THE HISTORY OF VAN HALEN

Important background info:

NETHERLANDS, THE, constitutional monarchy of Europe, also known popularly but unofficially as Holland. The Netherlands is one of the so-called “Low Countries.” Everybody guess why!

—Funk & Wagnalls & Me

A small country, forced to live by its wits... because of its tolerance for unorthodox opinions, a haven for intellectuals. What we’ve got here is one wimpy country.

— Carl Sagan in Cosmos. Reading between the lines courtesy of the author.

My mom wanted us in the U.S. and out of Holland—she was afraid we’d get into music...

— Eddie Van Halen, Guitar Player,

April, 1980.

Your mother should know.

—Paul McCartney, world’s most successful musician.

☆ ☆ ☆

Eyebrow-raising true story:

1955: The year that spawned Van Halen. Literally. Well, everybody except Ed, but he’s just the guitar player.

First out of the birth canal was Alex Van Halen on May 8 in Amsterdam. Needing a rhythm section more than the rhythm method, a Mr. & Mrs. Anthony of Chicago, U.S.A. obliged by parenting l’il Michael (which he still is, come to think of it), on June 20. Interestingly enough, as we historians like to say, both dads/culprits were musicians. Al’s dad blew the clarinet; Mike’s pop played the trumpet in big bands. You know, big bands...Styx, Foreigner, REO.

Van Halen’s image was well-established, to say the very least: the Sweethearts of Excess.

On October 10, David Lee Roth bowed in, most likely demanding to be breast-fed. Dave’s dad (and a frightening number of his relatives) was a doctor. Early genetic experimentation cannot be ruled out.

What was going on in ’55, anyway? Well, throughout much of the spring and summer, “Rock Around The Clock” fought it out with “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” for the top spot in Your Hit Parade. Tragically, rock won out, and the king of the wild frontier would be put on hold until Adam Ant served it up... uh... “Alamoed” in 1981.

By the time our modern Davy first bawled (without a slap, by the way), America’s #1 hum was “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” which ended up being the top song of the year! Like, bad vibes, huh?

1955 has been termed “a year of tragedy” for many other reasons. Lawrence Welk launched his TV career with a 99-year, no-cut clause. President Eisenhower suffered a heart attack, possibly from missing a putt. Eminent physicist Albert Einstein died; this is now regarded as a trade-off for David Lee Roth.

In retrospect, we can see that the happiest event of 1955 was the pablum debut of 75% of VH. Oh yeah, Salk invented the polio vaccine, but he never followed up with Vaccine II or anything. Lousy management, I guess.

1957: And the cradle will rock...Eddie Van Halen was born—hands first— in Amsterdam on January 26. This allowed young Alex to gain early experience at “hitting,” which would serve him well in later years. Meanwhile, Eddie showed no outstanding guitar talents during his first year, believing that cutting teeth should always precede cutting leads.

Music-wise, America deliberated the relative merits of Elvis The First (“Love Me Tender,” “All Shook Up,” “Teddy Bear,” “Memphis Calling”) and Debbie Reynolds (“Tammy”). It was tough, but Elvis won. In other news, Sputnik was ’57’s rocket from Russia, Britain tested an H-Bomb without Malcolm McLaren’s say-so, and Ike emancipated Little Rock, Arkansas. Perhaps more interesting was Strom Thurmond’s record-breaking 24-hour-plus Senate filibuster, which—years later—would be the musical m.o. of Van Halen’s Canadian contemporaries, Rush.

David Lee Roth decided he'd become a singer when his voice changed (never did, though), having heard Ray Charles' “It's Cryin' Time Again." Or maybe that was Lome Green talking “Ringo."

1963: Alex and Eddie were learning classical piano from a Russki teacher per their father’s wishes. A later Warner Brothers release (written by VH, natch) put it this way: “Beaten and forced to learn classical music, the young Van Halens practiced on a stolen piano in a dank and clammy basement hovel...slaving hour after hour over the keyboards, their shackled wrists weakened by hunger, they secretly plotted to someday escape this musical prison.” Makes sense to me; all us CREEM writers know about musical prisons.

Meanwhile—stateside—youthful David Lee was diagnosed as hyperactive, which was probably about as tough as diagnosing that the sun is hot. Out in the real world— for all you young people—the moptops were beginning their top of the pops mop-up. JFK didn’t notice that the light had changed, Johnny Carson took over the Tonight Show, Christine Keeler gave the Limeys a halfway decent hetero-sex scandal, and Pope John said ciao to the material world.

1964: The Kinks’ Ray Davies wrote “You Really Got Me,” just to show he was no pretender to the rock biz. The Kinks’ version—reaching **1 on the American charts—probably remains the definitive recording of the tune. This is what I like to call foreshadowing, y’know?

Big news of the year: David Lee Roth decided he’d become a singer when his voice changed (never did, though), having heard Ray Charles’ “It’s Cryin’ Time Again.” Or maybe that was Lome Greene talking “Ringo,” but—no matter! The die was cast.

1965: Ed Van Halen bought his first instrument—a drum kit, logically enough — after hearing “Wipe Out,” or maybe after hearing Ringo act naturally. Big Bro’ Al proved to be a better banger, though, and was allotted the drums...Ed shot $70 on a guitar with four pick-ups. Quite possibly the young prodigy was confusing pick-ups with prunes. Are four enough? Five too many??

1967: The Van Halen family moved to Los Angeles, proving it’s a short jump from the Netherlands to Never-Never Land. Summer of Love (especially in Newark and Detroit), “Ode To Billy Joe," Packers play Chiefs (and whip ’em good) in Super Bovyl One, and the marriage of Elvis Presley all get in the record book.

1969: Michael Anthony moved to L.A., tragically missing Macomb, Illinois, by inches. Never short on sociability, Mike ends up playing trumpet in his high school marching band and orchestra. Other notable events in ’69: Americans walk on the moon, complaining of lousy taxi service, Ike and Ho Chi Minh both kick (karma, right?), Jets and Mets bring it all back home, and...my, my...My Lai.

1974: Alex and Eddie had been playing in a power trio called “Mammoth" for some time.. Michael Anthony was handling the bass for “Snake" in the meantime. Slithering to jazz improvisation classes (they give classes?), Mike met up with Al, and you know what that means. Yep, the inevitable garage audition, historic joining of the band and all the rest. Mike became the new bass player for Mammoth (“A junior Cream,” recalled Ed)...but destiny was unsatisfied! What’s the problem with this destiny, anyway?

Well, along came David Lee Roth—you remember him, he’s the guy that replaced Einstein—and Mammoth was complete. Heck, Eddie said it better: “We got stuck with each other.”

That’s about the most historic events of 1974, unless you want to count streaking, Hank Aaron, and a Presidential resignation.

1975-1977: Mammoth played the bar scene endlessly, changing their name to Van Halen along the way. Basically, they played oldies because, basically, they were a bar band. One oldie they “turned into a jet plane” (Ed’s words, not mine) was “You Really Got Me.”

Roth later recalled this era: “Once the band was together, it was a steady up. We would play as much as possible, anywhere we could, and just jam and jam and jam. We figured that if we were good enough to play a big place, then a lot more people would come back every night. And that’s kind of what happened.”

Alex Van Halen became the only drummer in the world playing two complete kits; most likely he was the only drummer in the world who wanted to.

Another thing that kind of happened was that Gene Simmons—a member of the immensely popular and forgettable Kiss—took a liking to VH, popping the bucks for their first demo sessions.

Finally, Warners movers Mo Ostin (Chairman of the Board) and Ted Templemen (A & R veep) caught the guys’ show at the Starwood Club. By the next sunset, Van Halen were signed to Warner Brothers, who’d missed a splendid opportunity to spin off a new label—“Warn Your Sisters.”

Mark down 1977 as Real Life’s Panic In The Year Zero, then. By the way, that Elvis Presley guy we were talking about died the same year. Coincidence?

1978: February—Michael Anthony’s favorite month, yuk, yuk—brought the release of Van Halen, as the group tried to crack the market...never an easy task.

Fortunately for them, radio programmers met in secrecy and vowed to play the LP’s single—“You...Really...Got...um... oh, yeah, Me!”—until Bossie bow-wowed. Anyhow, the single caught on and, since the release of Van Halen, the group has never been off the charts. I mean, even to go to the bathroom.

VH took the public by storm and the critics by zephyr. One typical review by an erudite and perceptive writer bandied about words like “dinosaurs,” “archetypical big rockers,” “late psychedelic/ early-metal pyrotechnics,” and “metal/ metal/metal,” even stooping so low as to criticize the album’s cover!! Darn that Riegel—the guy couldn’t have missed the boat any better from Switzerland. An archetypical critic/critic/critic, though... aesthetically, Jacques Cousteau, commercially, land-locked; usually, right.

What this all meant was that VH’s overplayed “Battle With The Critics” had begun. Eventually, of course, the band would alienate much (but not enough to hurt) of the listening public more than the assembled Cryd-Guild.

A year of “deadly numbers,” ’78 saw 914 die in Jonestown, 144 die in San Diego when a private plane collided with a commercial jet, and Ray Blazine and Bobbie Sherlock set a single-kiss record by holding a smooch for 130 hours, two minutes, and 17 seconds, the approximate studio time devoted to Van Halen.

1979: After another grueling two weeks in the studio, the band’s second album was released in April. Conscious of the mistakes of previous artists (Salk, et. al.), the album was titled Van Halen II.

Meanwhile, the band was becoming a true on-stage spectable. Alex Van Halen became the only drummer in the world playing two complete kits; most likely he was the only drummer in the world who wanted to. David Lee Roth was fast on his way to becoming the most loved and hated person in the world (all at the same time), and Eddie Van Halen was garnering increasing respect, soon to turn into reverence.

All in all, a good year for Van Halen, fending off stiff (and I mean stiff) competition like “Time Passages,” “Forever In Blue Jeans,” and “You’re Only Lonely.” The pendulum was swinging back to Metal, and young America danced the year away to Van Halen and sundry second-stringers.

1980: In which VH established themselves once and for all with Women And Children First (April), a title most people would think has two words too many, if D.L. Roth would’ve had his druthers. A good year for Eddie Van, who—at the ripe old age of 23—won every guitar-playing award in sight.

Van Halen introduced the most inane contract rider in show business, demanding M&M’s backstage , with all of the brown ones removed.

On a humorous note, Van Halen introduced the most inane contract rider in show business, demanding M & M’s backstage, with all of the brown ones removed. As Grand Funk one? said, they’re an American band. Needless to say, VH took righteous umbrage when their rider was violated in New Mexico, and did your usual thousands of dollars worth of damage to a hapless concert hall.

As Van Halen was hitting the long ball, John Lennon was shot to death at year’s end, signing an autograph instead of a contract. Reagan won big, lining up his chances to get shot in ’81.

1981: Maintaining an interesting offstage persona, Van Halen became a continual candidate for the National Star as well as Billboard. In April, Ed married TV star Valerie Bertinelli. For laughs, David Lee Roth gave an enlightening interview in Oui and took out paternity “insurance,” which is something most guys can pick up at the drugstore.

The band managed to continue their reckless touring, which now included the largest entourage in the business. In May, they even got an album out (Fair Warning), spending an ungodly five weeks recording. The album immediately went Top Ten; by now, all their LP’s were at least million-sellers.

By the end of the year, Van Halen’s image was well-established, to say the very least: the Sweethearts of Excess. Say, I had a kid that year, too—no insurance, though. Success is funny.

1982: The last I heard—mid-February —Van Halen was “in the studio.” This might mean another album and, possibly, another tour. What do you think?

CREEM SPECIAL EDITION

VAN HALEN

DAVID LEE ROTH

"You heard about the Boston Strangler? Honey, I'm not one of those..."

CREEM SPECIAL EDITION

VAN HALEN

EDDIE VAN HALEN

"Gee, I wonder if Val knows...?"

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VAN HALEN

ALEX VAN HALEN "Whaddya mean I look like Mickey Mouse?"

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VAN HALEN

MICHAEL ANTHONY

"Hmmmmmm. Does this hair on my chin mean I've finally reached puberty??"