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Museday Mumblings (Vol. 23): Van Halen Live

Museday Mumblings (Vol. 23): Van Halen Live

This one is about my experiences seeing Van Halen live.

Three was NOT a charm.

Some say I never actually saw Van Halen, because all the shows I saw were with Sammy Hagar. I kind of agree, actually. Van Halen was sort of long in the tooth by the time I was old enough to attend a concert, and they were deep into Sammy territory, so the edge and “show” were sort of gone. But I loved 67% of the shows I saw.

The first time I saw VH was May 1, 1992 at the San Diego Sports Arena. Literally two days into the LAPD/Rodney King riots. I was living in San Diego and my mom drove down with my brothers from Bakersfield. My poor mother – she drove around LA to the east just for safety. They got a hotel and we hung out and acted like idiots, so excited about the show.

So we go to the arena and it was just a mass of people. Sold out show. I think it was the first time we all four brothers ever went and did something like this together (if I recall correctly, Mom just stayed at the hotel – I may be misremembering). We lined up to get in, then we found our seats, which were way up in the back, but with a good, central view, even though we were kind of far away. Baby Animals was the opening act (fronted by Nuno Bettencourt of Extreme’s now-ex-wife Suze) They were unremarkable and to be honest, just not my thing. Not the type of band you’d expect to open for Van Halen. Plus they sounded like shit. Not sure if that was just the headliner crapping on the opener with a bad mix or their sound engineer’s fault in some way. It was kind of a crappy-sounding arena. Most are, actually. Outdoor shows ALWAYS sound better. My brothers and I had a great time, though, despite everything and the climate of Southern California at the time.

I think about seven or eight days later I got drunk for the first time in my life in Tijuana. Seems appropriate.

The second time I saw Van Halen was during the Right Here Right Now tour in July 11, 1993 at Jones Beach Theater in New York. My Aunt Eileen made it happen. We drove up to New York and stayed with our family there. It was SO MUCH FUN. Got a T-shirt. Ate food. It was kind of hot but the sea breeze kept us cool. Vince Neil’s solo band opened the show, and they were better than you would expect. Steve Stevens was his guitarist – and he RULED. Van Halen was ON, too. It was an amazing show. They played “Unchained”, which I don’t think I’d ever heard Sammy do. We all had a truly great time, and I was inspired. This was peak EVH love for me – I had seen my hero, and he had been amazing.

The third and final time I saw Van Halen was during the shitty 2004 reunion tour on my birthday – September 16, 2004 at the Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena. I say that to put this in context. Eddie was buried under his addiction on this tour. He was FUCKED UP during this show – probably drunk and completely gacked out on coke. He and Sam were NOT getting along, and you could feel that with their interactions. This was the tour where they made Michael Anthony take a major pay cut just to participate. I already was a little annoyed at Van Halen, but I thought going to see them on my birthday might be a cool experience.

I was wrong.

First, we got into the show kind of late and missed the opening act, local Jax favorites Shinedown. I personally didn’t care all that much, to be honest. They were a butt rock band and I just wasn’t into that stuff. I think we caught the last two songs. They did sound great live. I’ll give them that. Brent Smith is a truly great singer.

Then the “mighty” VH hits the stage. The quotes reveal the irony. Sam came out strutting and he sounded great but looked stupid in a really bright yellow shirt. Alex looked like he was in physical pain behind the drums pretty much the whole show, but was managing. Mikey sounded great as usual – giving his standard excellent performance. Ed was a MESS. Playing songs wrong, missing changes, clams (wrong notes) everywhere. He looked homeless. He had his hair pulled up in a top ponytail and he had on overalls with no shirt. His tone was terrible. He didn’t seem to be meshing with anyone, including his brother, which is insane. Then we get most of the way through the show and hit the guitar solo. And it was EMBARRASSING. His guitar was out of tune the whole solo. He ham-handed his way through all his signature stuff like a drunk at Guitar Center, and let the guitar feed back like he was trying to punish us rather than do something cool. The set list was good, most of the crowd liked it (they did two encores) but the show was very upsetting for me.

I didn’t buy any merch. I walked away so disappointed. And kind of bored. And Van Halen had never really bored me, other than the 1998 album they made with Gary Cherone (Van Halen III) . I was sad about the shell they’d become. And annoyed that the show tickets cost as much as the first two combined. I was kind of done.

A few years later they announced the reunion with David Lee Roth, and when they announced that Eddie’s son Wolfgang Van Halen would be replacing Mike on the tour, there was no way I would go. He turned out to be a quick study and is a good musician, so he wasn’t a bad choice, but I just couldn’t support it. I do look forward to hearing Wolf’s music once it comes out (release was delayed by the pandemic). But what they did here was the last straw. All evidence points to Michael Anthony being a good human and the sweetest person, and the Van Halen brothers screwed him over every chance they had. Mike found out about the tour through the media. No one called him. No one bothered. The nice guy finished last because the insecure egomaniac bullies needed to have their way.

So I never did go see them again. I tried to get free tickets for the 2015 tour through my radio contacts, simply because I wanted to see them one more time because I figured this would be it (and sadly, I was right). It didn’t happen. And I’m pretty okay with it. the 1992 and 1993 shows were fantastic. Those are the memories of Van Halen live that I will hold forever.

A little side story – in 1984 when I was living in Fremont, California, my best friend Joel’s big brother went to the Van Halen concert at the Cow Palace and I happened to be sleeping over that night, so I was awake when he came home – it was the first time I’d seen anyone partied out. He was so happy, though. I remember he had this awesome headband that I still think about to this day (the middle one).

Take care, all! Thanks for coming on this little journey.

Rest in peace, Ed. Rest in peace, Van Halen. Thanks for all the great music.

Wash your hands. Physically distance. Call your friends. Vote for sanity and respect. Black lives matter.

Peace be the journey!

TMS

Museday Mumblings (Vol. 22): King Edward

Museday Mumblings (Vol. 22): King Edward

I am crushed.

One of my greatest inspirations as a musician, a very large reason why I even play, died of cancer on October 6th.

Edward Lodewijk Van Halen – better known to the world as “Eddie Van Halen” or “EVH” – the world-renowned guitarist and founder of the hard rock band Van Halen, my favorite band from about ages 10-25 (stuff happened around then that knocked them down a peg, I’ll get into that later).

Eddie was a master at his instrument, both as a soloist and improviser and as a writer and rhythm player. He popularized so many crazy techniques on guitar that we all consider sort of “normal” now, but few were really doing them in 1978 when Van Halen’s first record came out. He was an ardent tinkerer, assembing an instrument that served his purposes when he realized nothing commercially available would work for what he wanted to accomplish. He had wonderful stage presence, jumping around and smiling, all while playing amazingly difficult guitar parts and making it look easy. He also sang wonderful backing vocals, blending with his bandmates and providing a radio-friendly sound making their vocal hooks sparkle.

Most of this is stuff everyone seems to be covering as they pay tribute to Edward. And it’s all relevant to why Ed was so important to me as a young musician. I’ll boil it down to the lessons I learned from studying him closely, and then go into how it shaped the musician I became. SO MUCH of my philosophy about music is rooted in things I read in interviews with him that I think paying tribute to the lessons I’ve learned is an excellent way to explain why he’s so important.

Lesson #1: If it sounds good, it is good.
What I got from this is that we’re all different. We all love what we love. We should not be ashamed if we like some music or a tone or whatever because if we love it, that’s all that matters. If you like it, that’s absolutely all that matters. If it inspires you, that’s the best thing ever.

Lesson #2: Smile!
Eddie always played with an impish smile. It was never an arrogant smile. It was borderline cocky, but it always was inviting and told you how much fun he was having playing music. I let the music take over when I play, and often that makes me smile. Not just when things are going right…but when crazy shit happens or I swing and miss on something…I smile. There was a time when I didn’t – I used to get mad and scowl, and it looked terrible. Once it was brought to my attention, I vowed to pull a Van Halen and always chill out and grin. It’s been the best thing ever. People love it when I smile while performing, and often mention how much they love seeing me grin when I’m playing – how much more fun and inviting everything seems because it makes them happy.

Lesson #3: Try everything…
There’s a phrase Ed always said about soloing, “falling down the stairs and landing on your feet”. It was always in the context of jamming/improvising. Trying things, taking it way out or just trying something new, and then sticking the landing. That has been a mantra for me ever since. I always look for creative ways to be an ensemble player, to enhance the arrangement without distracting from what’s important, and then as a soloist, I will really go for it but then bring it back for a solid finish/transition to the meat of whatever we’re playing. It’s exciting and fun, and you’re always challenging yourself, and thus setting yourself up for constant improvement.

Lesson #4: Find new ways to do things.
When I first had access to a guitar, I had only played a little clarinet and keyboards. So naturally (and perhaps subconsciously), when I was farting around with the new-to-me instrument, I tried to play the guitar with both hands on the neck. So when I realized it was kind of Van Halen’s “thing”, he immediately became my favorite guitarist. The only person I honestly remembered seeing playing guitar like that was jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan in some movie (looked it up: it was “Blind Date”), and his method was completely different – very multi-fingered and chordal. But after the Van Halen obsession began, I basically sought out every unorthodox way to make a guitar make a sound. I learned pinch/artificial harmonics. I learned natural harmonics. I learned how to tap harmonics. I learned what frets would produce what interval from the original note. I’d do crazy stuff like pull the high E string off the neck and see which notes I could make on the side of the neck (not a Van Halen thing, I just found it fun). Just anything to challenge the “normal” ways of playing guitar. Here’s a little video where I talk about some of this silliness…

Lesson #5: Serve yourself and never pander to your audience
Pretty ironic that a guy who ended up being a pretty seasoned cover band guy who does nothing BUT pander to audiences would say this was a major lesson he learned, but it’s true. When it comes to my own music, I want to be happy with it. I honestly have never done music to gain others’ approval, even in the context of cover bands. I always want to LOVE what I’m doing, and I’ve gotten better at saying “no” as I’ve grown older. I’m sincerely proud of what we do in Chandler and The Bings, because I put my personality into everything. And when creating my own music, I’ve only sought to make the sounds in my head into pieces of music or songs. And it’s cool if other people like the stuff I write, but in the end it doesn’t matter. I made it. I like it. Or at least I’m satisfied that I tried. Ed was ALWAYS on this program. He wanted to play what HE wanted to play, no matter how much fans bitched, or the climate didn’t seem right for whatever music it was. He was going to create what he wanted to create, and that was a lesson that really hit home to me. If you try and satisfy others, you’ll never be happy, but if you work to create things that are meaningful to you and you dig? You win no matter what. Other people liking it is just frosting.

Lesson #6: Don’t be a prick
This is where we get into the darker and sadder side of my love-hate relationship with my childhood/teen/young adult guitar idol. Starting in the mid-90s, a lot of stories came out of him being a dick to Sammy, then a dick to Dave, then talking shit about Michael Anthony. It was becoming more and more apparent that he was just a bitter and angry person. It’s likely his substance abuse problems caused a lot of this behavior, but it still ruined him for me. His treatment of Michael Anthony was the worst, though. Mikey never did anything but support Eddie, play excellent bass, and was a major part of the vocal brilliance of Van Halen. So not only did Eddie go back on the deal they had as a band to split everything four ways and make him sign away his rights to the publishing in 2000 or so, he made him take a major pay cut to participate in the 2003-2004 reunion tour with Sammy. Mike did it for the fans and his friend Sam. A “lost” interview from 1981 or 1982 came out at some point in the early 2000s and Ed spends a large amount of the article shitting on Mike, so this wasn’t something new. He basically didn’t bother to tell Mike about the 2007 reunion with David Lee Roth – just got Wolf to play bass and went with it. I vowed to never give them another dime after all that mistreatment of Mikey. I read Sammy’s autobiography which was very illuminating about a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff that went down “On The Inside”. That basically made me write him off as a bitter prick. But it was 2015 or so, when Eddie did an interview where he claimed Michael Anthony had to be shown how to play all the parts – that somehow he was a fundamentally basic and untalented musician – that was it for me. Fuck Eddie Van Halen. Fuck his EVH gear, fuck his legacy, FUCK THAT GUY. I was done.

Every now and then I’d try to enjoy Van Halen the way I once did, but it was basically impossible. I’d always think about how much of a prick Eddie was, and I learned by his shitty example that I never wanted to be like him as a man. Because, to me, he wasn’t one. I’m sure he was better to a lot of people in his life, and I know this changed while he was fighting his cancer and I’ve heard he mended a lot of bridges, including the one with Sammy. But I think it was most people forgiving him, not him reaching out to apologize. And since I don’t know him or how he really was, I take all the nice stories of his kindness and generosity and mix them with all the bad shit and then put that in the context of what he meant to me and that’s why I’m spending all this time writing about him. EVH could be a prick. But he could also be a sweetheart. I’ve definitely been a prick from time to time, but I’ve never fucked over a bandmate the way he did. Weirdly, though, his death made it possible for me to enjoy his music again the way I did when I was little, because the imprint he left was so good it outweighed a lot of the bad things I was hung up on for so many years. If the people involved could forgive him and mourn him, there was no sense in me continuing to be mad. I really hate when people are offended on behalf of people, and I’m not going to be one of those people.

I’m just going to enjoy his music, and think about how he and the boys made me happy when I was a kid. I’m going to focus on how much he and the band inspired me to become a better musician. And I’m going to fucking smile while I play, jump around, and when I improvise, I’m going to always try to fall down the stairs and land on my feet. Because that’s what Eddie would do.

Rest in peace, King Edward, and thank you for everything (the good and the bad). I love you.

TMS