The Oddest Couple: Can it Last?
The article below was originally published in the June 1984 Musician magazine. And was written by Charles M. Young
Van Halen: Everything you needed to know: how Eddie gets his unique, tormented Brown Sound; where David Lee Roth gets his energy and arrogance; what hearing does Alex have left; whether Michael Anthony will ever play bass in the shadows; is Eddie strange?
by Charles M. Young
Van Halen is
(A) The Four Stooges, (B) More Murderous Than Abdullah The Butcher, (C) What Would Happen If You Put Al Jolson In The Studio With Beethoven, (D) Lucky It Hasn’t Run Into A Bridge Abutment, (E) The Best, (F) All Of The Above.
No question, it’s a problem: you wake up in the morning and there are all these new noises in your head. Either you get them out of your head and onto some tape, or whatever is dispensing those new noises is going to get mad and quit. So you go into your studio, make aural reality of those new noises, and pretty soon there’s a whole bunch more new noises demanding to be heard. And pretty soon it’s three days later, you’ve had no sleep, even more new noises are screaming for reality, and suddenly your wife wants a cuddle. A man must choose: new noises or Valerie Bertinelli?
“She wants to spend more time with me,” says Edward Van Halen backstage before a show at the St. Paul Civic Center. “But it only happens when she’s not working. When she’s sitting around watching TV, she wants to spend time with me when I have to work. I’m not saying I always work, but I’m always writing. I like to get my ideas down so I don’t forget them. At least it’s at my new studio [in his backyard] and not some studio in Hollywood.”
On a scale of marital problems, this one seems to score way below divorce.
“Put it this way,” says Valerie Bertinelli, now retired from the sitcom One Day At A Time, between acting jobs, and much nicer than any journalist would expect of someone so ungodly pretty. “I know who his mistresses are and they aren’t female. My only threats are the guitar and the synthesizer”
And Eddie carries his share of the responsibility for the problem, carries it like Sisyphus did his rock, or maybe Jesus his cross. Anyone so blessed with talent-so goes the inevitable equation-is going to be equally cursed. Try another analogy: rock ‘n’ roll talent is like giving a Ferrari to a fifteen-year-old kid with a learner’s permit. He’s got a good chance of driving it into the nearest bridge abutment and ending up a drug overdose, a drooling lunatic, a raving asshole, or a deaf megalomaniac. But if he teaches himself how to drive (ain’t no driver’s ed yet), he’s the coolest thing on the road. Eddie Van Halen’s guitar is probably the meanest, most dangerous Ferrari now on the road. He has learned to keep it under control, however, by hitching it to a semi-trailer full of guilt and humility. The key word here is “different” or, as Eddie pronounces it, “diffirnt.” Sometimes he will go so far as to accept a compliment on his music, admitting he rates it “more interesting” than the usual stuff one hears at the heavy/hard/ high/big end of rock. But then he’s got to lacerate himself a little, call himself “weird” or worse to get his equilibrium back. All in all, if you must deal in words, the non-judgmental “different” ranks as the optimum adjective.
“It’s not really a talent,” says Eddie, impaling an unfiltered Pall Mall on an inch of guitar string sticking out of a tuning F knob. “It’s an obsession. I’m not saying I’m better than anyone w else. I’m different. I play different…I’m totally into…I’m obsessed with music. I’m selfish. I’m a sick fuck. Name of my studio is 5150-that’s police code for escaped mental case. Donn Landee and I are both…he engineered all our records, but he’s more than an engineer. He and I basically produced the last record. We’re both 5150s. I’m not saying I’m an unsocial asshole, but I don’t need humans a lot. I got my wife. I got my brother. I got my parents. I got Donn. That’s it, concerning deep humans. Donn, he did a lot to get me mentally healthier, to be able to let all that stuff out and not worry. I have some things on tape that would clear the room”
That doesn’t necessarily make him insane, a 5150.
“For me, it’s normal.”
Everyone else is sick
“No! I’m not saying I’m holier than thou. He stutters around for the right words. “If there were ten people in a room, nine of them would not be like me. That makes me the weirdo, but not in my mind. Cause they don’t understand the things that I do, doesn’t make me crazy. But I’m not saying they’re crazy either. In this society, I’m 5150. In my mind, I’m not. I’m just different.”
Another area where Eddie Van Halen is different is his attitude toward money. In his view, it distorts the artistic process, so he doesn’t think about it. He did not, for example, receive any payment for his arranging or guitar solo on “Beat It.” This was, of course, one of the all-time great guitar solos, an electrifying moment on the best cut of an album that has at this writing sold more than thirty million copies. Eddie counts himself lucky to have made friends with producer Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson (“Maybe he’ll give me a dance lesson someday.”), expresses mid annoyance only with his fellow band members and manager for thinking him foolish. This disregard for money extends to Van Halen as well. He’s the only guy who writes music, yet he shares the publishing credit with everyone.
“Ten years ago, we sat down at Dave’s father’s house and said. Well, what are we going to do if we make it?’ I said. ‘Spit four ways. There are four people, right? That was before we found out I’m the only one who writes. I made my own bed, so I’m sleeping’ in it. It’s like being’ married. You find out things about your wife later on, but you’re still married, so what the fuck I could be an asshole about it, but it would just create problems.”
Not a unique attitude among young musicians-this disdain for money-but rare in a veteran of eleven years and six albums: Van Halen, Van Halen II, Women And Children First, Fair Warning, Diver Down and 1984. It is an astonishingly eccentric body of work-some of the most commercial hard rock ever played, mixed with interludes of 5150 music that just leave you stunned (can anyone explain “Sunday Afternoon In The Park on Fair Warning?). The obvious comparison is Led Zeppelin, an equally eccentric band who also appealed first to teenagers-in their capacity for wonder-and only later to critics. But where Led Zeppelin went for drone and moan and high decibel alpha waves, Van Halen goes for pure adrenaline, packing eight musical ideas into a time frame that most bands would take to establish one idea.
“They were hypnotic,” says Eddie. “That’s something I’m not allowed to go after.”
Meaning David Lee Roth doesn’t like hypnotic songs? “Well, what’s he going to do? He can’t dance to them. I like hypnotic. You haven’t heard all my music. Nobody knows what I do. They’ve only seen the one of me, which is Van Halen.”
Roth’s vocal energy-as integral to the VH sound as Eddie’s guitar has never garnered much critical praise.
“People don’t see past his image to listen to him, and he’s good. A complete motherfucker, man. Okay, so he’s not an opera singer Is Jagger? Kids come because they would like to live the fantasy of Dave. That image: fuck all night and get wasted. But that’s Dave and not me.”
It’s never been Eddie?
“In 78 I ran around squeezing everything that walked thought that’s where I would find happiness. But I rapidly found out different. I would just lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking 1s this it? There’s got to be more. So it made me get into this more… (Eddie strokes a thunderous power chord) “…because I get more out of it.”
Ever worry what your mother might think of some of Roth’s lyrics?
“I don’t know what the lyrics are.”