Everybody Wants Some (25 page)

During an interview video Van Halen filmed at 5150 to promote the live album, Alex half-jokingly spoke his mind to Sammy. “I have a philosophy—it’s safety of the past. You know why? There’s safety in the past, because it cannot be changed. There’s comfort.” Whether intended as a joke or not, Van Halen were growing more comfortable with putting their past on display.

Venturing to Europe in March 1993 for the first time in nine years, the
Right Here, Right Now
tour was launched in Munich, Germany, not far from Nuremburg where the
1984
tour had ended. They had never been to Europe with Sammy before, and gained an unexpected publicity bump from fifty-six-year-old international superstar singer Nana Mouskouri, earner of 250 gold and platinum records around the world. “I just love Van Halen and David Lee Roth, or hard rock,” she said.

After seeing his fist-pumping stage presence, Continental crowds blamed the über-American Sammy for keeping Van Halen away from Europe for so long—especially in Holland, where a thirteen-year absence had strained family ties.

Back in the United States, Van Halen picked up erstwhile Mötley Crüe singer Vince Neil as an opening act. This former David Lee Roth clone now had a successful solo act while his former band carried on with a new lead singer. In the Mötley Crüe biography
The Dirt
, Neil fondly recalled bonding with Sammy through kamikaze shots before Neil’s set and margaritas before Van Halen’s. “He ended up with the short end of the deal,” Neil said with laugh, “because he was always wasted before he hit the stage.”

Van Halen successfully created the extramusical importance they had sought with the Monsters of Rock tour but in an entirely different way. They organized a drive for fans to bring canned food to concerts to be donated to needy families through USA Harvest. Joining a different kind of major-label feeding frenzy, Warner Bros. donated six tons of chicken in Van Halen’s name.

Though they were traveling in jets and limos, Van Halen were tran-scending the trends by remaining normal guys, a band of the people. Stunned concertgoers after an August show in Texas saw Eddie Van Halen laughingly going from car to car in the post-concert traffic jam, looking to thumb a ride back to Houston—his limo was parked by the side of the road with smoke coming from under the hood.

Nodding to Generation X, Sammy grew a goatee and Michael Anthony sported a “Mosh” T-shirt when the 1993 tour ended in Costa Mesa, California in August. During “Finish What Ya Started,” the band members’ wives came onstage at the last show dressed like Playboy bunnies.

Eddie Van Halen met Kurt Cobain later that year, and appeared unimpressed by the new breed of rock star. Eddie stumbled into Nirvana’s dressing room backstage on December 30, 1993, at the Great Western Forum in Inglewood, California, and began badgering towering bassist Krist Novoselic, insisting he was so tall he should play basketball. Then Eddie naturally offered the newest sensation their mark of arrival—he wanted to join Nirvana onstage for a jam. “We don’t jam, we’re not that kind of band,” Cobain said. “Besides, we don’t have any extra guitars.”

Eddie jerked a thumb at Nirvana’s second guitarist, Pat Smear of the legendary L.A. punk band the Germs. “Let me play the Mexican’s guitar,” Eddie suggested. “What is he, is he Mexican? Is he black?”

Then Eddie began sniffing a deodorant bar, leaving white residue on his face. The others in the room didn’t see a shy, half-Indonesian Dutch immigrant whose life had been spent half in seclusion with a guitar—they only saw a drunken celebrity acting like a huge asshole.

“It was horrible! I was just shocked,” said Smear, who counted Eddie as an idol. “I was thinking, ‘God, Eddie Van Halen hates me!’ ”

Pestered by Eddie’s drunkenness and offended by slurs directed at his bandmate, Cobain suggested Eddie go onstage by himself and play “Eruption” after they finished their encore—the kind of smartass insult that slides right over the head of square elders, especially impaired rock stars.

It was not the first time a Van Halen brother’s lack of inhibition backstage had come across like patent racism. In the late 1980s, Alex met Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid after a show, and promptly insulted him by saying he couldn’t understand why a black man would even want to play guitar.

“Feeling pretty ghetto,” Reid told the
New York Observer
, he nonetheless summoned the nerve to upbraid Alex, saying “Why don’t you go ask your brother? He’s a real musician.” Eddie and Sammy had just praised Reid in the pages of
Rolling Stone
weeks earlier.

By 1993, Van Halen were cool and cutting-edge only in the most corporate ways imaginable. Their “Right Now” TV spots for Crystal Pepsi, for example, marketed the colorless, caffeine-free cola as “the clear alternative.”
Saturday Night Live
mocked the ads with “Crystal Gravy” parodies, promising salvation through translucent meat sauce. Though certainly a massive payday for Van Halen, shilling for a failed soda pop was not painting a path to a promising creative future.

Less than four months after meeting Eddie, Kurt Cobain was dead. “I don’t think things are any worse than when I was young,” Eddie told
Rolling Stone
. “I think there are certain bands that even complain about making music. Hey, if it’s a problem, don’t do it. As much as I loved the music Kurt Cobain made, and as sad as it is that he’s not with us any more, I can’t help thinking that if what you’re doing caused you to kill yourself, I would have stopped doing it. It ain’t worth it. Stay at home and make music in your bedroom for yourself.”

More and more, that seemed to be exactly the direction Eddie was headed. Van Halen started to float adrift after their manager, Ed Leffler, died at age fifty-seven on October 16, 1993, two quick months after being diagnosed with thyroid cancer. “He was more of a friend and a father figure to all of us than he was a manager,” Eddie said. The loss affected the brothers gravely, with Eddie later reporting that he hit an emotional rock bottom.

“To me, death’s always looking at you,” Hagar said matter-of-factly. Ever the pragmatist, he resumed business quickly, organizing a promotional schedule for his
Unboxed
solo collection that had him away from Van Halen just three months after Leffler’s death. The timing strained the band’s relationships.

For the short term, Van Halen began managing themselves, putting more stress on a group that was tired and emotionally drained. For the first time in nearly twenty years, Alex and Eddie were personally faced with the deluge of phone calls from booking agents, golf magazines, and TV producers asking if they would like to appear on cooking shows and celebrity food fights. Their affairs quickly became a shambles. With every piece of bad news, the pressure on the band increased. “When Ed Leffler died, the band that we created in 1986 died with it,” Sammy later said regretfully.

David Lee Roth’s March 1994 album
Your Filthy Little Mouth
came calling like a colorful circus barker but left with a whisper. Feeling the metal fatigue, Roth teamed with funk producer Nile Rodgers, mastermind behind disco hits by Chic, Diana Ross, Madonna, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, and others. Mr. “Le Freak” himself, Rodgers had originally signed up to do the music for Roth’s ill-fated movie, and seven years later they were consummating the plan. 

The album took the boldest tangent of any Roth solo outing yet. Relying heavily on a horn section and big bass lines, Roth was now a tour guide through an underbelly of night scenes—similar to what David Johansen from the New York Dolls did when he greased his hair and became life of the party Buster Poindexter. Not oblivious to the changing winds of musical fashion, Roth hoped to either outsmart the trendsetters or avoid the issue altogether through his strength of character.

“Everybody’s Got the Monkey” was an improvement on the silly fun that slipped through his grasp on
Skyscraper
. Roth’s voice had regained its throaty purr, and the big rock sound was fully flushed.

Jumping in and out of genres like an impatient channel-switcher, he also dabbled in country-western music with “Cheatin’ Heart Café,” a duet with Travis Tritt. “No Big ’Ting” nodded to dancehall reggae.

Covering Willie Nelson’s piano blues “Night Life,” a short-haired and moody Roth took a melancholy stroll through the big city, from slick rainy sidewalks to subway train, no company except a cigarette. The grainy black-and-white music video could have done for lost souls what “California Girls” did for bikinis, except that virtually nobody saw it. Roth was becoming a tree falling alone in the wilderness.

None of these dalliances alone should have sunk his career. Roth had gotten away with stylistic murder many times.
Crazy from the Heat
finally came out on CD in 1992, and remained one of the most popular left-hand turns in popular music history. Roth was versatile to the core, going all the way back to “Ice Cream Man.”

But as Van Halen proved with “When It’s Love” and “Right Now,” big audiences didn’t want torch songs; they wanted power ballads.

Roth’s latest hotshot guitar player was Terry Kilgore, who had played in rival bands to Van Halen in the club days. “I think a lot of people were rough on him because he was trying to make a transition,” Kilgore told
The Inside
. “You try to change from what you are, and people don’t accept it. I think he should have left his hair long and gone out and done the same thing, but he didn’t want to do that anymore. Dave wanted to expand his musical horizons.”

Though Roth had been trying too hard since day one, this time he actually sounded like he was trying too hard. Something was missing. Maybe it was too painfully simple—when he cut his hair, he lost his creative license. He forgot his own golden rule: “Rock and roll is nothing but shoes and haircuts.”

Mouth
debuted at number 78 in
Billboard
, then dropped off the chart after two weeks. The album was his last for Warner Bros. More cracks formed in Roth’s foundation in January 1994, when an earthquake rattled his Pasadena mansion, leaving it without heat. Insurers paid $350,000, and Roth came after them a year later with a $5 million lawsuit.

While Roth was in New York City working on
Mouth
, Valerie Bertinelli happened to be visiting Manhattan on a press trip. One afternoon she and her husband went shopping. “Without really thinking about it, we walked right past him,” Eddie recalled. “Valerie called out to him, and he turned around and kept walking. I turned around and walked a half a block back. At the time he was working with Nile Rodgers on his record. I shook Dave’s hand, and he just looked at me in shock, and didn’t say a word.” Whenever Roth’s life went off script, he froze.

Shortly afterward, Alex weighed in on Roth’s continued long-distance overtures toward rejoining Van Halen. “I simply find it strange,” he said. “Here’s a guy that quits a band, and then when his so-called solo thing falls apart, tried to wedge his way back in. It’s like, ‘Sorry about fucking your old lady, but I need a job, man.’ ”

After meeting with practically every big-league rock manager, Van Halen settled on Ray Danniels and SRO Management to replace Ed Leffler. Besides a history with progressive rock forefathers Rush dating to the late 1970s, Danniels’s primary advantage was he was married to the sister of Alex Van Halen’s Canadian actress wife, Kelly, making him Alex’s brother-in-law.

“What Ed Leffler was to me, Ray has been to Alex,” Hagar told
Billboard
. “If Alex wasn’t sure about some deal that came down, he would always call Ray for his sounding board. Ray was already there for Al, but after Ed died, Alex started turning to Ray more and more.”

Danniels was hired against the wishes of Hagar, who insisted on signing a separate management deal. The two men clashed from the start. “The second Ray Danniels came into the picture, everything changed,” Hagar told the magazine
The Road
. “They’d do anything, because it’s all about the money, which is crazy, because Eddie doesn’t need money.”

With Leffler at the helm Sammy had been the main conduit between management and the band. Now the singer was hearing about business decisions through Alex or Eddie. The dynamics changed, and so did the balance of power. “At the point I came in, Michael Anthony was very gracious,” Danniels told
Hits
. “Everything seemed okay. But Sam was distant and made it clear that he had his own guy with Ed Leffler, who had managed him prior to joining Van Halen. He felt a loss of control.”

Danniels began renegotiating the band’s contract with Warner Bros., getting more money that came with certain strings attached—like a number of greatest-hits releases. These were pivotal points in how the band set its priorities, and the outcome would soon have a terrible effect on Van Halen’s stability.

Eddie returned to rehab in late spring 1994, and marked the change by shearing his raggedy hair into a boxy crew cut. “I was waking up every morning with the true alcoholic shakes and the dry heaves,” he told radio DJ Razz. “That was happening for a few years, actually. I would have to drink a few beers just to feel normal. I just couldn’t handle it anymore. I shaved my head because I was so pissed off and frustrated with myself, I grabbed my Norelco shaver and did a butcher job. Valerie freaked, obviously. But the result is great for both of us. That was the beginning of a new me.”

Sammy later added a few sensitive details about the night Eddie cut his hair—that Eddie was locked outside, completely wasted, and Valerie wouldn’t let him in the house. “Let’s get this straight,” Sammy told
The Road
. “While I was in the band, Eddie was not sober.” Valerie Van Halen admitted she was getting sick of fetching drinks and aspirin. “Fourteen years living with an alcoholic is my limit,” she threatened.

By this point, Alex Van Halen had already been sober for eight years. “I had my demons,” Alex said. “The toughest part was not being able to celebrate with everybody after gigs. Alcohol is funny. It’s socially acceptable and it’s part of partying, but it can turn on a dime and get its hooks into you. Then it’s time to pull out.”