After Van Halen ended their Diver Down tour in South America, the band members went their separate ways. Eddie, Al, and Michael returned stateside while Dave stayed in South America and went on another outing with his travel troupe, the Jungle Studs.

Roth had loved outdoor adventures since his four years as a Boy Scout. The idea for an adult adventure club came to him in 1980 while visiting one of his favorite outdoor spots, The Los Angeles County Arboretum. The 127-acre park at one time was designed to be rented to film companies who wanted to shoot jungle pictures, including Tarzan movies and other TV shows that needed lush backdrops. On one visit, Roth decided he wanted to see the real thing, so along with some friends, he formed the Jungle Studs. From kayaking in Alaska to hiking the mountains of Nepal, they would travel all over the world to challenge themselves physically and turn a deaf ear to their different careers back home. When they started up the Amazon River after the end of Van Halen’s Diver Down tour, they had no idea in a few weeks; it would have to be cut short.


As the summer of 1983 approached, band members had nearly recovered from the monstrous Diver Down tour, their most extensive outing since 1978. Then their manager, Noel Monk, got a call from a tech pioneer.

Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, believed that the 1970s were the “Me” generation. He intended the US Festival to encourage the 1980s to be more community-oriented and combine technology with rock music.

The first was held Labor Day weekend in September 1982, and the second was less than nine months later, over Memorial Day weekend in May 1983. It was put on under the banner of Wozniak’s newly minted Unuson Corp., which was short for “Unite Us in Song,” hence “US,” and not the abbreviation for the United States as many assumed, given the capitalization. The 1983 US Festival had four separate themed days planned: New wave, rock, heavy metal, and country.

At first, Monk told Wozniak no thanks. The band was not planning to do any shows until their next album was released. (Ed had already started recording.) They were focused on relaxing, writing, and recording their next LP. But then Wozniak offered Monk $1 million for Van Halen to headline Heavy Metal Day. (Monk got this wrong in his book where he said they were initially offered $1.5 million.) Monk was speechless by the offer. The band felt the same way, and they took the gig. Monk was also wise enough to put in a “most favored nation deal” clause. If Wozniak paid any other artist more, Wozniak would have to match that for Van Halen.

After frantically trying to get a hold of Roth in the Amazon jungles for a couple of weeks, the deal was finally signed for the former Pasadena backyard party band to play the biggest concert of their career.

Woz was looking for a headliner for Rock Day, decided on David Bowie, and did not care about the cost. Bowie had not toured the US in five years and had just released his monster album Let’s Dance.

Barry Fey, concert promoter and band booker for the 1983 US Festival, said in his book. “We’re all booked and I get a call from Wozniak. “Barry, you know I love David Bowie.” “Okay’,’ I said.
“Is there any way we can get him on our show?” “Steve, we’re already booked, there’s no room:’
“Barry, please, it is my money.” I called and found out that David was in the middle of a Euro-
pean tour and the only way he could make it is if we put his whole crew on a 747. Bowie was getting $750,000 a night, so that would cost Wozniak $1,500,000, including the cost of the plane. But, Van Halen had a Favored Nation clause in its contract, which meant no other band could be paid more. I called Steve back and explained that with the added $500,000 for Van Halen, Bowie would cost him $2,000,000. “Book it:’ No hesitation. It’s easy to see why Woz would lose $10 million on the four-day event.

Whenever you hear factoids about Van Halen or the 1983 US Festival, you will inevitably hear how they made this insane amount of $1.5 million for one performance. What’s not said typically is David Bowie grossed the same $1.5 million, and he netted more money for his one performance than Van Halen did for theirs. What’s also not mentioned is it was Van Halen’s publicist Steven Mandel, that had the astute idea of asking Guinness to list the accomplishment in their book. With the request, he got Van Halen free press for decades.

When the 1984 Guinness Book of World Records created the new category based on the price of this performance, they listed the highest-paid group as Van Halen but also listed Bowie as the highest-paid single performer. Aside from the apparent distribution of $1.5 million among four as opposed to one, Bowie paid his musicians about $300 a show. (The main reason Let’s Dance guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan did not play on the Bowie tour.) Bowie also didn’t have a 130-person entourage to provide food and drink, and he played a 30-minute shorter set. But where Bowie’s management earned their keep was their contract clause that Bowie retained his audio and video rights. John Mellancamp, or Cougar at the time, asked for the same clause but was denied, so he bailed from the show.

Van Halen members learned later it was their responsibility to provide audio for a planned Westwood One radio broadcast and video for the Showtime Network. This added work would delay recording their next album since they had to take their time to mix and edit their US Festival performance. Luckily, they could do the audio mixing in Ed’s new studio. According to Ed, Alex, and Pete Angelus edited the video while he and Landee worked on the audio. (Angelus was a creative jack of all trades and helped the band with many endeavors outside of creating music.)

A month after the event, Eddie said:
“The whole US Festival was a pain in the ass. All you hear about is how many people got killed on our day and [how much] money we made.” He’s referring to a man who was bludgeoned to death with a tire iron, according to sheriff’s officials, “in a drug deal gone sour.” Eddie also told rock journalist and his personal friend, Steven Rosen, that the gig cost them more than they were reported to have made because they had to finance TV and radio specials, buried in the small print of their contract, that they never realized were their responsibility. Eddie said, “We lost more than it was ever worth.”

Although the band did incur certain costs they were unaware of before the performance, they also added unnecessary costs by hosting a large private party. But the most significant expense was putting together a concert when they weren’t already on tour, which included paying for weeks of rehearsals, renting a complete soundstage, paying the crew, renting lighting, transporting equipment, and other expenses for just one event. In a period of weeks, they went from zero to 100 and then back to zero. If the US Festival had been only one more stop on a continuous tour, it would have been much more financially successful.

All the money Van Halen and Bowie were rumored to be making didn’t sit well with other bands — in particular, The Clash, who was already grappling with maintaining their punk ethos while picking up a $500,000 paycheck at their commercial peak, courtesy of Combat Rock hits like “Rock the Casbah” and “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” For a week before the festival and throughout the event itself — right up to the moment before they went on — the confrontational Brits kept demanding one press conference after another to spout vitriol, particularly toward Van Halen, or else they wouldn’t perform.

Roth, who was never afraid of a good back-and-forth, engaged in verbal jousting with The Clash’s manager Cosmo Vinyl and frontman Joe Strummer many times over the weekend. In one instance, Roth implied The Clash’s song “Should I Stay or Should I Go” was a ripoff of an older track. Roth said: “I love The Clash. I love ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go,’ mostly because I loved Mitch Ryder’s ‘Little Latin Lupe Lu’ all those years ago.”

Unhappy with Van Halen’s pay day, the event’s commercialization of rock and roll, and the crowd in general, The Clash came out on stage with a banner behind them stating, “THE CLASH NOT FOR SALE.” But as their freedom-fighter act continued, The Clash had not realized how far they had pushed the event’s organizers. During their performance, Barry Fey instructed the crew to project the band’s $500,000 paycheck on the screen behind them. Naturally, the band was furious. They ended up in a physical altercation with the event’s crew and refused to play an encore. Little did the crowd know that only four months later, guitarist and founding member of The Clash, Mick Jones, would leave the band after falling out with Joe Strummer.

One ally for Strummer was none other than his nemesis’ guitarist. Strummer said in a later interview, “The only guy with any guts the entire weekend was Eddie Van Halen. Because with all that stuff going down, he walked alone, unasked, right into the middle of our trailer, and stood there grinning with his hands spread wide. And I thought — well, I drank to him over that. I’ll take it.”

For their first show in over three months, Van Halen would play on Sunday — Heavy Metal Day. Roth and Ed snickered at being lumped in with the other metal bands. Little did Ed know that 12 short years later, Van Halen would have to open for a hair metal band that in 1983 hadn’t even released an album yet. The band was Bon Jovi.

The $20 US Festival ticket also bought performances by Quiet Riot, Mötley Crüe, Ozzy Osbourne, Judas Priest, Triumph, and the Scorpions. Quiet Riot was added after John Mellencamp dropped out and Joe Walsh was moved from Heavy Metal Day to Rock Day, leaving a spot open for Quiet Riot.

Mötley Crüe was still an unknown L.A. club band, while Ozzy Osbourne was finding his feet after the devastating loss of guitarist Randy Rhoads. Judas Priest was a known quantity and delivered powerful, leather-clad British metal to the hot summer crowd. The Scorpions put on a blistering set and proved they deserve to be second only to Van Halen. Triumph was the oddball, a Canadian power trio whose best years were behind them, but still played a great set.

“While everyone else weathered the heat, Van Halen lived it up like rock gods in their own private half-acre tent city with arcade games, girls galore, champagne, and a bar full of booze. If you wanted the Peruvian flakes, that was BYOB. (Bring your own Blow)” The original idea for this area was not to be an indulgent free-for-all. But more of a marketing ploy to generate buzz and for outsiders to think WTF is going on in there. The idea came from Van Halen publicist Steven Mandel who wanted to recreate a similar Rolling Stones compound he had seen when Van Halen opened for the band in 1981. But once Roth got a hold of the idea, it turned into the bash of 1983.

Van Halen had always harnessed their nervous energy with the help of alcohol, and as their performance drew near, the liquor intake was off the charts. At an incredible expense, the Van Halen Compound was separated from the rest of the backstage area and was described as a “rock and roll Disneyland.” It had four full-time bartenders working round the clock for the band and its large contingent of hangers-on. The Memorial Day invasion disintegrated into a never-ending quagmire of production demands and escalating costs.

A few hours before Van Halen’s performance, Roth called a press conference, apparently for the sole purpose of trying to one-up The Clash, who had called a press conference the night before. Roth finally emerged, only half an hour late, wearing a revealing fringed top and tiger-striped, clinging pants. He promptly lay down on a table for cheesecake-style poses. The encounter was bizarre: Roth comes across as something that might have been dreamed up on The Muppet Show — an odd combination of jive talk, Mae West come-ons, Rod Serling impressions, and bad stand-up comedy. When asked about The Clash, Roth said it “is too serious. I mean, no one gets out of here alive anyway, do they, sugar?” Roth also said, “Life is a game with winners and losers. But it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, as long as you look good.” Unlike The Clash Roth would rather share a joke with the world than save it. He disappeared shortly after asking a photographer: “Is that a camera you’re holding or are you just happy to see me?” [Isolate Roth’s laugh and have him laugh at his own jokes, over the top.]

At the appointed hour, a special film of the backstage party beamed over the giant Diamondvision television screens. The three-minute featurette, hosted by a local radio DJ, had been produced weeks ahead of time in Los Angelos at The Complex. It was a self-portrait caricature of the Van Halen reality, with Michael Anthony confusing a Space Invaders machine with a portable bar, Alex dodging a midget pulling a saddled sheep, Roth interrupted having sex on a piano, and Eddie popping party balloons with his cigarette. All of it is fairly embarrassing.

While giant VH logos flickered on the screens, Van Halen fired into “Romeo Delight.” Eddie uncharacteristically flopped a couple of notes. Roth supposedly lost his place halfway through the second verse and interjected his trope of, “I forgot the fucking words!” The band was explosive, but Roth was unstable, with Dave occasionally weaving and distracted. As the set continued, Eddie, Alex, and Michael would tighten their grip on their musical notes and start to lay down a clinic on how a legendary live band plays.

Roth would continue to take shots at The Clash by modifying one of his standard stage raps about whether he was really drinking whiskey from his ever-present bottle of Jack Daniel’s. “The only people who drink iced tea out of Jack Daniel’s bottles is The Clash, baby!” Later Ozzy would say, “I don’t know why Van Halen even bothered getting up there they were so fucking drunk.” Coming from Ozzy, that says a lot.

One of the highlights was when the band did a breakdown during “Somebody Get Me a Doctor,” where they played a portion of a forthcoming song, “Girl Gone Bad.” This was followed by Alex and Eddie doing a guitar-versus-drums battle, and then capping it all off by bursting into Cream’s “I’m So Glad.” However, there was also the lowlight of a cover song gone bad, when Roth started singing Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child.”

Even with Roth buzzed and a bit out of it, Van Halen proved again no other band in 1983 could come close to their powerful stage charisma.

The set lasted just under two hours. Meanwhile, heat, dehydration, lack of bathrooms, and mental fatigue thinned the crowd considerably before its end. “More people were arrested here today than the whole last year,” Dave congratulated the crowd to uproarious approval.

According to the New York Times, concertgoers were so fired up on their way home that they tore down the fences surrounding the event and rammed their cars into police cruisers. “They even hit a horse,” a deputy said. The local sheriff told the press he hoped Van Halen would “never come back” to his county. [Use the horse-punching scene from Blazing Saddles.]

Van Halen’s iconic US Festival appearance showcased them as one of the greatest live bands ever. Until the internet came along low, generation VHS bootlegged copies of Van Halen’s performance were sold for top dollar. Proving this was not a shit show, but Van Halen nearing their peak dominance. Even with Roth lit as a Christmas tree, the band shook off the rust and made it into a performance reveled by fans 40 years later.