Van Halen!

I would think there’s a lot of Ritchie Blackmore in EVH’s playing, so somewhat surprised he hasn’t come up itt, though I guess Deep Purple is represented by Tommy Bolin

That book reveals that he didn't start tapping or using a whammy until maybe 6 months before the first album. That's pretty crazy. If you listen to bootlegs from the early years, he was always a good guitarist but kind of anonymous in that hard rock/boogie vein. There's a great story, though, where they nab a gig opening for UFO, and he completely humiliates a worn out Michael Schenker.

I legit wonder if J Mascis is a secretly a big EVH fan - certainly Eddie never had quite the pedalboard J has, but there’s something in his attack/amplification/style, esp. Sire years to present, that reminds me so much of W&CF/FW EVH.

Stray Dog I know from one of those big Hipgnosis album cover books

https://www.discogs.com/master/176425-Stray-Dog-While-Youre-Down-There

One for the “horrible album titles” thread

every so often I'd read a Van Halen interview and Eddie would constantly say he had to relearn the parts for the album because he'd already forgotten what he played and how to play it (riffs, solos, everything), but that he could relearn most everything quickly by ear.

as a dude who basically had to spend inordinate amounts of time learning to play anything I was kinda like "fuk uuuu". but is that kind of normal for a lot of heavily acclaimed guitar players, this ability to pick up a ton of music or relearn music by ear fast? I often see stories where bands are on tour, someone gets sick/hurt or whatever and they quickly identify a replacement, a guitar tech, or a friend from another band ,etc, and it's like in a day or two they suddenly know all the music.

A couple of weeks a go a friend of mine was given iirc less than 24-hours notice to sub for Robyn Hitchcock's bassist, who had caught covid. She said it was super stressful but was able to chart it out for herself more or less OK with minor mess-ups. Long story short, pros gonna pro.

But I've heard the same thing about EVH as with, I dunno, Peter Buck. I think it comes back pretty quickly. It's surely easier for EVH to re-learn his idiosyncratic parts than for someone else to come in and do it, though.

If you want a slight boost of self-esteem, Google Eddie Van Halen's guest appearance with Simon and Garfunkel at one of those Bridge benefit shows. whether it's because he was in the wrong key, different tuning, or simply unrehearsed, he completely screws up a solo to "Sound of Silence." Even EVH is human.

There's a notorious video from one of the early 2009 reunion gigs with DLR where the "Jump" synth track is played back at the wrong speed and EVH starts making his own "shreds" video.

I've been a citizen of the San Gabriel Valley for seven years now, and "Van Halen played my backyard!" is absolutely our local version of "George Washington slept here." Everyone who bookmarks this thread should read Renoff's book - it's a great book about Los Angeles. So much of what has been documented about 1970s LA follows Laurel Canyon, punks, etc. but zero about the suburbs, exurbs, and other cultural wastelands that the overground snooted at. The story about a biker getting stabbed to death right in front of the band during a gig at Walter Mitty's in Pomona (a notorious bar right across the street from the General Dynamics plant that built Atlas ICBMs) is straight out of a Mike Davis book.

Deflatormouse OTM on VH as anti-depressant. Been in bad shape the last few weeks and kinda dug out from it by driving around and listening to all of the Van Halen episodes of the Sunset Sound podcast. The three 2020 episodes with Brian Kehew is the closest you'll get to a Classic Album on the first album (DLR's Zolar X impersonation is hilarious).

Listening to VH II rn. Alex totally killing "Outta Love Again"

I haven't read the book on VH's earliest days, but their former manager Noel Monk's book Runnin' With the Devil (he left right around the time Roth did) is fascinating.

great post elvis t. and hoping you feel better

Lol the out of tune Jump video is hilarious, your brain knows it isn't going to resolve but it holds out hope nonetheless

Monk's book is good, but "Van Halen Rising" was more illuminating. Kind of like the (much shorter!) equivalent of Lewisohn's "Tune In."

Elvis T. sold me on VHR being the next book in my queue.

Dance the Night Away is the uplifting VH song for me. Just pure concentrated joy - DLR's screams are so ott, best Anthony backing vocals, and the long repeat and fade of the chorus is the "May the Road Rise Up to Meet You" of hard rock. I joke with my wife that I want it played as the final music at my funeral service.

Here's (I hope) a minute of my guitar teacher's band of session guys nailing "Dance":

https://imgur.com/a/OXCAwxK

Guess not? This should be the link:

https://imgur.com/a/OXCAwxK

Re: that awful Jump performance.

https://www.guitarworld.com/news/the-true-story-behind-van-halens-infamous-out-of-tune-jump-performance-has-finally-been-revealed

t wasn’t too often that Eddie Van Halen was less than perfect on electric guitar. Which is why, for Van Halen fans, the infamous 2007 Greensboro, North Carolina show-closing performance of Jump – when Ed’s guitar was completely out-of-tune with the keyboard track – remains such a memorable moment.

Over the years, the screwup has largely been blamed on a tech, with many fans positing that the synth track was played back at the wrong sample rate. But now Eddie’s guitar tech at the time, Tom Weber, has cleared up the story.

Weber, along with Van Halen keyboard tech Greg Rule, appeared on Rock Talk with Mitch Lafon and The Jeremy White Podcast, and was asked about the Jump performance. Said White, “Were you there when that whole screwup with the keyboard happened? With the sample rate?”

“It’s not the keyboard sample rate. It had nothing to do with the keyboards. I haven’t been able to address this because it’s a sore spot for Ed. During the guitar solo, which was a couple of songs before the infamous incident, Ed loves to make noises with the guitar, we all know that. Anybody that’s been to a Van Halen show and been there for the guitar solo knows that you’re liable to hear any unearthly sound that Ed can make with a guitar.

“So at one point he took the guitar and literally jammed the headstock of the neck into the stage several times. Normally if there was a situation where the guitar was out of tune, obviously my job is to be ready for him with another guitar, which I was. Ed’s right-hand guy, Matt Bruck, and I were in ‘guitar world’ and it’s like, ‘Oh, crap – he’s knocked the guitar out of tune.’”

Weber continued, “Well, he fine-tunes it some and gets back into playing and I’m holding another guitar over my head so that he can see it and he’s waving it off. He’s still playing the solo, he’s fine-tuned, it’s passable. Well, they go right from that into Ain’t Talkin’ ‘bout Love, that’s the next song on the set list. Wolfgang starts playing and realizes that he’s not in tune with the guitar so he retunes a little bit so they’re in tune.

"So they’re in tune – you have guitar and bass in tune. So they play Ain’t Talkin’ ‘bout Love and Panama and then typically the band, at the end of the show, they come offstage for a minute, I switch guitars with Ed, and they go back on for the encore, which is Jump."

That particular night, however, "they didn’t come offstage," Weber said. "They went around the corner… we had what we call the ‘phone booth’ on stage left, the big ego ramp that went up around to this big cabinet that nobody ever used for anything. But they went around the side of that and Ed didn’t come off the stage to get another guitar.

“So now you have Wolfgang on his bass and Ed with his out-of-tune guitar on a keyboard song that is in tune. Ed didn’t have keyboards in his monitor mix so he didn’t hear that he was out of tune. So that’s where all that went."

As for what happened next?

"The funniest part about it was, he didn’t know that that had happened until a couple of weeks later when somebody was at the venue and showed him the video of it," Weber said.

"So I got called to the dressing room full of people and he said, ‘You handed me an out-of-tune guitar.’ I said, ‘No, I didn’t.’ I said, ‘If you’ll recall, you banged the headstock of the guitar into the stage that night several times and then you didn’t come off the stage to get the guitar at the end of the show for the encore. He said, ‘Ah, that wouldn’t make any difference.’"

According to Weber, Eddie, who had a guitar around his neck at the time, "proceeded to jam it into the dressing room floor, and in front of a room full of people it comes back up and it’s way out of tune. And I said, ‘Just sayin’…’ And that’s the last I ever heard about it.”

god i'm glad they cleared that up, was sick of the EVH fanboys insisting that it was a 'stupid tech who screwed up'

Eddie was wasted a lot of the time wasn't he?

The last time I saw him with Sammy he was a mess. Much better with DLR the next time.

the last tour here I didn't go as people warned me their shows had gotten a bit rough, and there was actually a Groupon for tix to their Tampa show as sales were so poor.

still regret it as I never got to see them live :/

in fairness though I think the reason people told me the shows were rough was Dave

they were both kinda rough

there was this period where Eddie was wearing a good hair in a top knot and wearing like camo cargo shorts and shit like that, he seemed really bad off

his hair not good hair, it was bad hair

He many many times said that the last record that meant anything to him was Peter Gabriel's So.

And the world wept for for a EVH-on-synths cover of "Mercy Street."

Only time I saw VH live was with Sammy but it was an awesome day was at the Monsters of Rock tour which also had The Scorpions, Fokken Dokken and Metallica.

You about cannot get more 1988 than that…especially as the show was in the ‘Hoosier Dome’. Ha!

the only time i saw VH was with cherone 😩

only time I saw him was with Simon and Garfunkel

Hello, teacher, my old friend

I Am a Cock

*spits out tea*

i saw them in 2012-ish with Kool & The Gang opening.
Kool & The Gang was the highlight :/

VH was weird & awkward. Vibes were way off, as the kids say. Dave was super rambly & no one wanted to be there, incl the audience

truly though kool & the gang were awesome & kinda saved the show from being an embarrassing waste of time & money

It's funny, because when that tour was first announced, I thought "this was 100% DLR's idea, and it's kind of awesome, Van Halen and Kool & the Gang are both party bands, though in a very different way"...but when I thought about it for about 30 more seconds I was like, "nope, Kool & the Gang are a highly disciplined show band and Van Halen are a sloppy if showbizzy party-rock act — Kool & the Gang are gonna eat their lunch every single night without fail."

I was just watching the "Best Of Both Worlds" bit from Live Without A Net and thought, I know I've heard this riff somewhere else...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GwjfUFyY6M

TS: The first four Van Halen albums with Eddie's guitar in one channel and Sunset Sound's reverb chamber applied to it in the other vs. the original fake stereo version of The Beatles' first four albums with the with the vocals on one channel and the band in the other.

I saw VH twice, both times touring the FUCK album (in retrospect, my least favorite of the Hagar albums). I don't remember either show being notably spectacular, but solid, professional events. First time the opener was Alice in Chains (!), second time the opener was Baby Animals (?).

pic.twitter.com/OREXxL34aq

— Fisher Protocol-WhoTalk (@FisherProtocol) April 23, 2023

Posting this again to highlight Hagar's strengths (and the rest of them, for that matter):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYUKtW8ayhA

Also, points for sounding undeniably like Van Halen. That snare sound should be my ringtone.

https://i.imgur.com/sD4emLk.jpg

From the Monk book

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtaIh3GIdQM

Not soon enough.

Curio time -- a set of the complete "Star Fleet" sessions that EVH sat in on with Brian May in 1983 is getting a release:

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/news/expanded-boxset-brian-may-star-fleet-project/

(listening to II loud in my headphones on the railroad last night when the conductor comes to take my ticket)

conductor: "Van Halen?"
me: "yeah"
"they're one of my all time favorites"
"me too"
"they were the first concert i ever saw"
"me too"
"what year did you see them"
"1994, a little embarrassing"
"oh, that's when i was born, i didn't see them that early"
"when did you see them?"
"2007"
"was that with Roth?"
"yeah"
(enviously) "awesome"

reading the masculinity thread as Beautiful Girls plays and thinking how DLR's perspective is so unrelatable to me, i have no idea what he's talking about wrt Beautiful Girls and that used to make me feel defective or something, yet it hasn't diminished my enjoyment of this band at all.

honestly i only fuck with II for the last 3 songs, not that the rest of it doesn't rule but i'm putting it on because i wanna hear DOA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72Gqi0B1fYo

spot on

I think I remember that interview from after the MTV Awards!

Biggest moment was Eddie sucking in his cheeks, revealing some DLResque cheekbones, and doing a pitch perfect dead-eyed impression of Roth.

this has all the quotable shit-talking from 1996/97…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IakQI4mWmRI

Boozy boozy bop- ziti bop