Edward Van Halen: A Definitive Biography (26 page)

She felt the time was right to come clean about her affair in Japan with Craig, the drummer for Private Life. She felt great getting it off her back, “but Ed flipped out.” Valerie said that he truly felt he had never done anything to her on that level, and she felt, like most men, he clearly had a double-standard when it came to the issue of fidelity.

After all of the sessions, the two decided to stick it out and keep trying to make a go at getting the marriage together. Valerie said, “‘Look,’ I told Ed. ‘You fucked up. I fucked up. Let’s just get this behind us.’” For now, Remington was keeping quiet, so all they could do was go about their lives as best they could and just ignore her altogether.

At one point afterward, Valerie received a phone call in her hotel room from a man Valerie referred to as a business associate of Ed’s—that “guitar company executive” Val had previously referred to. The man was screaming at her on the other end of the phone that Edward was sleeping with his wife, as if Valerie had actually given it her blessing and was partly to blame. Val, of course, shot back with the rather obvious retort that
his
wife was sleeping with
her
husband! Strange days.

Production of the Ernie Ball Music Man Edward Van Halen signature guitar came to an end for reasons that are easily deducible… Their personal relationship ended. Of their business relationship, Edward said:

The truth is, that I thought that since I designed the guitar, that I owned it… . I was sadly mistaken… And when I found that out, that Music Man also registered the trademark “5150” for string use… I mean come on, you know, the world pretty much knows the 5150 and the stripes is pretty much my thing. And they registered the trademark, so I just said, you know, fuck you guys. And the guitar was never really finished for me. The next guitar I wanted to build would have been the Wolfgang anyway. I wanted an archtop, and I wanted to experiment some more. I figured they were a small shop, but they couldn’t keep up with the orders…

Northridge and a Norelco

On January 17, 1994, Edward and Valerie were at home when the Northridge earthquake hit. Eddie was pretty shaken by the whole thing. He bragged to
GUITAR
about how solid 5150 was built, “This place is like Fort Knox,” he said. “Nothing happened to it during the earthquake in 1994. It’s all two-foot cinderblock filled with cement. It ain’t going anywhere.” However, the main house was rattled, although the damage was primarily cosmetic. “Man, that earthquake scared the shit out of me!” Edward said. “I thought that Satan himself was underneath the house. The TV spit about five feet off the wall and I almost got nailed by that. It was hell, man. I’m pretty prepared, too; I’ve got my flashlight and boots next to the bed. But this one hit so hard that I had one boot on, my underwear half on, and I was falling on the floor. I couldn’t do anything. In the meantime, Valerie’s already in Wolfie’s room grabbing him, and was back already. It was like she was on autopilot.”

Dave’s Pasadena home actually suffered rather extensive damage. His heat was out for much of that winter. His insurer attempted a $350,000 payout. Dave eventually returned fire with a $5 million suit.

That same month, Eddie played the annual Bob Hope Classic golf tournament with tour pro Payne Stewart as his one of his partners. Sportscaster Jim Lampley apparently mocked Edward throughout the broadcast—Ed actually claimed Lampley was “cartooning” him by making fun of his wardrobe as well as his game. “Maybe Mr. Van Halen should spend less time in the studio and more time on the driving range,” said Lampley. Ed was not playing well that day, and Stewart was reportedly unhappy with the pairing. Worse yet, Ed beaned a spectator with a ball, although the man was not hurt and was delighted to have been hit by a wild Eddie Van Halen shot. The next day, Ed met up with his instructor Ron Del Barrio and began taking his golf game much more seriously.

Sammy’s
Unboxed
solo album with two brand-new songs came out in March 1994. He went on TV to promote it on Letterman. But when he planned to bring Michael Anthony out to join him on
The
Tonight
Show
, Ed and Al were so peeved that Sammy ended up canceling his appearance altogether. Eddie was still mourning the loss of Ed Leffler and was reportedly upset at seeing the band’s singer doing self promotion in the media. Ian Christie noted: “Memories resurfaced of another lead singer testing the waters with a solo record before abandoning Van Halen.”

The spring of 1994 was not a good one for Ed at all. His grief over Leffler’s death, the stress of the marriage counseling, and the strife with Sammy—all contributed to a bout of prolonged heavy drinking. “I reached a point… where I was absolutely at wit’s end, and drinking wasn’t helping me,” Edward said. “I was literally freaking out.” Ed admitted that he literally starting pulling his hair out of his own head. Sammy claimed that Edward was so smashed that Valerie had locked him out of the house and wouldn’t let him in. He grabbed a shaver and cut his hair. “I was so pissed off and frustrated with myself, I grabbed a Norelco and did a butcher job. Valerie freaked, obviously… . But that was the beginning of a new me.” Eddie also said, “I walked down to the house, grabbed a Norelco shaver and just shaved my head. I looked like an Auschwitz victim… . I was losing it.”

After he had shaved his head, the band went to Europe for a promotional trip. Ed’s hair was still ridiculously cropped, and, again, it was a complete 180 from the image that everyone had ever had of him. “This one German journalist said to me, ‘Now wait a minute. I’m no psychologist here, but nobody just does that to their head,’” Eddie said. He said that, at the time, he didn’t feel like explaining what was going on, so spun it away from the truth, claiming he had lost a bet to Jim Kelly.

Eddie returned to a rehab facility late that spring, but did not finally make truly serious progress for several more months. The band actually played a gig that April at the Hard Rock in Los Angeles to launch Ed’s new charity tournament Eddie’s Celebrity Golf Challenge which was attended by stars including Bill Murray, Tommy Lee, Joe Pesci, Dweezil Zappa, Steve Morse, Jim Kelly, Neil Young, Bret Michaels, and Rob Lowe.

Recording
Balance

Recording for the next Van Halen album started in May and would last until July. This time there would be no Ted Templeman, no Donn Landee, and no Andy Johns. Edward told HP Newquist:

We met with a bunch of different people when we were looking for a producer. I talked with Mike Clink, with Bob Rock, with Andy Johns—they were all busy. Of all the guys we talked to and considered, Bruce Fairbairn was the one who worked out. We had already done a few albums on our own, but I prefer to work with somebody and bounce our ideas off of them. Just an outside ear, you know? But producing’s a very elusive job. You’re everything from baby-sitter to amateur psychologist and schoolteacher, and you’re just trying to keep it all going in the right direction.

Bruce Fairbairn took over as producer for the album that would become
Balance
. With Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, and Loverboy on his resume, the man knew how to make platinum albums. Engineer Mike Fraser got the studio set up in May getting ready for Bruce’s arrival. “I guess Alex and I were dicking around in the studio since October of 1993,” Eddie said. “But we didn’t start actual recording until June 1, and it took us four months to write and record the whole thing. That’s very quick, especially for us, but Bruce was very on top of things—he doesn’t let you get away with loafing. He has a schedule and he makes you stick to it.”

Everything except for some lead vocals for
Balance
was recorded at 5150; some vocals were done in Canada where Bruce lived. The album was mixed at the Record Plant instead of 5150. “But we’d still come up to my house to make sure it sounded right,” said Ed.

About the recording of the album, Sammy said, “Eddie was supposed to be sober, but he wasn’t and he could be trouble. He couldn’t drink around Valerie, and Ray Danniels was all concerned we keep Eddie straight.” Sammy said that Edward was stashing cocaine and vodka—along with chewing gum and cigars—in the studio bathroom, where he was frequently disappearing to. Sammy confronted Alex about Ed’s use and claimed that Alex was in denial. Sammy then confronted Eddie directly who told him flat out that he hadn’t had a drink for months. Sammy said, “He’d break down and cry, bust up things. It got ugly.”

Edward said he tried to temper his alcohol intake by drinking non-alcoholic Sharps with a few real beers in between. He had finally reached a point where his physiology was suffering. “All of a sudden my mind and body started retaliating,” he said. “It wasn’t fun anymore. I’d wake up in the morning and puke… . I’m realizing I’m a fucking alcoholic. I’d have to drink a six-pack to feel normal.”

One of the most significant things that came out of the
Balance
sessions was Edward suggesting lyric changes for the first time ever in the history of the band. Sammy felt that Edward was so frustrated with him that he was using vocal criticism as a lever to wedge Sammy out of the band. Sammy claims that was the real reason he and Bruce went to Vancouver to finish recording the vocals. Second engineer Mike Plotnikoff said, “Sammy would only come between three and five, and he had dinner reservations at six, so you had to get what you could out of him in that amount of time, and that was it. I think that was why Eddie and Sammy weren’t getting along.”

Worse yet was the song “Amsterdam.” While the city is indeed famous for its legal marijuana cafes, it just also happens to be the exact same city where both Edward and Alex were born. Sammy’s focus was completely on weed, and it tweaked Ed and Alex. They asked him to rewrite the words, but Sammy refused. “I always hated the words to ‘Wham, Bam Amsterdam,’ from
Balance
,” said Eddie, “because they were all about smoking pot—they were just stupid. Lyrics should plant some sort of seed for thought, or at least be a little more metaphorical.” The band spent a ton of cash making a video for the song while walk the city’s streets as well as showing Edward getting his famous Wolfgang tattoo. But MTV wouldn’t show the video because of the song’s blatant drug references. So Warner Brothers stepped in and insisted Sammy redo the lyrics—just as Ed and Al had done earlier—so that the video could air. MTV still didn’t play it. Later Edward said, “‘Wham Bam, Amsterdam’ wasn’t my fault! Blame the music on me, but not that other stuff.”

Sammy’s Club and Eddie’s Sobriety

There was also the issue of the cantina. While Eddie was sinking tens of thousands of dollars into the place, it fell into shambles. Confident that the Cabo Wabo was an obviously unprofitable deal, Ed and the others gave up their shares to Sammy—gladly leaving him holding the bag, in a sense. However, Sammy’s newfound independence caused him to refocus on the club—update it, get better management, and he Michael Anthony went down to jam as often as possible to raise even a few thousand dollars at a time.

By 1994, Sam had actually turned the club around, and now that Ed wasn’t a partner in the venture anymore, there was open animosity on the subject that would last for years and years. Sammy was proud he sunk his teeth into the club, leaned into it to bring it back from the dead. Again, Ed’s take had to have been that when he was a partner, it was a losing venture, and he lost a lot of cash. But now that Sammy’s got it to himself, he’s diving in and turning it around. The question was why didn’t Sammy lean into it while Eddie was throwing money at it? What was originally a band venture was now a Sammy Hagar solo venture, for which he can now claim all credit for in the end.

Finally, Ed got much more serious about his alcoholism. “That’s when I got sober, on October 2, 1994,” Ed said. “And I started seeing this therapist, a Sikh woman. And she changed my life.” Eddie’s therapist was Sat-Kaur Khalsa. He had been seeing her for two years before he finally made a major breakthrough. He told
Guitar
World
:

I fought her tooth and nail, man. I said, “There’s no way—I need a couple of beers to loosen up before I play.” So finally, about a year ago last summer, she goes, “Just give me 12 hours to work with you.” I said, “Okay.” So she comes out from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and says, “Are you ready?” “Yeah, I guess… this is weird.” So we do all kinds of intense mind-balancing things for a half-hour straight, and she tells me to sit down. I thanked her, because I was about ready to drop. She goes, “Close your eyes and just breathe. Now, go to that ‘room’ you go to after you drink. Go to that place, that feeling that you have after you drink.” A couple of minutes go by. She goes, “Are you there yet?” I go, “No.” She goes, “Go to that room.” All of a sudden, this whole new feeling comes flooding in. I said, “I think I’m there!” She said, “Keep your eyes closed.” She handed me a guitar. And I immediately wrote three songs. It took her an hour, not 12 hours… . And it was just like she’d been telling me. “You don’t understand, Ed, you’ve been blocking the light.” She was right, and now I can’t stop the light coming through, and I don’t want to stop it… . I was numbing myself because I couldn’t deal with things. I was hitting the brake when I thought I was hitting the gas. And now it’s wide open. Because that ego, all those neuroses and worries and fears, just isn’t there. Those three little letters don’t exist any longer. Not in the way they did.