars, there is no Metal without guitars.
Those other dudes helped create the Metal guitar sound, but Edward Van Halen perfected it.
Many guys like me wanted to cop that Eddie vibe; it spawned a whole new generation of guitars and amplifiers.
There's never been anything else like it. He started an absolute craze.
His shit was so dialed in, it was uncanny. Even if you grabbed the latest Kramer or Charvel guitar and Marshall amp, it was still hard to get that sound.
It's easier to cop that sound these days, but back then, it was a profound mystery. Information was scarce, and Ed's first few interviews in guitar magazines didn't help. There was talk about a variac and tubes melting; there was a "don't try this at home" disclaimer in the Guitar World article; Also, ninety percent of it was in his hands, so it was a challenge.
It was a treasure hunt that many a young guitar slinger embarked on, though, because the bar had been raised, and we didn't wanna be left behind.
******
I went to Port-O-Call the next day to buy the album after work.
I was beginning to think that the concert must have been a dream or something; this shit couldn't be real. I needed proof.
I flailed through the V's in the album bin, then asked the guy...
They didn't fucking have it. Sold out.
FUCK!
I went to Zayre and a couple of other places that sold records back then...nothing.
I remember calling around or asking people between classes if anybody had the record yet.
Nada.
Finally, a few days later, my boy Joey came through. He found out that our friend Kelvin had a copy, and we could go over to his house after school to smoke down and listen. Kelvin's mom was out of town...perfect.
I called Bobby, my boss, and told him we had a test at school or some bullshit so that I could skip work, then Joey, Kelvin, and I hopped in the Darvon after third period and headed to jam.
I don't know if it was the weed back then, or if my tolerance was just low, but when I first started getting high, the buzz was so goddamn good, it made listening to music a spiritual experience.
We had just finished a fat joint, and all found a comfortable place to sit and listen.
Kelvin said, "Get ready, boys, it's a rollercoaster!"
He dropped the needle on Van Halen 1.
The concert was not a dream; the fucking album sounded exactly like Van Halen did live. All three of us were so into it! I watched Joey, who is a drummer, kicked back in a recliner playing air guitar for the next forty minutes.
Kelvin kept yelling, "Here it comes!" before one of Eddie's badass solos. He would jump up and move around, making his best Dave impression.
Joey kept saying, "Gyaaad Damn!" over and over.
I just sat back and let it flow over me, savoring every note, every lick, every power chord.
It was even better than I remembered from the show.
Eddie's guitar sounded so fucking killer, so full and rich, with this nice curve to it, I had never heard an electric guitar sound so good.
His leads flowed out of the speakers and sparked your senses. It was not only technical and intricate but full of fire and emotion too. Both hands were working together as one musical dynamo. His right-hand palm muting was sublime.
The finger tapping shit was ridiculous!
Every song was a winner.
I didn't know anything about record production then, but I could tell that this album had the same kind of feel as my favorite records, which were all live records.
The shit jumped off the vinyl.
Kelvin passed me the album cover, holy fucking shit it was awesome.
That album cover had the same effect on me that KISS Alive! did a few years earlier, but I wasn't a kid anymore. The KISS cover seemed like a comic book now, but this shit wasn't kid's stuff.
So it seemed that Edward and Alex were brothers...that was cool...my brother was a drummer too.
Fucking Kelvin wouldn't let me borrow the album, but I couldn't blame him.
I finally got my copy of the record, and I proceeded to wear it out.
I remember my dad coming in one day while Eruption was playing loud as hell, on our killer new stereo in the den; he said, "That sounds like ELP, who is that keyboard player?"
I said, "Dad, that's Eddie Van Halen, that's a guitar."
"Bullshit," he snorted, "That's not a guitar, that's a synthesizer."
"No, Dad, I saw him do it live! He's playing all of that on a guitar." I replied.
He made me play it again.
"No way," he said matter of factly, "It's a synthesizer, they probably had one hidden or something. It's some kind of gimmick."
I just shook my head and smiled. I understood why he thought that and it was kind of cool that my dude was so fucking killer, everybody thought it was a magic trick, dad wasn't the only one. Too bad, there was no YouTube so I could whip out my phone and prove it.
Van Halen became a worldwide phenomenon...they exploded!
In a time when Punk and Disco were ruling the airwaves, the boys from Pasadena arrived to hand them their asses.
I had been playing for about two years then, and I was getting better at playing lead, but my main strength was still my rhythm playing. I was fortunate to start early playing with outstanding drummers, my best friend Joey, and my brother Paulie. That was the best thing that could have ever happened to my playing. It gave me a strong foundation in time and feeling the groove. Granted, I always wanted to push that groove and be on top of it, but that's just what us skinny ass guitar players like to do.
As amazing as Eddie Van Halen's lead playing was, the motherfucker was a rhythm guitar playing fiend! His shit was so well put together and tight. I locked onto those grooves right away and started to figure out songs off the first album.
Ain't Talking 'Bout Love, and Runnin' with the Devil were not super hard to get down. I was also able to cop the rhythm groove on Feel Your Love Tonight after hours of picking up the needle and going back and forth.
I didn't attempt much more than that at the time, my favorite songs like I'm The One and Atomic Punk seemed too daunting a task, plus I had way more fun listening to them than trying to figure them out.
I did pick up on finger tapping, though, after watching Eddie play Eruption, I was able to cop a crude version of the fugue part, then I took that and ran with it, making up my own tapping patterns.
I got pretty good at it.
I practiced all the time.
I had my Apogee bong now, was working, and keeping a stock of weed.
I would do bong hits, and practice my ass off with my little cassette recorder, recording myself, and playing over the playback.
I would take my new skills and show them off at school in the hallways between classes on the J45. I put electric guitar strings on it so I could play leads easier.
I was still an insecure kid, but the guitar began building my self-esteem. Girls started to notice me more...that shit was awesome.
I took advantage of it.
******
1979/1980 was my senior year of high school.
I only had two classes and then would go to work.
Whenever I wasn't working, I was jamming with Joey and my new guitar buddy, Rick.
Rick was so fucking talented. He had an uncle, Phil, who was a professional guitarist and a sweet guy; we would sit in a circle in Phil's apartment and jam on electrics for hours.
I learned a lot about feel from playing with those guys.
My playing had come a long way in a short time thanks to Edward and then jamming with Rick and Phil. My practice regime didn't hurt either, if anyone needed to find me; all they had to do was knock on my bedroom door.
Before I talk about the next phase of Van Halen, let me give you a little picture of what else was going on in the Simmons house at that time.
I'll preface this next little bit by saying, Van Halen, and Edward in particular, are always top of the list, A#1, from here until the end of time, just to be precise.
(You should know this about me.)
In addition to the Halen, here's the shit that was keeping my parents up at night:
First off, there is Rush, our favorite Canadians. They will get their chapter here at some point, goddamn...it will be a long one too.
Ever since I heard 2112, I was sold on those guys.
I learned more about chords and song structure from Alex Lifeson than anyone. Also, his solo in LaVilla Strangiato was another major template for my playing.
Fucking Neil and Geddy...are you kidding me? They were the baddest.
There was Pat Travers Go For What You Know live with Pat Thrall on the second guitar, and Tommy Aldridge on drums...sheeeeeit! Puttin' it Straight and Heat in the Street were in regular rotation too.
UFO Strangers in the Night live, one of the best live albums ever recorded. Michael Shenker was on fire on that record.
Gamma, with Ronnie Montrose, was another band in heavy rotation. I loved the whammy bar shit that Ronnie did on the Gamma record with the sharks swimming through the grass.
Scorpions Tokyo Tapes with Uli John Roth on his Strat, holy fuck! This is, by far, my favorite Scorpions era.
I have to give it up for Lynyrd Skynyrd One More From The Road as well. Allen Collins holds a special place in my heart. Steve Gaines and Gary Rossington too! Those dudes were a guitar army. I loved Ronnie Van Zant probably more than the guitars; the plane crash crushed me. (I could even argue that Skynyrd was Metal, but lets table that for now.)
Of course, my beloved Ritchie with the Purple and Rainbow records rounded out the guitar palette.
This was the stuff that was filling my head and my heart in the late 70s, forming my little guitar brian. I'm so grateful I was coming of age in a time of such killer music, maybe everybody thinks that about the music they grow up with, but this was fertile soil for a young guitar wannabe.
Randy Rhoads had not hit the scene yet, and Yngwie Malmsteen was still in Sweden working on his chops. Judas Priest's Unleashed in the East had only just been released in late 1979, so its badassery had not entered my world yet either.
I had a steady stream of killer Metal guitar teachers here at my fingertips; I was soaking it all in and applying what I was learning to my riffs and grooves. I was never great at copying a player note for note, but I was taking what I could grasp and applying it to my little songs.
Van Halen 2 was another kick-ass slice of vinyl. It was a great balance of cool amped-up covers, radio-friendly songs, and killer metallic rockers like Light Up The Sky, Somebody Get Me A Doctor, Outta Love, and DOA. There was also the fantastic Spanish Fly, which was like Eruption, except the bastard played it on a nylon-stringed acoustic guitar.
I got to work.
Figuring out Somebody Get Me ADoctor was a triumph. That is such a fun riff to play. When you play that rhythm part right, you feel like Chuck Norris on the guitar. Suddenly your posture is straighter, your chest sticks out, and you feel like a man. The lead is a bitch, so I just cheesed it, it was going to take me a while to get that shit.
We never had a bass player back then, so it was hard to flesh out songs like a real band, but we did the best we could with guitar and drums.
I was super bummed that Van Halen didn't come to Nashville on their first headlining tour for Van Halen 2. In those days, concerts were the only way you could see your favorite bands unless you were lucky enough for them to appear on the rare television show like In Concert or Midnight Special.
That hunger to see our heroes set the stage for the best concert I've ever seen in my life, rivaled only by what I witnessed on that sweet November night.
Don't believe me? Just wait.
1979 gave way to 1980. The 80s were the golden age of Metal, my friends, the greatest era in the history of man.
In March of 1980, Van Halen released Women and Children First.
That album and tour was the kick-off for the decade of Metal, and they were coming to Nashville that summer...
Shit was about to get real.
*********
Part Five: 1980 Invasion
The first song I heard from Women and Children First was And The Cradle Will Rock. I was working the packing table at Papermill Press, wrapping 500 sheet packs of Kobe Steak restaurant menus, when it came on 103 WKDF radio, our local F.M. rock station.
I stopped in mid-wrap and listened to it all the way through. I even shouted at Ricky to turn his press off for a minute so I could hear the solo better.
My boys were back! The D.J. informed us that the new album would be released next week, that he had listened to his advance copy all the way through, and it was another winner from the V.H. camp.
Hell yeah.
By the spring of 1980, I needed something good. I was experiencing my first real heartbreak from a breakup and was just beginning to feel normal again, or as normal as a seventeen-year-old can feel. It didn't help that Rick, one of my best friends and guitar buds, got with my girl afterward, or should I say, she got with him.
Goddamn, that was a brutal time. I let myself fall for the girl big time, told her I loved her and all that shit, and then she dumped me because I lied and told her I got tickets for Journey, and they sold out before I could buy them. As stupid as all of that sounds, it fucked me up, man. That was the first time I ever felt that kind of emotional pain; I can look back on it now and see how I started building a wall around my feelings then. I was never going to let myself fall for someone again, not like that.
I threw myself into my guitar like never before.
It was that classic tale of taking emotional pain and channeling it into your music. I won't say I became bitter, but I can look back and see where that whole situation gave me an edge that I didn't have before. I applied that to my playing as well. It was around this time, too, that I began developing more speed and aggression in my playing.
Nobody was gonna fuck with me, goddamnit.
If you ever wanna be worth a shit on guitar, you've gotta have that heart broken real good at least once.
Women and Children First was right on time, in more ways than one.
In addition to the excellent radio staples, Cradle and Take Your Whisky Home, there was the outright wicked gnarliness of Tora Tora / Loss of Control and maybe my number one Van Halen song of all time: Romeo Delight.
Dude, Romeo has everything!
Uptempo, opening song vibe, a very unique and badass verse part with stops and volume swells, then a crushing chorus groove with the best lyrics a man could sing...
"Baby pleeeeese! I can't take it, anymooooore!"
You know I was feeling that shit.
Then comes the solo. Pure Edward off the cuff with the lick from hell that nobody but he can play. I've seen many attempts over the years by well-intentioned guitar players, and they're all epic fails, myself included.
Then there is one of the best breakdowns in Metal, "Feel my heartbeat, feel my heartbeat...." followed by the chorus out and a classic Van Halen ending.
The first time I heard it, I probably played it over and over five or six times.
I immediately took up the task of learning Romeo Delight.
It immediately took up the task of kicking my ass.
I would come back to it time and again over the years and got to where I could do a pretty good shitty cover of it, like everyone else.
I began playing in a legit band that spring with a local guy named Billy Shipp. Billy was a dude around our neighborhood that had a reputation for being a rocker. He was a few years older than me and had a full band, a rare commodity in our area. He wrote his own songs too, another rarity.
He had a big afro like Lindsay Buckingham. He sang kind of like Lindsay too.
There was a chick singer named Janet, Grant the bass player, Mick the B3/keyboard player, and Don, the drummer.
I think their average age was twenty-five.
Don would donate blood for weed money; he was hardcore as fuck.
I saw them at a few parties around the area the previous summer. One great party was at a place called Cooks Cove on Percy Preist Lake; there was an outdoor stage built in a natural amphitheater-like hillside, like a mini redneck Woodstock. Beer and weed were present in abundance, and, amazingly, the cops never showed up. They played a good cross-section of covers, (heavy on the Skynyrd) and a few of Billy's original songs. It was a great gig.
Billy was the only guitar player, and he didn't play much lead. The keyboard dude did most of the soloing. They were in dire need of a lead guitar player. He heard about me from my friend Doug, and they asked me over to a rehearsal at their band house one Saturday afternoon.
We smoked a ton of weed, and then I plugged my Stratocaster into my new Roland Space Echo, then my Fender Super Six Reverb amp. I had been working on a riff where I played in time with the delay on the Space Echo. The rhythmic pattern made me sound way more impressive than I was, and everyone started freaking out. I got the gig on that thing alone before they ever heard me play one note of lead guitar. After I pulled out my best Ritchie Blackmore pull-offs, and then my Van Halen finger tap shit, they were about to throw a parade for my ass.
They had this hanger-on/roadie dude, Brad, that was like a redneck Chuck Norris. He was one of those dudes you knew not to fuck with, kind of like Bubba. He actually picked my skinny ass up and bear-hugged me!
Billy yelled, "Watch his hands, Brad! Goddamn!"
I showed them the song I had to go with the echo thing, a song called Your Life, which actually stayed with me into the Simmonz days. It was one of the first good songs I ever wrote. It was Metal, they weren't, but now they were going to be, just a little.
Any band I've ever been in, even if we are playing country, is at least a little bit Metal. You get what you pay for.
The fee back then? Beer and weed...and maybe some speed.
I was in the Billy Shipp Band most of 1980. Our most memorable gig was at the Tennessee Women's Prison. I don't know-how in the hell we got that gig, but I was told later that it was the last music show they ever had there. Brad ended up making it with two or three of the inmates backstage, and of course, we brought weed into the facility, although they never could pin it on us.
I fucked up my foot, helping Mick unload his big ass Hammond B3 organ and Leslie out of the trailer. I played the whole gig limping.
We killed, but of course, it was a captive audience. (BADOOM-PISH!)
That band fell apart and came back together in various forms three times that year. This happens a lot when there is a chick singer in the group. That's not sexist or insensitive, just true.
I finally quit for good after an incident in Donelson one night.
Billy and I had been jamming with the new bass player and drummer at the bass player's house. He was a fucking douchebag, and we were sick of him and his loud mouth, red neck wife, Karen. (Yes, the stereotype fits.)
Karen kept telling us what songs we needed to cover and that our original shit was too heavy, that nobody could dance to it.
Bill, the bass player with no balls, would sit there and agree with her, even though he secretly loved the original songs.
Billy and I finally said, "Fuck this, we are outta here."
Karen comes running at Billy and starts wailing on him, I go and try to pull her off, then Bill says, "Don't you touch my wife!" and sucker punches me right in the face!
Then Karen starts yelling at her dumb ass husband, "Why did you hit him?" Poor bastard couldn't even defend his wife's honor without getting bitched out for it.
They called me a few weeks later to see if I wanted to start a band with them.
I politely informed them that they must have lost their goddamned minds, and hung up the phone.
Paulie and I had not become joined at the hip yet like we would be by the end of 1980. He also began playing in his first legit band that year.
The band was Speedlimit. It was a twin guitar attack with Jimmy and Carlos, Brian on bass, and Todd on lead vocals and keyboards. They did some cool gigs that year too, most notably a One For The Sun gig at the fabulous floating stage on Percy Priest Lake. I was there in the crowd that day, and I was super jealous.
They killed that day, literally. Some guy was lying on the beach after the show; everyone thought he passed out, but he died; we never found out why.
Paulie was a natural on the drums from day one, and in the three years and some change that we both had been playing, he was already a monster on the drums when he was fifteen. He took to the double bass so fast, and he was learning from the same records I was. Paulie would study Cozy Powell and Neil Peart, just like I did with Eddie and Ritchie. I gladly shared my record collection with him, as he did with me.
As fate would have it, I would be in Speedlimit in less than a year, but that's another story.
Something else happened that summer that you are probably wondering when is this son of a bitch ever gonna get around to it.
The Van Halen 1980 Invasion Tour swung through Nashville on the summer leg, and another cosmic shift was about to happen.
It was the dog days of summer, school was out forever, and my heart was on the mend from the pain of being dumped. Dad and mom had split up, dad moved out to California, and I was the man of the house now. I was still loosely affiliated with Billy Shipp and played some gigs here and there, but mostly I worked printing and practiced my ass off. I was getting good, and I was about to get a big-time professional guitar lesson on August 5th, 1980, at Nashville Municipal Auditorium.
I bought my ticket months earlier, the day they went on sale.
(Because I would have broken up with myself if I missed this show.)
We went down in a gang in the Darvon, probably a few other cars in convoy as well. The pre-show details are a little foggy, but I'm pretty sure we partied at Kevin's apartment all afternoon and then headed down. It was a Tuesday, so I either called in sick to work, or maybe Bobby gave me the day off. I mean, it should have been a state fucking holiday.
I do remember it was a perfect summer night. There was a care-free party vibe in the air, and everyone was stoked that the world's biggest rock band was riding into town on the heels of a mega-huge album.
Women and Children First had been the soundtrack for summer. You could hear Everybody Wants Some and Take Your Whiskey, echoing through the parking lot at the state capitol where we parked. There was weed in the air, and beer on the breath, chicks in Daisy Duke's with hair a mile high and sweaty cheap perfume blowing in the breeze.
I had six killer joints in my sock and breezed through the lax security easily.
When we got out on the floor, they had chairs set up, but it was general admission. That was weird, somebody fucked up big time. There was mass confusion about this initially, and while everybody else was being a little bitch about it, wondering what to do, me and Joey pomahoused right up to the front about three rows back on Eddie's side and staked our claim.
"Fuck yes, dude! We are golden!" I yelled.
Later, as people began crowding in, we held our ground. It was easy during G-Force, the opener (who were horrible), but after that, it became more of an elbow fest. We let any motherfucker know they were not getting in our space. The chairs actually helped, we ended up standing on them, and most of the people followed suit. Security couldn't do shit, this was Van Halen goddamnit, and there were thousands of happy high motherfuckers packed in, ready to rock. They shouldn't have put those damn chairs there, but I'm glad they did, it made for a perfect view.
The energy of the crowd was intoxicating as the suspense built. I had a good buzz going, and I was fucking stoked that I was front row center for my hero.
There was fabric draped over much of the gear in between sets, but the stage was massive. This wasn't 1978 anymore, our boys had climbed the ladder for sure, I had never seen a more bad as fuck stage. Alex's drum kit was a huge double bass affair with fire extinguishers, warning signs, and a massive gong. There were radioactive warning signs all around the stage, and it looked like a bomb was peeking out of somewhere.
The whole military invasion vibe was working.
I was talking to a girl about why she was not about to share my chair with me when...
The lights go down.
Ten thousand adoring fans roar as the spotlights start panning the crowd in a crazy array of movement while the sound of helicopters booms through the gigantic sound system.
The announcer yells, "Heeere we go, everybody! Vaaaaaaannn Haaaaaalen!"
While the arena is still dark, Edward's guitar starts screaming through the P.A. at maximum decibels. Whammy bar madness, finger taps, wild harmonics; Dave is yelling like a crazed jungle animal, and then the whole band kicks in on an obliterating E chord.
A lone spotlight burns on Eddie as he starts the harmonic tapping intro to...
"ROMEO!" I yell. "FUCK YES!"
The whole band kicks in on the opening salvo in the white-hot stage light. The shit is locked in and moving at a heart-pounding rate, just like the record.
The stage is a sight to behold! There are hundreds of speakers everywhere, ramps going in different directions, and a huge VAN HALEN backdrop flapping in an unseen breeze. Dave flies ten feet in the air off the riser, legs out, and lands on a dime.
This was one of the first shows where Eddie played the Frankenstein guitar, I gazed upon it in all it's red, white, and black glory for the first time.
Now, when I say the guitar was loud, I mean the guitar was fucking loud.
At first, all you could hear was the guitar! I mean, I was good with it, but holy shit. Ed knew right away...he was making his wicked stage moves to start the show and looks over at Dave, laughing, and then looks out at the sound guy on the first stop in the verse and mouths, "TURN ME DOWN!" followed by a quick hand motion pointing to the ground. (I understand, sound dude, I get it. I would have been happy if it was only Eddie in the P.A.)
The energy from the stage was nuclear. This was a band that had hit their stride, running wide open on all cylinders.
Goddamn, they were kicking ass.
These guys were not the same dudes that opened for Black Sabbath a couple of years back, and those dudes ruled then! No, these were seasoned pros that had been doing shows and making records non stop since we last saw them. They were full-fledged rock stars now fully confident in themselves rolling it out on us like a division of Panzer tanks taking a city. Nobody could touch them.
I was taking mental notes from the get-go. I immediately sobered up and became a diligent student attending the advanced seminar on How to Fucking Rock by professors Van Halen, Roth, Anthony, and Van Halen.
It was a crash course.
I was so close I could see it all. I copped the harmonic tap on the intro to Romeo, saw how he played the main riff and saw the incredible seven fret spread he did on the gnarly lead.
As the show progressed, I watched and learned an assload of stuff. I still use much of it to this day.
A lot of the flash stuff looks easy, but in reality, it's hard because it's all about application and technique. Take the pick slide, for instance: It sounds like you are digging in on the strings really hard, but actually, you are just barely touching the string with the pick as you scrape it to get that super gnarly slide sound.
The two-handed neck swipe was a new one. It looked like he was wiping his neck down with both hands over the top, one after the other in time with the song. It was the coolest sound you ever heard and looked fucking badass!
I did that one a lot in the eighties to great effect, but it would look pretty ridiculous these days.
The same thing with the wang bar, Eddie used it so much for mild effect as well as super-duper whammy stuff. Little vibrato stuff here and there with the bar is really tasteful; I picked up on that too that night.
On Somebody Get Me A Doctor, I was able to see how he did the rolling harmonic thing after the lead, a real head turner anytime I used it for years afterward. You would not believe how many guitar players asked me how to do that trick.
David Lee Roth was the master of ceremonies for the entire evening, and he did a splendid job. He managed to catch my attention quite a few times with his killer screams, extreme confidence on stage, and fantastic gymnastic moves. He was very impressive and made us all feel like we were a part of the party.
They pulled out a keyboard rig for Michael Anthony to play the Fender Rhodes part for Cradle Will Rock, he must have played bass with his feet. Eddie played his Goldtop Les Paul on that one, killer.
Edward's solo was spectacular!
He would run the length of the stage and do baseball slides as he played burning leads and dive-bombing mayhem.
He played Eruption, and an electric version of Spanish Fly interspersed with crazy off the cuff shit that blew my mind. There were even hints of what would become Cathedrals.
The girl that dumped me came pushing through at one point during the show, she was short and couldn't see. She kept looking up at me with puppy dog eyes and asking if she could get on my chair with me.
I laughed and shook my head. That's gonna be a no from me dawg. (I like that phrase.)
I also gained immense respect for Alex Van Halen at this show. That motherfucker was a machine!
When they played Tora Tora into Loss of Control, I just about lost my mind. The drums were thundering, and his whole body was a blur as he laid down the intricate groove. He and Edward were locked in so tight, it was like they were one entity. Loss of Control is one of the baddest ass, most fun listening experiences there is. Seeing it up close live added the visual aspect that left us in awe when the last note died out.
Here's the setlist:
"Romeo Delight"
"Bottoms Up!"
Alex Van Halen drum solo
"Runnin' with the Devil"
"Tora! Tora! + Loss of Control"
"Take Your Whiskey Home"
"Dance the Night Away"
"Women in Love..."
"Jamie's Cryin'"
"Bright Lights, Big City" ("Jimmy Reed" cover)
"Everybody Wants Some!!"
"And the Cradle Will Rock..."
"On Fire"
Eddie Van Halen guitar solo, "Eruption," "Spanish Fly" and "Cathedral"
"Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love"
Encore
"Ice Cream Man"
"Growth" and "You Really Got Me"
Here's a couple of things before I go and contemplate writing about Fair Warning, maybe my favorite Van Halen Record.
My memory is a little fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure Eddie played the Moog synth thing that would later become Sunday Afternoon in the Park from Fair Warning. I seem to remember the whole building shaking from the low end and thinking the place was going to cave in.
Dave came out for the encore with an acoustic guitar made to look like a popsicle. It was hilarious! They did a ferocious version of Ice Cream Man after and then played Growth, which is that weird last groove on Women and Children First that fades out side two, and ended the show with You Really Got Me.
I've said it many times to anyone who has ever asked me; this is my number one concert of all time.
Everything was perfect. The band was at its peak of raw energy, still hungry, now on top of the world, and driving home the fact that Van Halen was the best band in the world.
The sound was terrific, the crowd's energy was infectious, and the songs were perfect for the moment.
This show drove the nail in the coffin of any other possible future for me.
This was what I was gonna do, there was no turning back now.
And, my heart did not hurt anymore. Van Halen healed me from the self-pity that would still linger about the breakup. I didn't give a fuck anymore after that.
One last thing, I did see Valerie Bertinelli behind the P.A. on Eddie's side that night. She had a little tray, and Ed would visit her from time to time, give a little kiss, and take a little snort.
I didn't know it at the time, but that was probably an ominous sign of things to come.
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