![]() ![]() Location and time: The Gorge, Saturday, 7 p.m. MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: “We love touring,” Anthony said, “and once you go home, it doesn’t take too long before you want to go out there again.” Now, free to do as it chooses, Van Halen chooses to do the one thing each member insists he loves best - play rock ‘n’ roll. ![]() It’s survived silly songs and even Eddie Van Halen’s celebrity marriage to actress Valerie Bertinelli. Van Halen has survived the loss of its original singer and survived Eddie Van Halen’s alcoholism. “We don’t hop on any trends or what’s going on, as far as, like, grunge or whatever’s happening now … we’ve always made the kind of music we like.” “We’ve always just been ourselves when it comes to making music and playing live,” says bass player Michael Anthony. Even its least successful records sell a couple million copies. 1 on the Billboard charts earlier this year, even though hardrock has, by and large, given way to dance and alternative.īut since releasing its debut album in 1978, the group has weathered a flood of pop-music fads. “Balance,” Van Halen’s 11th release, debuted at No. 1 album - and while Roth has faded into the hard-rock past, Van Halen continues to build steam. The band never lost a beat - in fact, the group’s first record with Hagar, “5150,” was also its first No. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images By Jim Farber Published Oct. It was a gamble on both sides - Hagar had a successful solo career going when he got the call - but the union was instantly fruitful. 851 Eddie Van Halen brought a joyous virtuosity to the electric guitar and was widely revered by his peers. Sammy Hagar is the singer who had the unenviable task of replacing the flamboyant David Lee Roth when Roth departed in 1985. Michael Anthony’s fluid bass is, in fact, the third leg of a powerful rhythm section. A distinguishing feature of Van Halen’s music is the unlikely guitar-drums dialogue of the two brothers, who have played together since grade school. Older brother Alex is a tremendous rock drummer, with a terrific feel and a huge range of textures at his fingertips. Finnish band Hanoi Rocks, heavily influenced themselves by the New York Dolls, have been credited with setting a blueprint for the look of hair metal. Over the past 25 years, Van Halen has been hard-rock’s reigning guitarist and as his style has matured in the past decade, he has become even more interesting. The classically trained scion of a musical family, he developed a style that artfully blended subtlety with bombast, and his unique “hammer on” technique was the first real rock-guitar innovation since Hendrix revolutionized everything. OctoFormer Journey frontman Steve Perry looks back at the band's tour with Van Halen in 1978 and how the experience forever changed his life. But Van Halen had a secret weapon - Eddie Van Halen’s guitar.Ī devotee of Eric Clapton, Van Halen elevated the art of hard-rock guitar at a time when everyone else was into cloning it. In 1978, when the debut album, “Van Halen,” was released, Van Halen looked like just another tousle-haired Los Angeles hard-rock band. Remember, this is the band that once demanded its dressing rooms be stocked with M&Ms, but only after the brown ones were removed. With his bandmates, Van Halen has created a self-defined world. In the private world of Eddie Van Halen, a story’s veracity doesn’t matter much, for reality is as reality does. In the other, he loses a golf bet to Buffalo Bills quarterback Jim Kelly, who wins the privilege of shaving the famed Van Halen tresses.īottom line, he says, “I just decided to leave it short, ‘cause I was sick of having long hair.” In one, he’s up drinking all night - one of his last drunks, he says - with Aerosmith’s manager, grieving the death of Ed Leffler, who had managed Van Halen almost since its inception. The only person who wore a bustier in the ’90s that I could appreciate was Perry Farrell.Van Halen’s guitar player Eddie Van Halen has at least two stories he uses to explain why he cut his hair. It sounds so trite, but before then it was bustiers. They could have an opinion and be respected. “But I’m circling back to say that one thing that I appreciated was that in Seattle and the alternative crowd, the girls could wear their combat boots and sweaters, and their hair looked like Cat Power‘s and not Heather Locklear’s, nothing against her. Guns N’ Roses came out and, thank God, at least had some teeth. “Girls, Girls, Girls” and Motley Crue: you. The metal bands that, I’m trying to be nice, I despised. I’d end up being at shows that I wouldn’t have chosen to go to, bands that monopolized late-’80s MTV. “You know, I used to work in San Diego loading gear at a club. In a recent interview with The New York Times, Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder talked about the late ’80s and early ’90s, being asked if the alt-culture explosion from those times could be still felt today.
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