The tour for 1984 was the pinnacle for Van Halen, grossing over $15 million in ticket sales alone. It’s also where the final cracks would start to show and lead soon after to a complete breakdown.

When concerts first started becoming mainstream in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the primary way to make money was only through ticket sales. By the early ’80s, Van Halen’s manager, Noel Monk, convinced the boys to all chip in $50k and start a merchandising company. Most bands at the time would farm out merchandise to companies like famed concert promoter Bill Graham’s Winterland. Within a couple of years, this move paid off huge dividends. By 1982, Van Halen was making $250k a night on the merchandise alone, and half of that was pure profit.

Sponsorship Deal:
In 1983, the new revenue stream for the concert business was the highly lucrative and low-maintenance world of sponsorship. Monk was able to score a sponsorship deal with Sparkomatic, a company specializing in high-end audio products, primarily for the automotive industry. The band would receive $1.2 million upfront, plus additional revenue for advertising. In return, they would put the company’s name on some of their licensed merchandise in tiny letters, which seemed like easy money to Monk.

But when Monk presented the deal to Roth over the phone, Roth was not impressed and said he’d never heard of Sparkomatic. Roth supposedly put Monk on hold and informed the rest of the band, and they said “No.” According to Monk, Roth didn’t present it to the band. Or it was the shortest band meeting ever. Roth returned and said, “You want to get us a sponsorship, fine. Make it Marlboro or Levi’s. Otherwise, it’s fuck you.”

Monk, dumbfounded, went back to Sparkomatic and told them the deal was off. A couple of weeks later, Alex asked Monk if he could ask if he could still get the deal. But Monk couldn’t; by then, Sparkomatic had given the sponsorship deal to Supertramp. It’s incredible rather than getting paid for allowing Sparkomatic to put its logo on some of its merchandise; Van Halen ended up negotiating with another company to allow them to use a portion of its logo. That business was Western Exterminator Company, whose logo included a character known as The Little Man, a dapper gent in a black coat and top hat wielding a huge wooden mallet, presumably used to obliterate various types of pests in the greater L.A. area. Roth loved this image and wanted to use The Little Man as a mascot for the 1984 tour. Monk made the deal, and The Little Man was plastered everywhere for the tour.

Roth would, of course, rewrite history and only tell his version to the press when asked if they tried to get a sponsor. “We went after a sponsor and tried to get them to put up some money and then we could be in their advertisements and help sell their stereos and their toothpaste or whatever, and nobody wanted us. I guess our image was wrong. So, we decided that we’ll be the first band to sponsor a company. So we took the logo from the Western Exterminator Company in Los Angeles.”

Stage:
The 1984 touring stage was one of the biggest ever taken on tour. One hundred seventy-five tons of equipment (including 1.5 million watts of light) loaded onto nine trucks and five buses, with a crew of 75 members. Van Halen gave custom Van Halen rings to all the crew members at the end of the tour.

“Metropolis,” designed by Pete Angelus and Roth, was a collection of metal beams, grids, spotlights, speakers, and backdrops. During the final encore each night, a massive light setup spelled out 1984.

Although their PA was one of the loudest at the time, many speakers on stage were just props. The top wall of the speakers was a curtain with speakers printed on it. Every so often, a breeze would come from backstage, and the whole thing moved. The ’84 stage was the same as the ’81 Fair Warning tour, except for more lighting, a more expansive stage with platforms, and a different backdrop. The backdrop with the speakers was from the Diver Down tour. The three backdrops for 1984 were the sky/clouds with the rigging, the hammer guy, and the same pattern as the stage floor.

New Elements to the show:
The band unveiled several new aspects to their live show on this tour. Eddie played keyboards for “I’ll Wait” and “Jump,” with the latter featuring a guitar solo entirely on keys. David Lee Roth took his turn in the solo spotlight, bringing out his inner Elvis Presley by doing a kung fu-style sword dance. The dance, known as “Dave’s Tai Chi Solo,” was developed by Roth and kung fu master Paulie Zink and performed against a rousing synthesizer backdrop from Edward. That same instrumental piece also appeared in the 1984 movie scored by Edward, The Wild Life.

Edward brought a new aspect to his unaccompanied guitar solo spotlight by adding his newly patented guitar gear. He outfitted his guitar with a clear, plexiglass tray table that allowed him to lay the guitar flat, perpendicular to his body. He would then hammer out chords with both hands on the neck. The technique began taking shape in 1982 but only surfaced on this tour. He patented the tray table, thinking that slide players might get use out of it, though it has never been marketed.

T-Shirt Band:
For the first part of the tour, Van Halen needed what they called a “T-shirt band,” a.k.a. a band that nobody wants to watch, and they go and buy a Van Halen T-Shirt when they’re playing. Nowadays you could just go to VanHalenStore.com and buy official shirts but back then concerts was the main place to pick up new gear. Autograph got the nod to fill the opening act slot without having a record deal or an album out. Autograph’s drummer Keni Richards was a jogging partner of Roth’s. So Roth pushed for Autograph to open for Van Halen, and after hearing their band tape, Eddie and the boys agreed to let the band open up many dates on the 1984 tour. It was reported on the first night of the tour that Autograph was unannounced and unadvertised. Horrified when the lights dimmed at 8:30 and a bunch of guys who were not Van Halen came out on stage, fans unanimously rejected them. Autograph endured a never-ending barrage of garbage and insults tossed at it. Roundly booed at the end of each tune, the group left the stage after six songs. The second half of the tour was opened by the forgettable band The Velcros.

The North American arena tour consisted of 101 dates between January and July 1984, including two- and sometimes three-night stands in several cities. Van Halen did not need a lot of promotions to put butts in seats, but one idea they had was incredibly successful.

MTV’s Lost Weekend:
When MTV announced its Lost Weekend with Van Halen contest in early 1984, the network received over one million postcard entries for a chance to spend three days with the band during their 1984 tour. The promotion’s title was inspired by the 1945 Billy Wilder film, The Lost Weekend, about an alcoholic on a four-day binge. What Van Halen got in return would be $2 million worth of free advertising for their tour and album.

MTV’s Martha Quinn announced that winner Kurt Jefferis and his best friend would be flying to Detroit, where they “barely survived” the April 5 and 6 shows at the Cobo Arena.

MTV did not know that the winner, Jefferis, had a metal plate in his head from a tragic accident a few months before. One misstep and Jefferis could have quickly gone back into a coma with a good chance of dying. That fact did not stop Jefferis from snorting coke, drinking Jack, and partying with the band. Roth even got him laid by a stripper named Tammy. By the last night, Jefferis’ best friend, his plus-one for the trip, was worried about Jefferis and came clean to the MTV folks about his accident. MTV, worried about the legal implications if their winner died under their watch, quickly locked him up in his hotel room until it was time for him to go home. Jefferis would later say: “How many people can say they smoked a fatty with David Lee Roth, man? It was a high point, a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

Decay from within:
Watching the band via MTV made it look like they were the best of friends and at a party that would never end. But as everyone knows today, that wasn’t the case. Although the 1984 tour would be one of the year’s highest-grossing tours, it would be the band’s last.

Their manager from 1979-1985, Noel Monk, details many indicators in his book that the band was falling apart during the 1984 tour in more ways than one. He would also publicize how three of the four band members would unfairly treat the nicest guy in the group.

According to Monk, here are some of the cracks in the band’s future looking glass:

• By now, Alex was a full-blown alcoholic having to drink pretty much anytime he was awake to starve off alcohol-withdrawal syndrome. This led to bad decision-making, like telling Monk’s wife he wanted to have sex with her while sitting right behind Monk on an airplane.
• Eddie had a personal coke dealer that would fly around and meet him on tour.* Eddie had to take many cash advances to fill his Peruvian flakes bottles. Eddie liked the booze as well. Others said this was not true.
• Roth would also partake in coke, weed, and alcohol, but the worst thing about Roth on that tour, according to Monk, was his ego and his dictatorial preening. Roth would order everyone around during soundcheck and then point out everyone’s little mistake at the post-concert meal.

Backstage after the show, Dave held court in the Van Halen hospitality area as if still performing. He set up his PA system and indulged as only he could ever do. Meanwhile, the rest of the band were like wallflowers, anxious to leave the crime scene, as it were. And each band member had their own limousine standing by to whisk them back to their hotel, communications between the four virtually non-existent.

Journalist Malcolm Dome confirmed Roth’s meanness firsthand backstage after the Vancouver show. He said: “That night in Vancouver, Dave humiliated the rest of the band — either unwittingly or deliberately (personally, I think the latter). It was as if he was on a solo tour. If there was a moment for me when it became obvious that Van Halen in its original state was over, then this was it. Dave Roth was playing for high stakes; the rest of the band were simply biding their time before finally ridding themselves of the man who was becoming their nemesis.”

DEA Band:
Monk would call Van Halen the DEA Band: drugs, ego, alcohol. Besides the rampant drug and alcohol abuse, all three would go to Monk and bitch and moan about the other band members. One night they all surprisingly unified to team up against, by all accounts, the nicest, most humble person in the band: Michael Anthony.

It was a typical post-concert meal, with Roth telling everyone what they did wrong when Ed spoke up. Not to put Roth in his place, but to call out not only Anthony’s performance but also his role in the band.

Excerpt from Monk’s book:
“Michael doesn’t contribute as much as the rest of us,” Edward observed. “Michael doesn’t write music or lyrics. Why does Michael get the same share as the rest of us?” Al jumped in behind Edward, asking the same sorts of questions and offering similar observations about Michael’s value — or lack thereof — to the band. For the most part, Michael just sat there quietly and took it — until David stood up from his seat, a plate of food in hand, and walked around the table. He stopped when he reached Michael’s seat and stood over him for a moment, glaring menacingly but saying nothing. Without saying a word, David slammed his full plate of food down on top of Michael’s full plate. The effect was startling. Food went flying everywhere. Glasses tipped over and shattered. Silverware fell to the floor. And all conversation stopped. Anthony said nothing, stood up, and walked out of the room.

A couple of weeks later, the trio returns to Monk and says, “We want to cut Michael out of the royalties.” They felt since he didn’t write any of the music, he didn’t deserve writing credit or song royalties. (I guess they forgot that neither did Alex.) And not only moving forward but also for the latest album, 1984, which had already been released. At the top of their fame and fortune, they decided to renege on someone that was with them essentially since the beginning. [Insert Jeff Spicoli. “You Dick”] You don’t hear anyone talk bad about Michael Anthony; not even notorious ballbuster and Van Halen photographer Neil Zlozower has a bad word to say about Anthony.

New Contract:
On June 20th, 1984, Michael Anthony, on his 30th birthday, signed a new agreement with Van Halen where he was no longer entitled to any writing credits or royalties derived from publishing from the 1984 album and moving forward.

Since he already had a contract, why did Anthony sign this new agreement? Was he afraid that Van Halen would kick him out of the band in the middle of the tour if he didn’t sign it?

Around the same time, Ed was showing nimble-fingered bassist Billy Sheehan the 1984 concert stage and floated the possibility of him joining Van Halen. The Talas bassist was interested, but there was no official offer. This might have been Ed’s backup plan if he needed to let Anthony go because he didn’t sign the new contract.

Why did Roth, Alex, and Ed decide to do this to their band brother at this time, amid the height of their fame? Could it have been a deep-rooted jealousy of Anthony? Angry with him because he wasn’t as miserable as they were? Anthony was happily married, could party within reason, was well-loved by everyone, and seemed to be the only one genuinely grateful at this point for being in Van Halen.

Or was it a fair and equitable move and something that had been building for years? Roth and especially Ed did write the music and deserved fair compensation for their role in the band. And it had been ten years since they had sat down at Dave’s father’s mansion and decided to split the writing credits — and therefore the royalty money — four ways. If you read Steve Rosen’s Tonechaser, you will see that Ed loved Anthony but was irked by him way before the 1984 tour, and maybe rightly so. Anthony was well aware of this issue before being asked to sign the new contract.

In May of 1982, Rosen posed the question of why they didn’t have a publishing agreement between him and Roth like Lennon and McCartney or Page and Plant. Ed responded with:
“Jimmy Page and Plant didn’t have a brother in the band cuz I love my brother, and I don’t give a fuck. The only person that eats my ass away is Mike because he makes as much as Al, Dave, and I, and he does nothing. He does nothing, but I feel sorry for him because if he was ever out of this band, he would never play again because he’s not good enough.”

According to Ed, Anthony was never around to jam with and never brought one idea to the band. Ed said: “He walks around like he’s Joe Bitching when he does nothing. I’m telling ya, ya can ask out Al, ya can ask Dave, ya can ask Valerie, ya can ask Noel, you can ask anybody. He does nothing, but he’s part of the band.”

Anthony had almost been kicked out for these reasons before, but he was allowed to stay on the agreement that he showed up every time the band got together, even if he didn’t have anything to add.

Ed went on to say, “Mike doesn’t deserve anything. He should just be paid $100 a week for playing. But you can’t do that because he’s part of the band now, and he has been since the first album. What the fuck do you do? Oh, god. What am I doing?”

As far as I could find, Michael Anthony has never spoken publicly about any of this. With the exception of some Roth comments, he almost always takes the high road when talking about Van Halen.

Late breaking Van Halen news alert:
Just as I was about to publish this video, I got word from a very reliable inside source that although Anthony did sign this new contract, it was never enforced. And in late April 2023, Sammy Hagar appeared on the Steve O podcast and implied that Anthony owned an equal 4th of the publishing. Saying “because we co-wrote everything publishing as a team the four…Eddie and I wrote everything Mike and Alex publishing company and yessup recording was owned by all of us equally ” So, as with a lot of Van Halen information..Who the fuck knows.

The last straw:
The U.S. leg of the 1984 tour ended on July 16th, 1984; it would start back up for a short Monsters of Rock tour in Europe a little over a month later. Never wanting to waste a moment, Roth headed to New York to lay down his vocal tracks for his first solo album.

In the early summer of ‘84, while Van Halen was touring, Templeman helped put together a killer group of musicians to help Roth croon four cover songs. (Edgar Winter would run point man for the musicians.) So Roth headed into Power Station Studio and knocked out four songs in under two weeks. (Or, according to Roth, in four days.) Templeman did not believe Roth had plans to leave Van Halen at the time. He thought it was a good idea too. Templeman said: “As a label executive, I thought the EP was a good move. It would keep Dave working and creating, we’d sell some records, and it would keep Van Halen, via Dave, in the public eye for a few months in early 1985. If I’d gotten even the slightest sense that he saw this as step one of David Lee Roth’s post–Van Halen solo career, I wouldn’t have done the record. I never ever wanted to do anything to threaten the future of Van Halen. I can’t emphasize this enough.”

To be fair to Roth, it’s not like this was the first time a member had stepped outside the Van Halen family and recorded with someone else. Eddie had recorded several things outside the band, with one of his contributions helping one album sell more copies than all the Van Halen albums combined. That album is still today the best-selling record of all time.

In the late summer of 1982, producer Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson were determined to make a rock song that would appeal to all tastes and spent weeks looking for a suitable guitarist for the song “Beat It.” They decided they wanted the Dutch Master Eddie Van Halen. Jones got Ed’s number via Templeman, but when Jones called Ed, Ed thought it was a prank and hung up on him. They got it sorted; Eddie went to the studio and nailed the song in two takes after doing a bit of rearranging, and in Ed’s mind, that was it. He thought no one would ever know it was him in the song. And against his manager’s advice, Ed took $0 in fees. One of the main reasons this song would win over the mainstream is Eddie’s R&B/rock riff flavor that opened up rock radio to Jackson. He deserved to be paid but did not want it. In late 2022 “Beat It” studio musician and friend to Eddie, Steve Lukather, revealed that Eddie actually did the solo at 5150. With 5150 not being built by the time “Beat It” was recorded, it’s very probable Lukather is mistaken about where the solo was recorded.

The following year in April of 1983, Queen’s Brian May invited Ed out for a jam session which turned into the album Brian May and Friends Star Fleet Project. Besides both being soft-spoken, incredible musicians, they shared the challenges of dealing with a flamboyant and headstrong lead singer.

You can see the similarities in band dynamics in May’s response to a question posed to him at the time.

For context, May was coming off of one of Queen’s worst-received albums, Hot Space, which was Freddie Mercury-driven and not to the liking of the more rocking May.

Reporter: “A lot of the Outside World who do think about Queen probably think it’s Freddie’s band. He thinks of a direction, everyone fights a bit, but generally follows meekly behind. True?”

May’s response: “It’s a continual fight, because we all have very definite ideas of what direction we want to go in, and none of them are the same. It’s a continual battle, and it’s very democratic, and it’s very painful. Most of the time when we’re recording, it’s hell. You have this constant dividing line between being up and positive about what you’re doing, and the other side is that you may be trying to push what you want down someone else’s throat, and maybe the other three will take it for a little while but in the end, they’ll say, ‘No, this is rubbish, we hate it, stop pushing.’ And that’s what’s happened a lot.”

In the summer of 1983, Ed wrote three synthesizer songs (one of which included a guitar solo) for his wife’s made-for-TV movie, The Seduction of Gina.

In early 1984, Eddie started to work on music for Cameron Crowe’s pseudo-follow-up to Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Wild Life. None of the score was officially released, except for the track, “Donut City.”

One instrumental from these sessions got reused for the much bigger film Back to the Future.

So in the span of a year and a half and near the end of the height of Van Halen’s fame, Eddie recorded many tracks that would end up in three movies, jammed with a renowned guitarist from a legendary band that turned into an album, patented a piece of guitar gear, helped produce a record for Frank Zappa’s son, built a home studio, and recorded on an album that would end up blocking 1984 from the #1 spot on the charts. (And he performed live with Jackson during the 1984 tour.) Plus, if Ed had had his way, he would have also produced and played on the Allan Holdsworth’s album.

Even in the early years of Van Halen, Ed played outside the group. In 1977, Alex and Eddie recorded with Gene Simmions of KISS, and in 1978, Ed played on the Templeman-produced album by Nicolette Larson. He also played on Tim Bogert’s (Vanilla Fudge) “Don’t Leave Me This Way” in 1983.

There is nothing wrong with Ed doing all these side gigs, and I get why Roth thought it was no big deal for him to record four basically throw-away cover songs on his own. But this would be cited repeatedly by many people as the last straw for Edward.

When David Lee Roth first heard “Beat It,” he thought someone was ripping off Ed’s licks. But then he found out it was actually Eddie. Roth said: “It was at that point I said maybe I’ll do something on the side as well. Certainly, nothing that would conflict with what we were about as Van Halen, but I’ll keep my eye open. It was some months later when I was in Mexico with my trusted assistant, Ed Anderson. We were sitting under a thatched-roof, empty little bar out in Playa Blanca, looking out upon the sea, and the Beach Boys were on the stereo. Ed said to me, ‘You should do this song.’ It was ‘California Girls.’” This novel idea — combined with Ed already working outside the group, and the frustration of wasting time sitting outside for hours at Ed’s 5150 studio hoping he’d wake up so they could work — led Roth to wonder: Why can’t I do a solo album?

According to Roth, everyone in the Van Halen camp knew of his solo pursuits. But accounts from Monk and Anthony say the first time the band knew about it was while waiting for a Concorde flight to their European Monsters of Rock shows.

Michael said: “I remember we were going to Europe, and we were sitting at the airport, and he played us the tape, the EP of the songs that were going to be on the album. I thought it was pretty shitty that he’d always get on Edward’s case because he was being approached to do different things like ‘Beat It’ and all kinds of different things. And Roth was, ‘If this affects me, I want to know.’ And then all of the sudden, one day he goes, ‘Hey, I got these four songs that Ted Templeman and I are going off and doing’… He plays us this tape and it’s like, “Mmm, yeah, good.” I wasn’t going to tell him to his face that I thought it stunk.”

Eddie’s public response in 1984 was very diplomatic. He said: “I think it’s something he always wanted to do. I think it’s great he’s actually doing it.” But privately, Ed thought of it as a novelty item and felt betrayed.

Monsters of Rock:
After an exhaustive U.S. tour, Van Halen decided not to tour Europe extensively. Instead, after a four-year hiatus from Europe, they decided to join the multi-band Monsters of Rock tour for five dates. Sandwiched between openers Motley Crue, Dio, Ozzy Osbourne, and other bands, and headliners AC/DC.

For the most part, the band’s five European dates were standard shows — full of Roth’s swaggering wise-ass, spectacular stage presence and energy. (At the Castle Donington gig, he took what may have been a slight jab at Ed by saying to the crowd: “Michael Jackson ain’t got shit on heavy metal.”) And the band played with enthusiasm as they did nine months earlier at the start of the tour in Jacksonville, Florida.

Backstage at Castle Donington, Ed was starting to show his frustrations — with Roth, presumably — by lashing out at others.

World-renowned rock photographer Ross Halfin relayed his dark encounter with Ed. “I remember shooting them onstage, and Edward was smiling at me, so I was smiling back. I went backstage to see them afterwards, and Eddie was hanging out with Neal Schon from Journey and John Entwistle from the Who, so I took a few photos. Then Eddie said, ‘Hey, fag, what’s your fucking problem?’ I said, ‘What?’ And their tour manager said, ‘Oh, look, just ignore him.’ But he kept going, ‘What’s your fucking problem, fag? Smiling at me like a fucking fag.’ He just turned completely nasty. I realized he was drunk, and when he was drunk, he could turn from the nicest, most charming guy to the most horrible person in the world.”

According to Noel Monk, Ed was backstage with Neal Schon of Journey ungraciously noting that Michael Anthony’s solo, which the crowd loved (even though he ripped his pants in the middle of it), had been composed and spoon-fed to the bassist by Edward. “I had to teach him that,” Edward said. “Every note.” Later, Edward had a meltdown in the dressing room after their set, provoked by a guitar glitch during the show.

On September 2, 1984, in Nuremberg, Germany, after an encore of “Happy Trails,” the band, with the original lineup, would never perform together again. Unknown to everyone, the Van Halen we loved was over.