Everybody Wants Some (20 page)

One major surprise was Sammy strapping on a red guitar for “Love Walks In,” tackling the entire song complete with rudimentary noodling solo including finger tapping, while the world’s preeminent guitar alien Eddie Van Halen happily pounded a synthesizer a few feet behind him.

Mike’s bass solo preserved the band’s wild animal spirit, pounding and rolling like a giant marble on the walls of the crystal castle stage. He grabbed a cheap copy bass, hurled it off a riser onto the stage, jumped up and down on it, hammered his arsenal of effects, then swiftly stepped out of the spotlight for a second to exchange the punching-bag bass for his real rig. The ingenuity of cheap showmanship still could not be stopped—and neither could Van Halen’s image of indestructibility.

The band was still selling out concert halls nearly every night. When a music video became unavoidable, they simply produced a long-form live concert video,
Live Without a Net
, recorded in New Haven, Connecticut. The title came from one of Sammy’s new nightly routines, singing “I Can’t Drive 55” from a lighting rig fifty feet above the stage.

Hagar’s trade was rocker—an all-purpose description used by newspapers like
USA Today
to describe any musician who chewed gum onstage. “Yeah, I’m a happy guy, and I refuse to be bummed out,” Sammy told
Rolling Stone
. “I like being happy, and these guys have been unhappy for a long time. They’re used to coming in, everybody pissed off, this guy yelling at that guy, everybody trying to hold each other back. It was a real mess towards the end. A lot of people might say, ‘Well, isn’t that what makes great bands?’ No, that’s what ruins great bands.”

Good-naturedly posing for a Warner Bros. publicity photo wearing straitjackets, the band claimed convincingly that for the first time its members shared a common vision. No longer the combustible sum of competing parts, Van Halen were now a happy, harmonious unit. “It’s just pure music,” Eddie said with a smile, though he couldn’t resist a few parting shots. “That to me is a little bit classier than ripping the kids off, doing some clown show. It’s just more down to earth now.”

Since Sammy joined the band, they’d called their good-old boy humor together “Bocephus mode.” When Hank Williams Jr. got wind that they were using his nickname as a call to party, he invited Van Halen across the country line. Just as Van Halen got out from under the shadow of their old singer, Hank Jr. was finally growing beyond comparisons to his father. Van Halen came to the party in costume, appearing as Hank Jr.’s backup band in his video for “My Name Is Bocephus.” Also along for the hayride: comedian Bobcat Goldthwaite, prop comic Gallagher and Dan Haggerty of
Grizzly Addams
fame. Just to fit in, Alex shaved his head bald before the shoot.

Ticking off Roth, Van Halen finally appeared for the first time on the cover of
Rolling Stone
in 1986, while he had to settle for the cover of
Spin
. As it became clear that all interviews for
5150
would include a healthy dose of vitriol toward him, Roth called a press conference in Toronto. “Just like any band, we had a career difference, and we decided to go our own ways. Two weeks later I’m reading in
Rolling
Stone
about what an asshole I am, how poor little Eddie was forced to spend twelve years of his life living a lie, and here comes his wife to back it up. So I stayed quiet for six months, reading diatribe after diatribe. I don’t think it’s necessary to make a choice, but Van Halen demands it—for some bizarre, retarded reason. They demand the audience makes a choice. Well, I’ll rise to the challenge. If we have to have a comparison, I eat you for breakfast, pal—I eat you and smile.”

After a brief series of wilderness adventures, Roth resurfaced with a new band of lethal players that could only be described as Van Halen killers. “Something that always thrilled me is getting into some situation where the outcome is unpredictable,” David Lee Roth said. “I’ve always approached music with a sword in one hand, and a torch in the other.”

The first recruit was bassist Billy Sheehan. He came aboard during the summer of 1985, and helped initiate guitarist Steve Vai and young jazz drummer Gregg Bissonette. “Though my dream was to play in Van Halen, I thought it was close enough and I agreed,” Sheehan told Rotharmy.com.

For Roth to score Sheehan was a sure shot over the bow of the good ship Van Halen. Known as the “Eddie Van Halen of bass,” Sheehan had introduced finger tapping to four-strings back in his Buffalo-based band Talas. They opened for Van Halen on the 1980 “Invasion” tour. “I saw Van Halen kick ass for about thirty shows,” Sheehan said. “On the worst nights they were better than any band around.” Sheehan and Eddie compared technique and talked shop. And though they never took it any further, they fantasized about Sheehan replacing Michael Anthony in Van Halen.

Looking for an equally dangerous guitarist, Dave contacted puffy-haired Billy Idol guitarist Steve Stevens, who declined. Sheehan and Roth then rooted out twenty-five-year-old Steve Vai, a former Frank Zappa sideman who had replaced Euro-metal guitar prodigy Yngwie Malmsteen in the band Alcatrazz. Roth met Vai at his favorite after-hours club Zero One, after the guitarist had finished secretly recording with ex–Sex Pistol John Lydon on the Public Image Ltd record
Album
. 

Vai was a student of Joe Satriani, the Berkeley guitarist whose 1987 album
Surfing with the Alien
was among the first guitar instrumental albums to crack the
Billboard
Top 30, a feat that many compared to toppling Eddie Van Halen. Now all the younger gunslingers were over their awe and taking aim at King Edward’s throne. If there was such a thing, Roth had hired “Evil Eddie,” a faster, meaner player who took what Eddie did in the 1970s to a new place.

Drummer Gregg Bissonette came from the Maynard Ferguson big band, a jazz ensemble where his brother played the bass. He toured the world and recorded a live album with the group. “I figured if he can power 22 guys without an amplifier and still do his job,” Roth told
Creem
, “he ought to be able to lead these two around, and carry me back home.”

Roth trained his fledging troupe on old Van Halen material to gauge their chemistry, and then proceeded with songwriting. “I listened for potential,” Roth explained. “And when I found the musicians I wanted, I decided that if they weren’t walking around unattended, I would—in the great old American rock and roll tradition—simply steal them from another band.” Even Eddie’s longtime guitar tech Rudy Leiren came to assist Vai for one week during rehearsals.

Full of gravel-voiced sincerity, Roth courted the Canadian press with his sensibleness. “[Van Halen’s] got nothing better to talk about than me. 
I do
. I’ve got a beautiful band, man, and I’ve got a great future.”

When asked about his relationship to the Van Halen brand, however, Roth was quick to defend the legacy. “Hellafied brand name, isn’t it? It’s just like Ajax. It’s just like the guy who invented the package for Lucky Strikes cigarettes. They said he was done, he had one stroke of genius and he’d never have it again. He went on six years later to design the S-1 locomotive. So don’t expect that after ten years of love and labor I’ll just step outside of it.”

If the
Crazy from the Heat
EP was a polite diversion from the high-energy rock of his day job, Roth’s full-length solo debut,
Eat ’Em and
Smile
, set its sights straight on Van Halen’s home base. Released in July 1986, the album declared tribal warfare—and now that Van Hagar had gone the pop route, Roth offered fans the irresponsible hard rock they craved. The record quickly rose to number 4 and went platinum in September, vindicating the frontman’s decision to fly the coop.

“Are you ready for the new sensation?” he crowed at the start of “Yankee Rose.” “Guess who’s back in circulation!” His voice sounded coarser and wilder, while the music began in a frenzy and climbed higher. “Yankee Rose” cracked the Top 20 and rolled out the carpet for Roth’s solo career.

The Roth-Vai songwriting team penned the feisty “Elephant Gun” and “Bump and Grind.” “Shy Boy” was a hectic metal showcase written by Sheehan’s prior band Talas. As opposed to the steady, throbbing bottom end Michael Anthony created for Van Halen, Sheehan rode his bass alongside Vai like a second lead guitar player, putting the music’s energy all the way up front. Roth’s concept was all active ingredients.

Roth revived his movie aspirations for the music video for the sub-lime summer pop song “Goin’ Crazy.” During an ultra-bright intro sequence nearly as long as the song itself, he buried himself in an enormous fat suit complete with bulbous neck, bad necktie, and rhine-stone belt buckle. He became a vulgar five-hundred-pound record company executive—a fair indication of the poor regard he held for the people he worked with in the music business.

Ever the old-time entertainer at heart, Roth brought the vibrating pop metal orgy to a grinding halt with an album-closing cover of Frank Sinatra’s “That’s Life”—a welcome respite for listeners out of breath by the finish line. The record was all Roth, all the time—his pepped-up ensemble had recapped his entire career in just over thirty minutes, managing to play and say twice as much as any mortal hard rock band.

An unusual Spanish-language version of the album appeared, titled
Sonrisa Salvaje
(“Wild Smile”). At the urging of Sheehan, Roth took the time to translate and sing all ten songs, a cosmopolitan move that set him apart from the run-of-the-mill hairbangers in L.A. While the world was not yet ready for bilingual cock rock, Roth did swing an invitation to perform at the Miss Mexico pageant, where he lip-synched two songs from
Crazy from the Heat
beachside for an audience of girls in bikinis—nice work if you can get it.

Eat ’Em and Smile
led to a long tour of over a hundred shows with Cinderella in tow throughout 1986, shifting to Tesla in early 1987. Steve Vai later reckoned that his guitar chops were at a career high during the tour. Along with an expanded array of costumes and sword dances, Roth wielded a massive inflated microphone with his name printed down the side, wagging it from hip level. Flaunting his bravado and libido, he remained aware that the public expected more from him as a solo artist than the gyrations of a naughty sex god.

Interviewed by
Penthouse
, Roth sounded wistful for the open-minded sexual sophistication of the 1970s. The girls he was hitting between the legs weren’t connecting with him as often between the temples—they had become too young and too predictable. The age of the sexually experienced and adventurous professional groupie was over. “What’s in the room next door now are college girls, working girls, secretaries, nurses, assistants. It’s not really like New York after-hours anymore—as much as I might like it to be.” He joked about suffering “choice fatigue” and ended up back at the hotel alone many nights.

Then again, fatigue was inevitable when the Polaroids from his scrapbook featured sights like a backward-leaning naked girl being used as a coffee table, a lit cigarette in her vagina. Sheehan recalled dozens of women jumping into the shower with the band after one show. “Anyone that was backstage knew what it was about and was a willing participant,” he reported to Rotharmy.com.

Regardless, Dave was learning that life was downsized outside the charmed world of Van Halen. He was working twice as hard for slightly smaller returns. On the other hand, he was officially in charge now, earning a bigger piece of the pie and spared the aggravation of constantly arguing with the Van Halen brothers. He had jumped ship and all the safety that entailed, and he remained head and shoulders above all the other glam metal pirates in the water.

Potshots continued to fly like confetti between the Roth and Van Halen camps. Eddie Van Halen sounded less than impressed with
Eat 
’Em and Smile
, calling Roth’s solo group a “pasted together junior Van Halen.” Roth harped on Sammy’s age, and he called Eddie “a wonderful guitar player” but “a shitty human being.” He declared, “Van Halen had disintegrated into a spiteful bunch of bleary-eyed, argumentative procrastinating individuals.”

“I think the Van Halens forgot where they came from,” he complained. “They keep saying they were a Volkswagen with me, and now with their new singer they’re a Porsche. A Porsche—that’s all they talk about these days. And that’s exactly what they went for—they went out and made the kind of music that will get you that kind of fancy car. I’ll always have a lot more fun in the backseat of my Volkswagen, baby.”

After taking
5150
to triple platinum, Van Halen were war-torn and battle-weary. Surviving the first foray while still fighting Roth had been exhausting. Eddie’s face looked puffy, and Alex was shorn bald—as if his hair had disappeared because of worry. “I said a few things in anger that I should apologize for,” Eddie told
Rolling Stone
. “But I cried. I was bummed. I slagged him in the press because I was pissed and I was hurt. The thing was Dave is a very creative guy, and working with him was no problem. It was living with the guy.”

The latest blows weren’t easy to push to the background. During the 1986 tour, manager Ed Leffler had been hospitalized in Texas after being assaulted in a hotel elevator. Worse, Valerie Bertinelli suffered a miscarriage that threatened her marriage to Eddie. “It wasn’t the eas-iest thing to deal with,” she told interviewer Debby Bull in 1987. “But nobody knew I was pregnant, so nobody knew I had a miscarriage. I’d like to have four kids. Ed says he wants a full band.”

Though she professed total love for her guitar player, lengthy absences and continual drinking constantly tested the couple. She admitted to a women’s magazine that the marriage needed work. “He doesn’t abuse me, but he hurts himself,” she told
Redbook
. “He’s got a problem I’m not happy with, but I bring stability to his life.”

The year 1986 ended sadly for Van Halen, as Alex and Eddie’s father, Jan, died in December from complications stemming from alcoholism. He was in his late sixties. The brothers holed up in the 5150 studio at Eddie’s house for ten hours playing music together. David Lee Roth called to express his sorrow.