Everybody Wants Some (31 page)

When the album was finished, Eddie spoke of finding his musical “soul mate” in Gary Cherone. “It’s like he’s a long-lost brother,” Eddie told
The Inside
. “It’s funny, when I think about it, my father was a traveling musician—so who knows?”

Though Eddie’s spirits had been battered, he remained relatively sober throughout the sessions. “It’s kind of hard for me to listen back to some of the old stuff,” he told
The Inside
. “I was in a different place. I was in a bottle. I wasn’t clear. I have a glass of wine every now and then, but I don’t get fucking hammered like I used to. I don’t have the reason that I used to.”

“I think I caught it just in time,” he continued later. “I think when you hit around 40 and you don’t cut the crap, you either kick the bucket or just lose it in the turn.”

Eddie began mentioning a higher power for the first time in relation to his musical gifts. “I don’t mean to get deep on you, but there’s some force out there, and for me to come up with the whole thing in ten minutes—it was just given to me. Anyone who thinks that they’re responsible for something like that can kiss my ass. God just picked me to do this. And you try to keep your chops up so whatever he gives you, you can execute.”

III
had sharper teeth than much of the Hagar-era output. The band sounded more immediate than the super-size stadium rock of
Balance
. Alex’s drums were tightly contained, while Eddie’s guitar was pushed up front in the mix. At the same time, the record was relaxed and a little introspective—not a bombastic attempt to blow away the earlier achievements.
Van Halen III
was a stripped-down snapshot of the band in the late 1990s, with a young hopeful bravely throwing out his vocal chops.

Marking a return to rock, Eddie had grown his hair back to a respectable unruly mop of curls, and he still rapid-fired on his EVH faster than many listeners could register. As always, he seemed to be operating effortlessly in a slow-motion zone, throwing out licks and flourishes as if he had all the time in the world and everyone else was crawling along at half-speed.

The biggest complication of completing
III
was that the recordings were captured with too many microphones, which brought sonic goblins into the mixing phase. Every little tweak sent the entire mix into a tail-spin, changing the relative punch of guitars, bass, drums and vocals. Then, when Van Halen proudly delivered their first new album in two years to Warner Bros.—now under new leadership—the label thanked them but said they weren’t ready for it yet. Back to the drawing board went Eddie and his engineers.

Hoping for airplay on adult contemporary radio, Eddie remixed a version of “Once” with acoustic guitars, adding new vocals by Gary and female vocals by Madonna backup singer turned yoga music doyenne Donna DeLory. Eddie successfully made the track suitable for falling asleep. Despite his extra effort, the single remained unreleased—a sure sign that the record company didn’t know what to do with the band as it mellowed with age. Commercial radio was certainly no longer a friend to rock music.

Alex’s girlfriend, Stine Schyberg, designed the album cover, and afterward she put together the stage set and tour merchandise. For many years the band’s interest in Asian wisdom began and ended with the Kama Sutra. Now, along with therapy, breathing exercises, and meditation came a dalliance with Eastern mysticism—one of Eddie’s speaker cabinets had a Peavey nameplate written in Sanskrit, and Alex’s bass drums read “Van Halen” in Sanskrit. By this time, Alex was a yoga-practicing vegetarian with a mystical Fu Manchu handlebar mustache. He also adopted a Zen approach to superior firepower. “We’d like it to be great the first time out,” Alex stressed to
The Inside
. “This is gonna be the first time the band will be seen the way it is now. The rest is really out of our hands.”

Van Halen began 1998 in freezing Sweden in the dead of January, where they filmed a video for “Without You” in a trendy ice hotel—a building made of packed snow and furnished with carved ice, a space untouched by California sunshine. Cherone had long since shorn his shaggy brown hair and was leading the band with a snappy, short hairdo, doing his part to finally update Van Halen for the 1990s.

The week before
III
hit stores, on March 12, 1998, Van Halen unveiled its new look, sound, and feel with a live radio broadcast from Billboard Live in Hollywood. Along with a few new tracks, they performed mostly Roth classics like “Unchained” and “Feel Your Love Tonight.” Eddie had to relearn the gem “I’m the One” by listening to the record—the former cover guitarist covering himself. The Billboard Live club was a corporate aquamarine box on the Sunset Strip, situated by coincidence on the grounds where sleazy Gazzari’s stood in the 1970s. The grittiness had been gutted, disinfected, and stuffed with padded couches. The Hollywood music scene and the Sunset Strip had grown up and gotten comfortable, and Van Halen had been a big part of that transition to legitimacy.

After introducing Cherone to fans with a simple summer tour, the band planned to return to the studio in the fall of 1998 to quickly produce a second album. The condition of Eddie’s hip had improved to the point that his doctor was postponing surgery indefinitely. Alex, however, remained shackled by a neck brace, as his cervical vertebrae were inoperable. “I’m not too happy about it,” he said, “but it’s the price I pay for being an idiot sometimes.”

Van Halen Mk. III hit the road immediately, jetting down under for the band’s first ever visit to Australia and New Zealand. Debuting at venues halfway around the world gave Gary a psychological break, as the crowds were smaller and had never seen Van Halen before. Overall, he was a smart international choice, as Extreme remained very popular overseas, where his more subtle qualities connected—unlike Mr. “Voice of America” Hagar.

At the first shows, Gary seemed out of his mind, climbing fences and stalking the stage in a trim black suit and
GQ
haircut. He alarmed Hagar-era fans, who were expecting giant smiles, colorful baggy shorts, and an overflowing mop of curls. During the sampled swirling intro to “Dirty Water Dog,” an Aborigine appeared with a didgeridoo to drone and gurgle along with the band.

While halfway across the world, plans to swing through Indonesia didn’t come to pass. The Van Halen brothers were curious about their mother’s homeland, but tracking record sales in the bootleg-ridden country proved too sketchy. They couldn’t predict if they would play to thousands of people or dozens, and every day away from the States meant losing bigger opportunities.

Unlike Hagar, Cherone was game for singing old Roth-era songs like “I’m the One” and “Mean Street,” as well as a few Sammy hits like “Dreams.” The distinction made by outsiders between Roth and Hagar songs irritated Eddie and Alex. They reminded the public that all the songs were Van Halen material, written by the band and sung by who-ever happened to be holding the microphone.

While mostly keeping barbs at bay, they liked pointing attention to Sammy’s reluctance to sing old Roth-regime songs. They questioned whether Dave intimidated the Red Rocker. “Regardless of Dave’s singing ability, the songs were identified with him,” Mike remarked.

Even Hagar knew that his refusal to sing Roth songs had hurt him. “I didn’t want to be compared to old Van Halen,” Sammy admitted to
The Road
. “I did have some insecurities. I would walk out on stage every night knowing those people wanted to hear ‘Jump’ and ‘Runnin’ with the Devil.’ I was a little nervous about that, but at the same time, I knew the new music we had made was powerful and strong.”

Cherone brought back the Roth standards with hopes that the majority of Van Halen’s fans would embrace him. Though diplomatic about not choosing a favorite forerunner, Cherone knew the Roth songs but none of the Hagar ones. “There’s going to be obvious comparisons about whichever is better,” he told
The Inside
. “I try not to think about it. Music’s not a competition over who can sing better. It’s subjective.”

Crowds were delighted to hear “Mean Street,” “Dance the Night Away,” “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love,” and other hallmarks of the band’s formative years. During sound checks the band tested “Jamie’s Cryin’ ” and Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs.” A few nuggets like the spaghetti western tribute “Hang ’Em High” remained on the shelf—it was deemed “too talky” and reliant on Roth’s carnival barker repartee.

Along with the classic songs, Michael Anthony brought his long-retired Jack Daniel’s bass back into active duty. Unfortunately, one set piece they cut was his bass solo, but he did step to the foreground to help sing “Somebody Get Me a Doctor.” More than ever, the emphasis shifted to Eddie Van Halen’s guitar playing.

For all the talk of how the band was a family, there was in fact a genuine camaraderie between the band and the staff. Tour manager Scotty Ross had been wrangling press, band, and crew on the road since 1991. Michael’s bass tech Kevin Dugan, one of the creators of the Jack Daniel’s bass, had been keeping his boss in picks and whiskey since the early 1980s. Beyond these familiar faces, treated as valets to the gods, were three dozen other longtime working men on the road and a handful of union guys. The only job Van Halen really had a hard time filling was lead singer.

A new and controversial conversation piece was Eddie’s encore of “How Many Say I,” where he wheeled out a concert piano and gargled bravely into the microphone while crowds continued roaring at typical concert levels. Philadelphia honored the band’s twenty-second career performance there by declaring May 24 “Van Halen Day.” All four members of the band received miniature replicas of the Liberty Bell. They also played a command performance for Donald Trump at his Trump Marina in Atlantic City in late August.

Yet the expectations should have been scaled down during the incubating period, with more small shows like at Billboard Live. For all the time spent recording during 1997, the band had spent very little time rehearsing with its new singer. Cherone inherited his rock god mantle, but he remained a prince, not a king. He looked small in comparison to his brightly colored predecessors. He remained boyish, still searching for his stage legs. He bleached his hair, but going blond would not save the day this time. “There’s always a few out there with the folded arms going, ‘Okay, I don’t care what you do, you ain’t Dave and you ain’t Sammy,” he told
The Inside
.

He smartly set himself apart from his peacock-plumed predecessors by dressing in subdued black suits or sweaters, dancing and shimmying in Banana Republic outfits and bare feet. But Nuno Bettencourt, who played guitar in Extreme with Cherone for twelve years, observed that Van Halen were trying to force their new singer to sound more macho. “It’s like they’ve pushed him so hard he’s not Gary anymore.”

The
New York Times
called Van Halen’s Madison Square Garden show “hollow, almost devoid of presence, pacing, or drama,” and suggested that the newly reinvented Van Halen should have taken their no-frills show to more clubs instead of halls.

Adding to the feeling that the sky was falling, in June 1998 Alex was warming up before a show in Hamburg, Germany, when a section of plaster fell on top of him and bruised his right arm. He told Michael he felt like he’d been hit with a baseball bat. The band was removed from the stage just before another slab of ceiling dropped onto Alex’s kit. His arm muscle was seriously torn by the accident, so at the eleventh hour, the remainder of Van Halen’s European tour was canceled. He appeared back in the States wearing a soft cast on his arm, along with the usual neck brace and head wrap. His wounded appearance seemed to personify the damage that had been done to his band in recent years.

Van Halen III
was soon widely recieved not as a rebirth but a disappointment. Peaking at number 4 in
Billboard
, it lingered briefly on the charts for three months. Stuck at gold status after August,
III
became the first Van Halen effort not to reach platinum sales. The distinction hurt—for years Van Halen had been the only act on Warner Bros. with a platinum disc for every album released. Eddie frequently protested that Van Halen weren’t in it for the money, only the joy of music. But their partners at the label were definitely dollar-oriented—and it had to hurt band morale to take a step down the career ladder. It was a question of pride, if nothing else.

The specter of the 1996 debacle at the MTV Video Music Awards with Roth already hung over Cherone’s every move. And as Gary acknowledged in several interviews, anything less than double platinum in Van Halen was considered a failure. Only a massive hit could have saved him, as “Why Can’t This Be Love?” did for Sammy. “The album was a stiff and the tour didn’t do well,” Hagar remarked uncharitably during a radio interview. “That could have happened when I joined the band, fifteen years ago, but it didn’t because we made a great record. And my career was in place with ‘I Can’t Drive 55.’ It was equal to Van Halen at that time.”

Hagar may have felt entitled to revise history, but increasingly it looked like Cherone would never get that far. In June 1999, he developed unusually pronounced symptoms of lead singer disease. Cherone clashed with multiplatinum alternative rock bands, though unfortunately, not on the album charts. Using his post in Van Halen as a soapbox, he wrote a public letter to Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder, an outspoken proponent of social causes, including abortion rights. Cherone’s missive mocked the idea of a woman’s right to choose as a function of whether she herself had been chosen by her parents after conception. Though his freedom to speak his beliefs could be seen as healthy, this was the first time Van Halen had been used as a mouthpiece for the Catholic Church.

The remaining songs from the 1997 sessions sat waiting to be recorded for Cherone’s follow-up effort. He described one unrecorded track, “Sad Celibate,” as a moody, expansive song in the vein of Led Zeppelin’s
Houses of the Holy
. Alex, Eddie, and Gary all maintained that the band would return to the studio almost immediately, but their momentum was lost.

Like an underperforming CEO hired to turn around a major corporation, Cherone summarily exited Van Halen on November 5, 1999, after failing to achieve target results. “He was just the wrong choice, it’s that simple,” Alex said later. “No harm, no foul. I think the chemistry was just wrong.”