Everybody Wants Some (38 page)

At the end of 2005, Alex Van Halen and his third wife, Stine, were named Neighborhood Emergency Assistance Team members in their community of Hidden Hills, California, and awarded backpacks and hardhats to use in case of earthquakes or other emergencies. The way things were going with Van Halen, they might need to duck and cover sooner than they thought.

Speculation about Van Halen’s plans spiked in 2005 with word the band would be seeking a new lead singer on the CBS reality show
Rock
Star
. INXS had successfully humiliated themselves during the show’s first season, and now rumors that Van Halen was next in line surfaced from MTV.com and America Online. Van Halen’s publicist didn’t help matters with the statement, “I’m not denying it. I’m not going to answer any questions about it.” On his radio show, Roth claimed he had been handed an open-call audition sheet from producers. After six months in the news, a “vehement denial” from the band and CBS put the rumors to rest.

Eddie Van Halen’s presence was needed, but when he appeared the reaction was not entirely a good one. His weary appearance at Elton John’s March 2006 Oscar party underscored the urgency. Drained by divorce, surgeries, and drink, thirty years of eternal eruption had left Eddie a worn, gray-haired fifty-year-old man. Once the envy of millions, he looked like the walking wounded. Heartless Internet wags dubbed him “Smeagol Van Halen,” an unflattering comparison to Gollum from
Lord of the Rings
. Even in his Dutch hometown of Nijmegen, Eddie only placed seventeenth in a newspaper popularity contest ranking the “Greatest Nijmegeners.” You couldn’t help but hope that all he needed was a return to the precious power of Van Halen.

The Van Halen brothers kept a jealous eye on all their exes, especially Roth. Weeks after his cornpone bluegrass outing, Eddie and Alex ambled out of the garage to the Home Depot Center in Carson, California, where they joined country star and frequent Hagar sidekick Kenny Chesney in loose renditions of “Jump” and “You Really Got Me.” Mechanical hip be damned, Eddie ran through his old gymnast routines like a wounded bird testing its wings and flying once again.

Before long, a few of his much-touted 5150 projects finally saw the light of day. He released music videos for two new songs, “Rise” and “Catherine,” written for Goth-porn movies by director Michael Ninn. Embracing the sex movies, Eddie invested money into their production and allowed scenes and a couple of music videos to be filmed at his home. In the fall of 2006 he hosted a launch party for the flicks at his house, now a bachelor pad, playing a slew of early Van Halen songs on a backyard stage.

The “Catherine” video, directed by Michael Ninn, was an expression of aimless sadness, capturing Eddie alone in 5150 in the darkness, cigarettes in his headstock, shirtless and sweating heavily while he cried out a sustained guitar solo over piano, strings, and drums. Cut-in shots showed him playing the other instruments as well. At the close of the song, he threw down his guitar on the hardwood floor and gulped from a bottle of red wine. The poignant isolation of the three-minute film seemed the clearest picture of what Eddie had been doing since 1999.

He was rootlessly looking for an outlet but was fenced in by unrealistic expectations that ruled his actions. The optimistic story that began on a boat from Holland had all but turned into
Citizen Kane
, with Eddie losing his mind like Orson Welles at his Xanadu estate. Instead of a glass snow globe labeled Rosebud, Eddie dropped his red guitar, and his malfunctioning path was just as enigmatic as Charles Foster Kane’s in the movie. He had turned a few guilders and a piano into lim-itless riches and adulation, and had built his American dream house at 5150, yet King Edward had become a prisoner in his castle—a cautionary tale instead of a shining inspiration.

Pressing Van Halen back into service at this dark hour, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame came calling a few days before Halloween 2006, nominating the band along with eight other acts for the following year’s five available slots. If nothing else, winning the vote would jolt the flatlining band into appearing publicly.

Suddenly, in November 2006, Van Halen’s apparent new spokeswoman—a porn publicist who had become Eddie’s girlfriend—announced that Van Halen were rehearsing for a summer 2007 tour. Speculation ran rampant about who would sing, alongside surprise over confirmation that Michael Anthony had been canned and replaced with fifteen-year-old Wolfgang Van Halen.

At first, the old dance partners Eddie and Roth moved awkwardly. “I’m telling Dave, ‘Get your ass up here and sing, bitch! Come on!’ ” Eddie told
Guitar World
. “The ball is in Dave’s court.”

Roth let the rumors simmer. He continued to serve his fellow man as a paramedic, riding an ambulance on New Year’s Eve 2006 instead of hosting a TV party as he would have done twenty years ago. He compared the Van Halen soap opera to a NASCAR race that spectators watch just to see the crashes. Sammy Hagar was less circumspect. “Dave and Ed working together? I don’t see it in a million years,” he told the
Cleveland Plain-Dealer
.

In fact, Roth had rehearsed with Eddie, Wolfgang, and Uncle Al during December. Wolfgang had apparently been the unifying force, directing his older bandmates with cues from a Van Halen–loaded iPod. “The chemistry is combustible,” Roth told
Rolling Stone
. “There’s an explosive sound there that . . . unless you were there, which most folks weren’t, then you may have forgotten.”

The road to hitting the highway in a tour bus was still bumpy. Regardless of the latest reconciliation with the considerably wiser Roth, Eddie let it be known that he would not let the band’s former dictator push him around. “We’re not holding out for anyone, and we’re not demanding anyone,” he told
Rolling Stone
. “We’re not putting our eggs in any one basket. There’s not just one person on this planet that can sing.”

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame pressed a decision, however, as Van Halen were chosen for honors in 2007 along with R.E.M., Patti Smith, the Ronettes, and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. From their separate outposts, the band members past and present issued low-key statements of acceptance. “That music is a part of American culture,” Roth commented, “beyond just a stack of tunes.”

The Hall of Fame simplified matters somewhat by leaving Gary Cherone off the invite. “Nothing against Gary, but I would’ve voted against getting him in,” Hagar told MTV.com. “He was really just a moment in Van Halen. There was questions about me getting in, because I’ve only been in the band 21 years!”

Ever gracious, Cherone congratulated the five inductees on the honor, downplaying his exclusion gracefully. “To answer the few fans who are wondering whether I should or shouldn’t be included—while, yes, I was a small part of their history, I was certainly not a part of their legend, and that is what we, the fans, are celebrating.”

For the first time in years, Van Halen seemed to be getting something done. At the January 2007 NAMM convention, Eddie announced a milestone partnership between his own EVH guitars and industry granddaddy Fender, commencing with a top-line run of three hundred precise replicas of his red-and-white-striped Frankenstrat. Obsessively crafted by builder Chip Ellis, complete with cigarette burns, bicycle reflectors, and nonfunctioning front pick-up, the copy of the axe that Eddie built for under $300 in 1976 was priced in 2007 at upward of $25,000. Announcing the partnership and praising the replica guitar as fooling even himself, Eddie seemed distracted and awkward before the adoring crowd. He plugged in and proved he could still play guitar if it ever again became necessary.

As rumors reached a shrill pitch, on February 2, Van Halen “officially” announced a summer tour—only to run adrift two weeks later. Despite a breaking announcement on Billboard.com, a reunion news-flash on the Drudge Report, and a “99% likely” forecast by the
Las
Vegas Review-Journal
, the latest Roth adventure was soon postponed. An unnamed executive from concert promoter Live Nation told the
Los
Angeles Times
that Van Halen’s 2007 tour had “shut down.” 

“We have fragile politics in Van Halen,” Roth said almost sadly. “Please accept that as a partial answer.”

All eyes turned to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, just a few weeks away at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. If the reunion/renewal lineup of Van Halen with Wolfgang and Roth were in any shape to perform, they would surely unveil themselves that night.

The question hung heavy: What form of Van Halen would appear at the ceremony? Though a great opportunity, the event was fraught with hazards. Roth shunned Sammy’s overtures toward singing a duet at the event, explaining that the two men played entirely different kinds of music. Meanwhile, the Van Halens reserved a table at the event, though manager Irving Azoff told Sammy they were not planning to attend. “We’re not gonna know until that day arrives,” Alex cryptically told
Rolling Stone
.

Eddie didn’t sound very certain. “Alex and I have been doing this for so long that there aren’t very many things that we haven’t won,” he added. “I remember the last award I accepted from Bill Maher, when he was doing
Politically Incorrect
[in 1996]. They wanted me to get up and make a speech, so I said ‘Thank you.’ But I told everyone from then on to wait until I’m eighty—stick everything in a box, and send it to me then.”

Then four days before the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was due to induct him, Eddie’s ceaselessly upbeat assessment of the band’s health was countered with a sobering admission of his ongoing alcohol addiction. Instead of touring or accepting any awards, he would be returning to rehab, possibly as a precondition of doing any business with mega-promoter Live Nation. “Some of the issues surrounding the 2007 Van Halen tour are within my ability to change and some are not. As far as my rehab is concerned, it is within my ability to change and change for the better. I want you to know that is exactly what I’m doing,” Eddie wrote in a public letter.

Alex announced that he would not be attending the ceremony without Eddie, leaving the interesting entourage of David Lee Roth, Sammy Hagar, and deposed bassist Michael Anthony to accept the honor. Roth had repeatedly requested to perform at the induction ceremony, with or without the Van Halens. Though the organizers were set on having Velvet Revolver play Van Halen songs, they offered Roth the chance to sing “You Really Got Me.” He insisted on an original Van Halen song, not the Kinks cover. Velvet Revolver, however, backed away from learning “Jump.”

His conditions rebuffed, on the Friday before the ceremony Roth decided not to attend. “I don’t make speeches for a living,” Roth told the
Los Angeles Times
, “I sing for my supper.” In its attempts to please the Van Halen brothers, both singers, and now Velvet Revolver, somehow the Hall of Fame had dishonored an honoree.

A weekend was a long time in Van Halen’s lives, however. Nobody was sure what would happen at the Waldorf-Astoria ceremony come Monday, March 12. What soon transpired was every Van Halen fan’s worst fear—the validation became a debacle that bordered on tragic.

First, Velvet Revolver—a celebrity rock project consisting of former Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland fronting the remnants of Guns N’ Roses—read a perfunctory statement listing a few career highlights, nothing surprising or exciting. The band’s botched performance of “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love” proved they were probably the only hard rockers of their age to have never covered the song. The supposed balance—a version of Hagar-era “Runaround”—was much worse, a lackluster abomination consisting of Slash and company repeating a riff while Weiland yelled “round and round” over and over. At least one member of the black-tie audience noticed, objecting loudly as they cleared the stage: “That wasn’t Van Halen!”

Cheered by their families, Sammy and Mike graciously thanked Dave and wished the Van Halen brothers the best. Sammy specifically thanked the Hall of Fame for including him. Mike recognized Gary Cherone for his contributions. Then they joined Paul Schaeffer and the house band for a squeaky, off-version of “Why Can’t This Be Love?” that wasn’t even saved by the horn section.

The entire event made Van Halen seem like a slipshod, overpartied footnote on rock history. It was inconceivable that Dave didn’t suddenly appear with an acoustic guitar to sing “Ice Cream Man,” or pop up with inductees Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five for an impromptu mash-up of “Runnin’ with the Devil.” As Michael Anthony told the press afterward, “I was waiting for Roth to come busting through at some point during the speech.” So were we all.

In the end, everyone in Van Halen has taken a turn as villain. All the band members have bent the truth for convenience and used the media to stall the fans, mask their true intentions, forward their own plans, and polish one side of a controversy. The truth is more muddled by emotion, personal politics, and the haze of altered states than anyone can admit without upsetting whatever tender relationships remain, if any. The only shining side of the coin is that all the players involved have a decent track record for coming clean after enough time passes.

Thirty-five years after the Trojan Rubber Company rocked its first high school gym, the simple fact remains—Van Halen ain’t over until David Lee Roth sings. His return to Van Halen remains a great unanswered question of rock music. Since stepping down from morning radio, he has remained in the public eye, a constant reminder that one of the great love stories of the hard rock era awaits its proper conclusion.

Roth never enjoyed a proper number 1 album with Van Halen, but the sales speak for themselves—twice the millions of albums were sold in the United States with him than with Hagar—though time and upgrades to CD from vinyl and cassette allow Roth a head start. An entire generation born after 1985 is already past the legal drinking age. Though they were not alive when Roth led the band, they still buy the music and the $100 vintage T-shirts on eBay. The legacy of vintage Van Halen survives on grainy Internet videos.