MONKEYS PAWED MY OBELISK

MONKEYS PAWED MY OBELISK

Edouard Dauphin

From The Journal Of A Dauphin:

Friday, the 20th. Woke at dawn. Aftereffects of “controlled experiment” seem to be subsiding. Trembling has abated. Hair has resumed growing on arms. Walked about Chelsea for two hours, Ate at Joe’s. Home: watched Dream House. Couple from Sacramento did not win The Usher. CREEM phoned, wanted story on Van Halen. Haggled over money. After an hour, they gave in, agreed to pay me some.

Thursday, the 26th. Doctor X says I’m almost back to normal. (Ha!) CREEM called again. Looks like I’ll be hooking up with Van Halen either in Florida or Southern California. Check weather for both areas. Each is sunny, in high ’70s. Which way to the airport? CREEM rings back with a slight change of plans. I’ll be meeting Van Halen in Dayton, Ohio, where the temperature is 8 degrees. Begin jabbing pins in a voodoo doll labeled Dave DiMartino.

Tuesday, the 7th. Piedmont flight 435 touches down at Dayton, where the. thermometer reading has soared to 11. Beneath sign proclaiming “Birthplace Of Aviation,” The Dauphin skulks through the terminal, wondering idly if Ohio is one of the half dozen states where there is still an outstanding warrant for his arrest. At baggage claim, dazed oldster rushes up, asking “Is this Dayton?” Making it more odd is the fact thaf he has come in from off the street. Take limo into town. Driver notes that Van Halen’s Dayton concert is sold out in one hour and fans have been camped at the arena since five this morning. “Groups that big usually bypass us,” he remarks. “Ozzy only got as close as Columbus.” We pass a billboard that reads: “Need $8 today? Alpha Plasma Center.” Is Dauph imagining things or is Dayton a little weird?

The concert hall is an 8,000 seater and most of those 8,000 are converging on the car as we wheel into the restricted area, nearly running down a couple of security guards who are trying to clear a path for us. Backstage, things are quiet, almost solemn, and for a good reason. It’s three hours before the concert and nobody’s here. In the hospitality suite, they’re laying in the alcohol supply, \yhich consists almost exclusively of quart bottles of vodka and 16-ounce cans of Schlitz Malt Liquor. Now that’s what I call hospitable. Dauph pours a couple of quick shots and ambles about. From behind a door marked “Sound Room” comes a fusilade of electric guitar notes. Did I say nobody was here? The door opens and out strolls Eddie Van Halen.

Much has been written about Eddie’s dedication to his guitar—how if wife Valerie ever divorces him she could name a ’59 Stratocaster as correspondent—but spending an hour with him as he loosens up for the Dayton show, one can’t help noticing the man’s singlemindedness of purpose when it comes to the musical end of Van Halen’s creative output. This is someone justifiably proud of the awards he’s won as best rock guitarist as well as the studio he recently built in his backyard, which he christened 51-50, police code for “escaped mental patient.” Well, you gotta have a sense of humor when you spend a good part of your professional life being seen in public with David Lee Roth.

"This career is like balancing a marble on a two-by-four." — David Lee Roth

Perched on a stool in the sound room, sipping from a bottle of Blue Nun and wearing a floppy shirt and threadbare jeans even Rick Johnson would have tossed in the Hefty bag months ago, Eddie is candid about 1984, Van Halen’s biggest and arguably best LP to date, noting that producer Ted Templeman was AWOL for most of the recording. “Basically, Donn Landee and I did the whole album. There were songs that we did without anyone there, that were just complete tracks already and then we’d say: ‘Come on, Dave, sing.’ ‘Jump’ was orginally done without anybody. ‘1984,’ the intro. All the guitar solos. I don’t do anything with anyone around. I like doing stuff alone.”

“Not everything, though,” interjects Alex Van Halen who has wandered in from the corridor. “You get calluses on your hand.”

Eddie laughs. “I don’t even listen to the radio,” he goes on. “I don’t buy records. The last tape I bought was Brand X two years ago. I don’t listen to anything. 1 don’t mean that I think I’m top good, that I don’t have to—but 1 don’t get inspired by listening to anything, except maybe Debussy. I’ve been playing a lot of piano lately, getting off on that.”

What about the slagging Van Halen has often received from the rock press? “The worse, the better,” says Eddie. “At least entertainmentwise, for myself. I’ll read some guy who writes: ‘Michael Anthony played a lousy guitar solo’ and he doesn’t even play guitar. Half these guys don’t know what they’re listening to or who we are. A lot of them are frustrated musicians themselves.”

Alex nods. “I look at Van Halen as social workers. What we’re really doing is creating jobs for these guys.”

Not that CREEM scribblers would ever come in for this type of assessment. After all, haven’t we hailed each Van Halen ajbum as a masterpiece and already put out an entire VH special with another in the works? And then there’s the Readers Poll, which, this annum, was checkered with Van Halen

references, ranging from Top Guitarist and MVP (Eddie) to Comeback Of The Year (David) and Second Most Pathetic (also the dark-rooted one), having yielded the top spot to Boy George. “But Dave’s working on a sex change. He’ll get it back next year,” predicts Alex.

Bass player Michael Anthony arrives, quiet, affable, genuinely pleased at a compliment on his playing. The talk turns to other musicians, with Eddie claiming that the only guitarist to have ever really influenced him was Eric Clapton. “He’s the only one I ever copied. And I don’t play anything like him. But I love the way he plays.”

“John Holmes inspired me,” offers Alex.

This seems as good a time as any to get the truth about the infamous Van Halen contract rider stipulating that M&Ms be provided backstage, with all the brown ones removed. “Again, we’re creating jobs,” says Eddie. “Someone has to pick out the brown ones.”

“ See,” continues Alex, “ you’ve got this list of what you want backstage. You want your Perrier. A bar of soap. Three blondes. And M&Ms without the brown ones.”

“We just want to make sure they’ve read it,” explains Eddie. “And when we get a bowl with brown M&Ms, we krtow that they didn’t read it. It’s that simple.”

“And when the three blondes aren’t there,” laughs Alex, “we rea//y know they haven’t read it.”

Speaking of blondes, The Great One has appeared, resplendently decked out, essaying the odd kick, chatting enthusiastically with those who venture over, and reminding The Dauphin of the first time we met, a yearand-a-half earlier at an Iggy Pop show in New York. On that occasion, while the likes of David Bowie, Debbie Harry and the Clash huddled behind the bulletproof glass in a self-styled VIP Lounge, David Lee Roth, sans bodyguard, slipped out to the general admission area to nurse a beer at the bar just like the rest of The Great Unwashed. For some, he may be the rock star you love to loathe, but give the man this: he’s accessible.

“I’m at the point where I don't have to worry about how much it costs." — David Lee Roth

And he is onstage too, minutes later, dancing out onto the edge, even inviting members of the audience up to join him. Items of clothing—scarves, lingerie, you name it—are tossed at him. He spears each one deftly, assimilating it into his total performance. Behind him, the band punches out a barrage of maximum arena rock, fusing technical precision with unbridled animation. These guys are good and they know it. The crowd knows it too. Some time ago, CREEM’s Dave D. opined: “If you don’t like Van Halen, you’re wrong.” To which The Dauph can only add: “And dumb too.”

Down in the photographer’s pit, the narrow no man’s land between Van Halen and 8,000 believers, Edouard crouches, feeling like some glazed foot soldier in a surreal bunker designed by George Grosz. Nearby, CREEM lensman Ross Marino clings for life to a stage abutment as he trains his camera on the battlefield. Every few minutes, the barricades buckle and someone hurtles into our foxhole to be escorted away or, in some cases, lowered onto a stretcher for medical attention. By the time Van Halen reaches their encores, the region underneath the stage is a rocking St. Elsewhere. Just another Van Halen concert, but not your average Tuesday night in Dayton, that’s for sure.

Backstage, post performance, the atmosphere is Party. The Bull and the Russian firewater are flowing like peepee at an infant’s convention. A comely blonde in poured black leather struts about, cracking a whip. Chairs and tables have been shoved back against a wall and people are dancing. The more adventurous of the Dayton females have interloped into the sanctum sanctorum, some to gaze about slack-jawed, others to assume a more calculating stance. The band mingles; in Alex’s case, somewhat aggressively. The Dauph sips from his silver flask of Villa Mauresque absinthe. David Lee Roth motions to him from across the room. He leads the way outside to his limousine. We drive back to the hotel. The night is still young, but Dave wants to talk.

☆ ☆ ☆

It’s a half hour later and the two of us are alone in the Roth Romper Room on the fifth floor of the Dayton Plaza. David has broken out a bottle of Jack Daniels and changed clothes. From the ground up, he wears: Soccer shoes criss-crossed with adhesive tape. White athletic socks. British paratrooper pants about nine sizes too big, with a safety pin in the drawstring. And a blue sweatshirt with white polar bears painted on it. “But it was done with spray paint and a stencil,” he points out, “so the polar bears are really stiff but the rest of it’s pretty cool. And here’s some wooden bracelets I got from the tropics. And a gold necklace I got from some groupies. And two earrings in my left ear—one’s for the first two times I crossed the Equator because I read one time that’s what the pirates did.” He shrugs his shoulder and grins. “Hey, it’s a living.”

He turns on a cassette machine and we hear Keely Smith warbling “It’s Magic.” Puffing on a Winston, he reflects on Van Halen’s audience. “We don’t bring out different kinds of people. We bring out different emotions and feelings inside the same people. I view the whole thing as primal therapy. I tend to think if I was in the audience at a Van Halen concert, I’d feel like one of the monkeys pawing at the obelisk at the beginning of 2001. ”

If he had been out in record buying land at the time, would he have picked up on Van Halen from their very first album?

“Absolutely. Van Halen smacked of enthusiasm. It has to do with Smiles. That’s what Van Halen always hustled up front. High voltage, but Smiles. And in the record you could hear a smile. It’s enthusiasm. Our own little angst, whatever. You see it onstage just as you see it in interviews and in photos. It’s not a posture. It’s not an act we’ve adopted. Van Halen, like our most popular film actors and actresses, does not act. We merely behave. Or misbehave, depending on your perspective. Why is Sylvester Stallone so popular? He gets in front of the camera and he merely behaves. He does not act. Same thing for Mr. T. Van Halen lies somewhere in between.” He laughs. “And please don’t write ‘Dave laughs’.”

"John Holes inspired me

The Dauphin mentions the approachability of the band and David nods in agreement. “Solitude is a very sweet drug. Stay home one night, wake up the next morning, go: ‘Hey, that wasn’t so bad—think I might stay home and watch cable again tonight.’ And then on and on. A lot of rocker people do this, I suspect, because they’re making music based on an inadequacy in another area, whether it’s social, sexual or because they can’t deal with their own self-image. In other words, they got problems. So they’re gonna hide out. And that’ll start to reflect on your music after awhile. You’re going to start writing songs about the hotel and loneliness on the Lear Jet and how many miles to home. You might as well write country Songs.”

Keely concludes and David hunts around in a large carton of tapes that he takes with him on the road. The Dauph’s quick perusal reveals The Rascals’ Greatest Hits, An Evening With Groucho Marx, soundtracks of New York, New York and The Harder They Come, along with Electric Light Orchestra, Billie Holiday, ZZ Top, Wagner, Judas Priest and The Best Of Spike Jones.

“The way I go shopping for tapes,” David explains, “ is the bodyguard stands behind me with a sack and we move it about four feet every 20 seconds. We pul| ’em all— anything that looks good. I suspect most people don’t have that advantage. I’m at the point where I don’t have to worry about how much it costs. I register how many tapes I bought in terms of pounds. I listen constantly. I have no particular taste in music whatsoever. Symphonic, r&b, disco, hard rock, heavy metal. It’s always a song or two you like the best and then the rest you toss.”

He indicates another huge carton nearby, this one piled high with reading material that’s accompanied him on the tour. Copies of Omni. The Annapolis Book Of Seamanship. (“Stars are like your granddaddy’s teeth, Ed. They come out at night.”) The Complete Book Of Triathlon Training. Art Buchwald. CREEM. The Book Of Haiti. Muscles & Fitness magazine.

“I read all the time. I read the back of the cereal box. And when I’m finished reading the stuff that interests me, I read everything that doesn’t just in case someone should bring up coin collecting. That way, at least I know enough to ask a question and continue the conversation. I think conversation is a forgotten art. I got this job for one part because it was going to bring me closer to more people and more different people than I was already knowing. I even-memorize the stewardess’s rap on the airplane.”

This leads into a discussion of David’s latest avocation, learning to fly a helicopter. “I got 27 hours of ground school under my belt. Typical Roth fashion. Thing that terrifies me the most—let’s grab it by the horns, see if we can do a somersault up onto the

withers. Stroll right through it. Since I'm a rock star, we can’t fly fixed wing. Everybody does that. So let’s fly helicopters. Fixed wing vehicles must always go forward and since I’m totally into hanging out, hovering is what it’s all about. Is it difficult? Well, it’s like balancing a marble on a two-by-four. This career is like balancing a marble on a two-by-four.”

. The Dauphin asks him how long he expects to live. David smiles wryly. “Well, barring any acts of God or Ferrari, I think we can go on at least another decade.”

In fact, he points out, the lyrics to “Jump” stemmed from an actual life-or-death situation. “I was watching TV and there was some stud on top of the Arco Tower who was ready to punch out early. And there was a crowd of people down 35 stories on the street and it occured to me there’s always at least one schmoe in the crowd who says: ‘Go ahead and jump.’ So I wrote that down because I guess I was the schmoe in that case. But it turned out much more positive than that. Inevitably it does.”

It has for David and Van Halen, no question about it. But he shakes his head and pours another Jack. “You look at it one moment, everything’s great, you’re on top of the world, you’re the king, you’ve got it all wired, it’,s checkmate, no dice, he’s down, he’s all through, a minute-twenty-nine into the first round and the next second, it can seem like the whole thing is gonna break apart at the seams, everybody’s gonna quit at once and I’m gonna be stuck here in a hotel room with everybody gone and a busy signal at the end of the phone. What it amounts to is I feel like I’m chasing the ice cream truck through the rain arqund here.”

But that’s just a joke. Dave, isn’t it? Van Halen will go on forever, right?

“Van Halen hasn’t come close to peaking, much less Dave, and I’ve based everything Dave is inside of Van Halen, consciously or unconsciously. It pirj’t nowhere near personal record time. I heard half the next album in the back of the bus the other night and you don’t know what you’re in for. I don’t either!”

As the evening draws to a close, The Dauph asks David if he realizes how hard it is to interview such a close-mouthed son of a bitch who refuses to open up about himself and what he really thinks. He smiles.

“I’m outspoken. I’ll tell you exactly what I feel in no uncertain terms and illustrate it in five circuitous ways which, if someone comes armed with preconceptions and disbeliefs, is going to infuriate them. I’m enthusiastic about everything that happens. I’ve got terminal enthusiasm. It’s not an ego thing. Granted, I’m a showoff. I’ll be dancing down that little white picket fence for Becky Thatcher the rest of my life. I know the world doesn’t revolve around Dave. But 1 like to think so. I see what’s really there in the mirror when I look but I’ll never admit it to you. I’m an emotional guy. I cry during The Waltons. Even during a trailer for a movie, I get all misty-eyed if it’s one of those romantic things. I respond very physically and emotionally to whatever is happening around me. Particularly happening to me or with me. I do smiling. I’m not laughing at it. Let’s write it off as: ‘Ain’t humans something special?’ No, Ed, I won’t go down in history, but I will go down on your little sister.” ,

“A lot of rocker people...are making music based on an inadequacy in another area, whether it's social, sexual or because they can9t deal with their own self-image." — David Lee Roth