The Tapes Archive

Marc Allan: So you were telling me about the sound system out there, and the tonal qualities. When you mix your albums, do you go for a small speaker, and make it, you know–

Alex Van Halen: No when we go into studio we take all our stage gear, set it up in a big room and play live. Of course there are separation baffles, and just in case something goes wrong, we have to fix up a guitar, or overdub something, and Dave is in a separate booth, but we all do play and sing at the same time, which unlike most bands who go in, lay down a rhythm track and build on top of that, over and over, and so forth, until you get such a fat sound, attempt a fat sound by massive overdubbing, which we don’t do. If you listen to the records you’ll notices, a very, if any, very few if any overdubs, an occasional rhythm guitar at the most. And Ted Templeman takes care of the technical aspect of it. You know, obviously he puts down vinyl.

Marc Allan: There was somebody who was talking about, well there was an arc on “Rolling Stone” about Mike Chapman, and Mike Chapman said that he wouldn’t want Ted Templeman to produce any of the groups he produced, because he thinks Ted Templeman would all make ’em sound the same. How about working with Ted Templeman?

Alex Van Halen: I think it’s the exact opposite, I tend to say that about Mike Chapman. Ted has produced such a diverse, diversity of acts, anywhere from The Doobie Brothers, to Ronny Montrose, Van Halen, he does Nicolette Larson, Little Feat, are you trying to tell me those bands sound alike?

Marc Allan: No I’m not, not at all.

Alex Van Halen: Come on Chapman, wake up, wake up. I mean, I didn’t read the article, so I don’t know what he said word for word, but we’ve been approached by a variety of producers, especially in the beginning, when people are already being signed, and we chose Ted, because when we sat down he was open, it wasn’t like a lot of producers put their stamp, so to speak, I mean it’s their sound on the record, a lot of times you can hear a band, you don’t even know who the band is, but yet you can tell, or pretty well guess, who produced it. And like I said, we had been approached by certain producer, at one point one of the gentlemen said, “Listen, this is my record and you’re gonna do it my way, “or you won’t do it at all.” And so we said all right, we won’t do it, goodbye. Enter Ted Templeman.

Marc Allan: I wanted to ask you about the Pueblo, Colorado thing that was written about in “Rolling Stone” also, something about racking a lot of–

Alex Van Halen: Yeah, well first of all, it was blown, usually out of proportion, I mean there was a little bit of food spilled on the floor, but as far as being smeared in lasagna, and all this garbage, that’s what it was, garbage, it’s not true at all. I think what happened was the college board, the school board, just didn’t want that brand new building, being subjected to massive rock and roll audiences, and they figured well, we’ll just grab any band, I think we were just a scapegoat. You obviously we didn’t leave the dressing room spotless, but there was no damage there, there were no urinals ripped off the wall, and whatever else they said, that we have behaved like animals, because you know, after all this is our living, it’s our job, and we know we have to go back and play there again. So we’d only be cutting our own throats, and it’s not true at all.

Marc Allan: What about brown M&M’s in your contract, is that true?

Alex Van Halen: All right, everybody has to have a little sense of humor, yes, it’s true. Look, if there’s brown M&M’s in our bucket, we won’t play. I’ll tell you, one of these days, one of these days someone’s gonna get that little piece of paper wrapped around a brown M&M thrown through his window in the middle of the night, and they’ll know who it’s from. But we don’t take that too seriously.

Marc Allan: But that is in your contract?

Alex Van Halen: Yes it is, and legally we don’t like brown M&M’s.

Marc Allan: Let’s talk about the aesthetics of M&M’s. Do brown M&M’s taste different from other M&M’s?

Alex Van Halen: Yes they do.

Marc Allan: They do?

Alex Van Halen: They do, they are heavily, more heavily sugar-coated, they contain more chocolate. The green ones and the yellow ones are much more refreshing.

Marc Allan: What about the red ones? Do you miss the red ones, I always–

Alex Van Halen: Yeah, I don’t particularly go for the red ones that much, like I said, my main objection is brown, and that’s all there is to it.

Marc Allan: So is that a running thing throughout the band, or is it just your–

Alex Van Halen: Well yes, it was actually David’s first objection was brown M&M’s, Michael doesn’t like M&M’s at all, Ed only like Jujubes. Can you believe that? I got a bridge you might be interested in buying.

Marc Allan: The band seems to relate extremely well to the audiences, and I guess that your average, the average of your audience may be, correct me if you think I’m wrong, 15 or 16, around there?

Alex Van Halen: You know, it varies anywhere from like I’d say 15 to 21, or so, and we get older audiences as well. But the reason we relate so well, is because we are the audience. What we’re doing on stage is what we always wanted to see being done on stage, and the reason it goes over so well, I mean we’ve traveled the world, we’ve gone to Japan, we’ve gone to all of Europe, England, places they don’t speak English, places they do speak English, and even when they understand the lyrics, and don’t understand exactly what Dave is saying between songs, they get the feeling, they relate, and I think it’s because there’s a little bit of Van Halen in everybody, and we’re just there to bring it out. And tonight you’re with us, and we’ll bring it all out. You know, because a Van Halen show is one of the last places where you can actually just yell and scream, and thrash your arms about, and do almost anything you want, short of hurting somebody or killing somebody, and get away with it.

Marc Allan: What about violence in the audience? Do you see that?

Alex Van Halen: We’ve seen very little of it. Now of course you’re gonna get a few, I mean a few guys are always gonna ruin it.

Marc Allan: Steven has mentioned something about an M-80 blowing up in someone, in one of the fire marshal’s ears last night, something that happened–

Alex Van Halen: Yeah, you know you get that anywhere, take a look at a football game, the people always knocking rock concerts for being violent, and such, you ever seen a European football game, or an American one, for that matter, the fans in there, they’re fanatical, even if their, if their team loses they get pissed and they beat up on the other side. You know, look at the high school games, look at the violence that goes on there? And that’s when they’re still stone-cold sober.

Marc Allan: How’d a band like Van Halen come out of Los Angeles, which is such a, I mean it’s one of the–

Alex Van Halen: We’ve been asked that a lot. First of all we’re not from LA, that’s where we got together, I’m from Amsterdam, so is Edward, we grew up basically in Holland, moved here about 10 years ago, and Dave’s from the Midwest, he’s from Bloomington, Indiana, Mike is from Chicago. And we’d all been playing around the LA area. Now LA’s not all the laid back that people think it is. A lot of that depends on where you live, you know? A lot of people, we say LA they think of Hollywood, other people think of the beach, but there are places in the middle of nowhere, where there are just people who, beer drinkers and hell-raisers, so to speak, you know, it could be anywhere in the middle of Texas, for all you know. And then again, there are the beaches, and there are the mountains, and there is the Hollywood, but there is a variety of stuff in between. That’s why we don’t sound like The Eagles, ’cause we aren’t from LA.

Marc Allan: There’s a quote in here that David’s kind of like to pick up on, I think it says, according to about heavy metal, he’s saying “What we’re getting these days is clones of clones, “unlike the original Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, “Led Zeppelin, Who, but they’ve undergone so many changes, “it’s become bastardized in so many ways.” And he’s talking about clones of music now, how, considering these bands are probably the beginning of heavy metal, how is Van Halen different? Van Halen’s obviously not a clone.

Alex Van Halen: Well first of all, heavy metal back when it first started, meant 20-minute guitar solos, half-hour drum solos, songs that went on to epic proportions. Van Halen does it in three minutes, I mean why take a half an hour when you can do it in three? And I mean, vice versa it could also be true, but I think people don’t have that long an attention span, they get bored very easily. I know for a fact, that when I see some of the bigger bands, and the drum solo happens, and I’m a drummer, it goes on for you know, five, 10 minutes, when it reaches into 20 minutes I’ll be out there, I’ll be one of the first to get out of the you know, and I’ll come back and I probably won’t have missed a thing.

Marc Allan: So there’s a minimum of solos in the band?

Alex Van Halen: Yeah, I would say there are solos, but not to the extent of, not playing a solo for the sake of having solo there. It used to be kind of almost standardized, I mean, when it was near the end of the set, you knew the drummer was gonna do a drum solo. Now in the middle of the set, when the guitarist rocked out by himself, you knew he was gonna stand there for 15 minutes, you realized he was miles away. Besides, I think our songs have memorable melodies as well, I hear lots of people they’re singing along with the song, singing along even when the music isn’t playing, and I’m like in the ride-on’s they take.

Marc Allan: And I’ve been walking around singing “Everybody Wants Some“, I know the words.

Alex Van Halen: Yeah, “Everybody Wants Some”, well that’s another thing, our lyrics are not into space, or into something you don’t understand, the third planet from the moon, or star or whatever, I mean it’s pretty basic. When you say I can’t wait to feel your love tonight, you don’t need to use your imagination very much, I don’t think.

Marc Allan: What was the best heavy metal band you ever saw?

Alex Van Halen: That I ever saw? I’ve seen them all, and I think each band that I’ve seen has something special to offer. As a matter of fact, I’ve even seen some punk acts, that I’ve, I think are New Wave, whatever you want to call ’em, like The Damned, they played 15 minutes, and in 15 minutes they played about 15, no wait, about 25 songs I think it was. I’m not exaggerating, those guys are just so hyper, they’re on stage and they were off, next one, boom. The music wasn’t really there, but I mean the show was, I mean every band has something to offer, I mean, when you go see Yes, it’s more like sitting down, an evening with Yes, and they duplicate the record, I mean they duplicate the record, which sometimes makes me wonder why pay $9 or $10 for a ticket, you know, and have to sit there, barely able to see, lousy acoustics, when you could much rather sit at home with a nice stereo? If you want to hear the record duplicated, listen to your stereo. I enjoyed Sabbath very much, I like Grand Funk, and I gotta say, it was a pleasure to play with Sabbath, you know, for their 10th anniversary, we toured with them for all of the U.K. and most of the states, and so that was a pleasure. But other than that, I really can’t remember that many heavy metal acts, you know of course everybody goes to see Zeppelin once a year, it must be a ritual or something, but since we’ve been touring so much I haven’t had the time.

Marc Allan: Do you think that Van Halen’s the best heavy metal act now?

Alex Van Halen: I wouldn’t call it heavy metal. Again, Michael would call it big rock, for lack of a better term. Well it’s gotta look like it sounds, and sounds like it looks. Like we were talking, we love to have the PA sound, it’s not actually overkill. Other bands use that system to fill a 40,000 seater, we do it to fill up a 10 to 15,000 seater, because we feel, we shouldn’t, we don’t have to crank that think to the point where it distorts and hurts your ears, to get the same level of decibels, you know, as you can with this system. We can sit there and say, drive it, say half way, and it won’t distort, and yet it will be super, I mean it’s hard to explain, it’s like Sensurround. You can feel it, you know?

Marc Allan: Kind of the acoustics in here help a little bit.

Alex Van Halen: I heard the acoustics are something else in here, but our music doesn’t need acoustics.

Marc Allan: I think the last time you played in Boston, you played the Orpheum, is that right?

Alex Van Halen: Yeah.

Marc Allan: You’ve come a long way, in a comparatively short amount of time. How have things changed internally in the band since then?

Alex Van Halen: Well our sex lives are better now. Internally, not at all. We’re the same as we’ve always been, we’ve always wanted to do this, we used to play for free, as a matter of fact, we started out, before we had a manager, before we had a record contract, we never had an agent. All we would do is take some fliers, some leaflets, put our picture on there, we’d rent the hall, put the date on it, and just plaster the entire LA area, and before we knew it we could draw about five guys and people to these shows, you know, it was all up there by ourselves, we would set up the stage, we would rent the PA with the money that we knew we were gonna make, and it was just recycled, the shows got bigger and bigger, more equipment, more people, and it just went on and on, and on and on. And then when we signed the record, we did it all over the world.

Marc Allan: Do you find yourself getting caught up in any sort of bureaucracy now that it’s bigger?

Alex Van Halen: No, because we run everything ourselves. We work very closely with the record company, we work very closely with our management, and luckily enough we’ve had a say in almost everything that we do, anywhere from the material that’s on the album, to the album cover, to where we tour, when we tour, the clothes we wear. You know a lot of people have the manager telling them what time to go to bed, what time to wake up, eat now, the things like that. We were pretty much left up to our own.

Marc Allan: Would you ever like to–

Alex Van Halen: To be a manager, hell no.

Marc Allan: To control your audiences a little more, to be able to send them,

Alex Van Halen: Like I said, we’re–

Marc Allan: you know maybe we think you should cool out a little.

Alex Van Halen: I think we are the audience, and that’s the whole thing, and the people relate to that, it’s just people can tell if you’re phony, if you’re trying to act something that you’re not, if you have to put on your suit to go out to play. I’ll tell you what, Dave’s the same offstage as he is on, he’s always mouthy, he’s always singing, and wearing funny clothes. And it shows, and as far as controlling the audience, again, why control ’em? They’re there to have a good time, it’s an escape. If you want to be controlled go to school, your teacher will tell you what to do.

Marc Allan: Can I ask you how far you went in school?

Alex Van Halen: Yeah, how far did I go in school? I used to walk in, and then I’d walk right back out. No, of course I graduated, I mean that’s some kind of state law says you have to graduate from high school, more or less. And they were more or less happy to get rid of me, so I bid adieu.

Marc Allan: Would you say the people in high school will remember you as they would figure that what you’re doing now is pretty typical of what you–

Alex Van Halen: Either that or in jail, I don’t know. I gotta be quiet honest with you, I never went to school that much, I figured I knew more than the teachers did, and the quality of education was not up to my standards, you know, up to par. I figured if I had to sit and listen to somebody for 45 minutes, trying to explain something which I already knew five years ago, then something’s gotta be wrong. So I would just kind of, oh you know, now Holland it was different, which were I was younger also, so that made a difference.

Marc Allan: When did you leave Holland?

Alex Van Halen: About 10, 15 years ago, it’s kind of hard to pinpoint, you know, it kind of runs together, it doesn’t change, doesn’t get bigger or smaller, it gets longer.

Marc Allan: Does it have any influence on you now?

Alex Van Halen: Yeah, I think it does. I think everything has an influence on you one way or another. I’m surprised you haven’t asked about how we write the songs or anything. But what I was gonna say is that–

Marc Allan: You used to write the words in–

Alex Van Halen: Well no, no, no, the whereas your influences and such. Ed and I studied classical piano in Holland–

Marc Allan: That’s interesting.

Alex Van Halen: And then we started playing rock and roll when we were older. Dave was always singing along with the radio, and Mike, I don’t know, I think he just eats his bass strings for fun. But when we played the clubs which we did for quite a while, we had a repertoire of about 300 different songs, maybe more, and it was by such a variety of artists, it was almost unbelievable. And all we had was one guitar, one bass, one vocal, and one drum. So we had to twist the music, you know, we had to Van Halenize it to make it fit to our instrumentation, which teaches you a lot about arranging, and such. And you know, all of those songs were recognizable, everything did sound like Van Halen, I mean it was still danceable, so we could still play at the club, because if the people weren’t dancing the club owner would boot you out, right? So serves two purposes at the same time, and it carried out over into writing our own music, there’s a little bit of everything in there. My personal tastes vary a little bit with Dave’s, which again, vary a little bit with Ed’s, but when we all get together, we all, it’s like a big soup, and it shows in the music. Listen to some of Ed’s guitar solo, like “Eruption“, or “Spanish Fly“, there is a little bit of classical influence in there.

Marc Allan: What song would I be most surprised that you did a cover of?

Alex Van Halen: “You’re No Good“, oh you mean next album?

Marc Allan: Well no, no, no, when you were playing clubs, and you said you had 300 songs?

Alex Van Halen: Oh I’d say, okay, we did some stuff by Ohio Players, “Get Down Tonight“.

Marc Allan: Really?

Alex Van Halen: Yeah, we used to do some old James Brown, “It’s Your Thing“, but then again at the other end, we did some Deep Purple, we did some Black Sabbath, we did, “Deal with the Preacher“, by Bad Company. You name it, we played it. We played anything and everything, and it seemed that the wider the scope of the style of music, we played any music but jazz, people just didn’t know how to dance to it. We didn’t really care for it that much. So it wasn’t really bankable, we didn’t want to introduce a sax section.

Marc Allan: Or the orchestra, that he tells about here, the big 24 piece orchestras.

Alex Van Halen: Yeah we don’t need that.

Marc Allan: Band’s not gonna play live anymore, we’re just gonna bring in an orchestra.

Alex Van Halen: Yeah right, well as you very well know, I’m not gonna name names, but very many bands do that, and they even have extra hidden musicians underneath the stage, or in the back. As a matter of fact, Grand Funk carried around, what was his name, Chris Frost?

Marc Allan: Craig Frost.

Alex Van Halen: Craig Frost, they carried him around for years before anyone knew there was an organist, and they finally has him all, shit, as long as you’ve been playing with us you may as well be on the album cover and the rest it as well. And other bands tape theirs stuff, pre-tape and play it.

Marc Allan: Yeah, again no names, that’s another thing I was reading about, I think Toto, and they have a singer that stands backstage.

Alex Van Halen: A singer who’s backstage?

Marc Allan: Yeah, a singer they have candid behind the–

Alex Van Halen: Oh I didn’t know that, I wasn’t aware of that.

Marc Allan: Yeah, that’s what I read.

Alex Van Halen: Okay, this is back-stabbing, listen guys.

Marc Allan: Okay, back to what I trying for, since you’re not heavy metal, you’re the best at what you do.

Alex Van Halen: I think we’re the most sincere, and we do the best to our capability, that came out great, and we’re not lazy, we enjoy it. We mean what we do, we mean what we say, and we’re on the level, and we do it 10 months a year, and the other two months we spend in the studio, and rehearsing and writing, and making the next album so we can do it all over again, it’s one big vacation land.

Marc Allan: Do you think your audiences will grow with the band, that if you go in another three or four years, will the same crowd still be–

Alex Van Halen: Okay, I don’t have a crystal ball, but I think judging by how much the audience has increased over the last two or three years, as you just mentioned from playing a 2,000 seater to a 10,000 seater, I think yeah. Our music is, I hate to use the word readily accessible, but it is, you know you listen to it and it makes you feel good, there’s an old saying, if it sounds good, it is good. Duke Ellington said that. That’s the truth, and he knew what he was talking about. Because I did go to college a little bit, for music, and they told me I was a musical prostitute because I was writing songs with no more than three or four chords, and I said “Listen, it’s harder to write a melody “for a song with three or four chords “than it is to sit there and modulate, “and sit there and change keys and meter, and beat, “and all this jazz, to get some kind of song across, “which nobody can make sense out of, “not even the guys that are playing it or writing it.” They don’t even know, they don’t understand, so I left.

Marc Allan: It’s interesting that you talk about you’ve had musical training, you’ve studied classical piano, I think that the majority of the things that I read about the band, you would think that you guys just picked up guitars and started to play one day, you found that you could make melodies that people enjoy.

Alex Van Halen: Well it may just as well have been, because I’ll tell you a lot of that training had absolutely no application, it’s nice to know, but what good is it if you know that the key of F has one flat, okay? What difference does it make?

Marc Allan: What about the reviews? Do you read them, do you care about them? They’re obviously not–

Alex Van Halen: It depends, generally, we’re in the next town by the time the review comes out. I think some of the reviewers, some of the critics, are good at what they do, and they should be commended. I mean, they know their profession and they do it well. Others I think are like a virgin trying to describe the pleasures of sex, I mean they don’t understand they don’t know, but in the long run I don’t think it matters, because just like the album reviews, which are sometimes so drastically opposite, I mean it makes you wonder, who actually knows what the hell he’s talking about? I mean one guy says it stinks, and the other can be completely opposite, possibly even on the next page of the same magazine will say, “My God, this is fantastic, “I mean the messiah has come down.” You know what I mean? So it just wonders, I think it’s a matter of personal taste.

Marc Allan: It’s interesting, ’cause Dave Marsh wrote a piece on Ted Nugent recently, and wrote a bit about Van Halen, and said how great Nugent was, but how he couldn’t stand Van Halen, how terrible they were at what they did. That’s what I wonder, you know, you read that after a while and just start going hey–

Alex Van Halen: Well I think as long as they don’t pull any punches on you, it’s all right, I don’t care what they say, but if he does it in a slanderous way, or has nothing to back it up with, then I think that the guy’s off the wall. And you can take this and stick it up your nose, Dave Marsh.

Marc Allan: The thing is, you know, I wrote a lot of criticism and I tell people get really upset about it, hey, it’s just my opinion, you don’t have to agree with it, you don’t have to not buy the album, I tell you what I don’t like.

Alex Van Halen: Well I just, not in defense of it, Ed won this years “Guitar Player” poll as the best rock guitarist. He beat out Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Ted Nugent, I don’t think he was even a runner-up, well maybe he was, but and that’s something more artist oriented magazine, you know, more guitarists, people who actually play the instrument buy that magazine, and they’re the ones who vote, as opposed to people like Dave Marsh who know nothing about guitars, probably. How many strings does a guitar have?

Marc Allan: How do you get along with your brother?

Alex Van Halen: Oh fine, you know we have the obvious, nobody gets along great all the time, we have the rows, the fights, whatnot.

Marc Allan: You just always here about The Kinks, you know, and Dave Davies and Ray Davies, how they try to stab each other.

Alex Van Halen: Oh yeah, well that happened in our younger years, but as we grow older, you know, after all it is a felonious offense, to get into the jail, even though he is kin.

Marc Allan: In this article, the guy wrote, he said just what heavy metal is, and he say, the person who wrote this says, “Art, it’s not.” in other words heavy metal’s not art. Is what you do art? I mean you know you say, it’s not heavy metal.

Alex Van Halen: Art is like beauty, it’s in the eye of the beholder, I don’t even know how to start on this one. I think it’s art in the fact that it’s gonna last for a while, I mean it is on vinyl, 20 years from now people can listen to it, and hopefully enjoy it still, if they don’t, well then, I mean what was the “Mona Lisa“, it’s a painting, you know? I’ve seen sculptures in the middle of some of these city centers, I mean, I’m like Jesus Christ, what the hell is that? I saw one that was a gigantic clothes pin, and that’s all it was. But since the person who put it there was quote unquote, an artist, it was an object of art. So it just depends, it’s just a matter of terminology.

Marc Allan: And it’s all very interesting, ’cause I was reading this book, “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight“. And this guy wanted to be an artist, so he would wear very thick glasses when he didn’t need any glasses, and would walk with his shoelaces untied, and trip over them.

Alex Van Halen: And that gets right back to what I was saying before about being honest, I mean not having to put on your suit to go out on stage to do something. I’ve seen guys who, you know, put on make-up, they’ll put on the real tight pants, but they’ll feel uncomfortable and look uncomfortable, because they are uncomfortable now, because some people ask them, and they go “Wow Dave, those are some outrageous clothes.” Well he wears stuff like that all the time. That’s just Dave, that’s him. I’m the slob, you know?

Marc Allan: How do you feel about glitter? Like Alice Cooper, Bowie, things like that? How does that relate to what you do? Does it at all?

Alex Van Halen: Oh I’ve seen, I like Alice’s show, especially before he started playing golf on the “Mike Douglas Show“. I think that blew his credibility a bit, especially now with his completely new image.

Marc Allan: When he was on the “Hollywood Squares“, that killed it for me.

Alex Van Halen: Right, yeah, that’s right, that was one of the better rock shows I saw, I remember it was in the Hollywood Bowl, I don’t know, maybe 10 years ago, helicopter came in, flew in so low this thing was deafening, I’m surprised the FAA didn’t get down on ’em, that was pretty dangerous, if that thing had run out of gas, 3,000 people would have been dead. But yeah, I liked his show, and there’s certain things I like about Bowie, we played some of his music. I haven’t followed up on him lately, I mean he changes his character and image like I change my underwear. Of course for him it’s become standard, it’s the norm, he does that almost every year, he comes out with something different, so you come to expect it of him. And in that sense, being different is being the same.

Marc Allan: Do you find that since you’ve become a very, very popular band, probably one of them most popular around now, that you’ve lost some contact with your audience?

Alex Van Halen: No, that’s not true at all.

Marc Allan: I’m somewhat surprised that you were able to do an interview, just like that.

Alex Van Halen: Yeah, well we haven’t lost contact at all. A lot of bands go out and they’ll play, or they’ll say they play, or they will play small clubs, now to me that seems like losing contact, they say that they like to be intimate with people, well I don’t think it’s very intimate if say, Van Halen was to go into a town like Boston, and play a 500 seat hall, when 10,000 people want to see you. That means 9,500 of them don’t get to see you. You know, which disappoints them, and it’s just a pain in the ass for everybody, you know? There’s gonna be a riot at the club, and you need to change the name, people are bound to find out, that means garbage just doing clubs. I don’t see that any reason why you can’t be close to people, 10,000 people, 20,000, whatever, they’re all there.

Marc Allan: What’s something that you’ve always wanted to talk about in press that no one’s asked?

Alex Van Halen: Your love life. I can’t really think of anything, I’ll talk about anything.

Marc Allan: Tell me about your love life?

Alex Van Halen: I’ll tell you what, you follow us back to the hotel after the show.

Marc Allan: What kind of things can we expect from Van Halen in the future?

Alex Van Halen: Okay, Van Halen just takes it one day at a time, but I hate to use that wording, sounds like a fuckin’ movie.

Marc Allan: Or a TV show.

Alex Van Halen: We take it as it comes, we don’t plan. We write all the time, and we have one of the greatest outside influences, which is Ted Templeman. Because when we get off tour, which will be in December sometime, I think, we go into the basement, where we rehearse, and we’ll play all of the songs that have been written over the last year. And Ted will listen, and his first impression of the songs that he hears, which are good, will usually be the ones that end up on the album. The last album was done maybe out of 50 songs. You know, we might do something quasi-religious next year, who knows? We didn’t know that we were gonna add little keyboards to this album until we actually sat down in the basement and Ed started playing a little bit, and there it was, “And the Cradle Will Rock“. First take, so we put it on the album, first song. But I’ll tell you, Ted’s a great guy. When we get together in the studio he’s like a fifth member of the band. We all throw ideas around, and Ted is the guy that makes some sense out of it. Somebody has to be sane in there.

Marc Allan: How long is this tour gonna last?

Alex Van Halen: ‘Til about December I think, it’ll be a total of about 10 months. In that course, we just came back from Europe, it’s good to be back in the states, thank God.

Marc Allan: What do you miss most when you go? Do you miss the good food–

Alex Van Halen: Yeah, I miss the food, yeah it’s true. It really makes me laugh when we come back, and a friend of mine will walk up and say, “Oh my God, isn’t this marvelous? “I’m gonna spend three weeks in England.” All right, you thought it was American, I don’t mean to knock the people or anything, it’s just one of those things, the food is not very good, the weather is absolutely unbearable, it’s always raining, always muggy. The audiences are great, they love rock and roll, they love to get into it. And the proof of that is because 90% of the bands on the radio are English. As for the rest of Europe, you know, Holland is my home country, so it’s nice to go back there once in a while. And we just finished playing the largest festival they ever had there, a place called Pinkpop, 50,000 Dutch people there, and that was good, but it’s really nice to be back in the states. There’s no way to describe it.

Marc Allan: December, January, and February you’re recording another album, and then back on the road again?

Alex Van Halen: Right, yeah, the last album we recorded took 10 days, and then of course the mandatory mixing and re-mixing, but the actual recording process takes very few days. So I see no problem at all.

Marc Allan: How long have you been on the road now?

Alex Van Halen: We left February or March, but I don’t know what month this is.

Marc Allan: This is July right now.

Alex Van Halen: Okay, so how many months is that?

Marc Allan: Does it bother you? Do you get tired?

Alex Van Halen:  No, you get used to it. As a matter of fact, even before the record, before the touring, we were all doing the same thing, only on a smaller scale. We would play five, 45 minute sets a night in the club, five, six days a week. And it would all be random long traveling distance, you know, two, three hours, which is your average plane flight from city to city anyway. And now all we do is play about 100 minutes, we used to play five hours, and no slow songs.