Tag: van halen (Page 2 of 2)

The Great American Bands. Dear sweet Iterated Christ, save us from pontifications on the Great American Bands. None here, I promise.

But I will say this: they had to be from somewhere.

You’ve got New York City, which is an ethnic European island, and then everything else is California or Texas; all white America is California or Texas. Wyoming is in Texas, and so is the majority of Idaho that rich people haven’t bought; Boston is in Northern California, and Miami is in between Los Angeles and San Diego. Americans light out for the territories, or they circle the wagons. California and Texas.

Van Halen was from California, and maintained a half-acre zone of sunsoaked sovereignty around themselves at all times; they’d play England or Japan, and blondes in wet tee-shirts would materialize in the corner of your vision, and then you’d turn your head and there would be an empty swimming pool filled with fatless dervishes on skinny skateboards made from orange plastic. It never rained in Van Halen songs, and winter was a discarded rumor.

How do we judge art? What is art, and what is entertainment; and do we measure these two categories with different rubrics? Are bonus points awarded for great hair?

Does it keep its own promises?

Van Halen didn’t offer any sort of journey–that was the Dead–and they weren’t dangerous, and they certainly had no wisdom to share; Van Halen promised a party. And they delivered: albums, shows, their image, their videos, all of it; a real, live California party right in the tape deck of your shitty car in the shitty town your parents forced you to grow up in, instead of California.

So: California. An American band, even moreso than it appears at first: two Dutch-Indonesian immigrants, a Jew, and Michael Anthony.

They all grew up in Pasadena and Altadena and Lomadena and various other Denas, and it is in those towns that all the Van Halen Origin Stories take place, the liturgy of half-true stories all fans know by heart; every band has ’em: there’s Mick and Keith meeting on the train, and Bobby and Garcia at the music store on New Year’s Eve, and KISS putting an ad in the Village Voice.

Van Halen has Eddie starting off on drums, and Alex on guitar; then there’s something about a paper route, and they switch instruments. David Lee Roth was a rich kid, doctor’s son, and he semi-weaseled his way into the Van Halen brothers’ band by renting them his PA. Then Michael Anthony showed up.

After that, they played house parties and suburban backyards; the cops came every time, and several riots broke out. This cheered the Van Halen boys, as all Great Bands have started at least several riots: they were on their way to the clubs, first the outer-boro places where they did five sets a night of cover tunes, and then moving inward to Hollywood, and upward once they got there. The band started at Gazzari’s, which was grimy and shabby and run by a cadaverous lech, and proceeded to the Starwood, and then the Whiskey. Whiskey’s still there; the other places aren’t

They own Los Angeles: time to make a record, but in an odd echo of Guns n Roses early days a decade later, first Van Halen had to avoid being helped by KISS. Gene Simmons had heard them, loved them, and wanted to sign them to his vanity label; Van Halen was impressed, and went to New York to record some demos with Gene, who was–predictably–so obnoxious that the deal soured. Think of how obnoxious you have to be to piss off people in a band with David Lee Roth. Also, Gene was probably just trying to poach Eddie for KISS.

(GnR would go through just about the same bullshit with Paul Stanley, but Van Halen seemed to have thought that Gene was their big break, while Guns made fun of Paul the entire time, and Izzy might have stolen his wallet.)

So they sign with Warner Brothers in 1977; this is what they sounded like at the time:

Go listen to it: it’s a real decent SBD from 10/15/77 at the Pasadena Civic Center; they sold out the 3,000-seater without a record out, but their first one was being released soon, and they play most of it. They are young and brutal and bashing, but they don’t plod–the songs don’t actually speed up, but they sound like they do–and the revelation is the vocals.

“David Lee Roth couldn’t sing.”

FUCK YOU, go listen to that show. He wasn’t Freddie Mercury, but no one other than Freddie was: Dave has as many notes in his range as Mick Jagger does, and he screams better than any white boy has a right to.

Plus he looked like this at the time:

Which will take you far. For the journey, you want a bearded mystic; for danger, you needed a skinny junkie; but this guy’s at the best party. By definition: whichever party this dude is at is the best party.

And the rest of the band looked like this:

(Enthusiasts, it is here that I will level with you, and say that when this began I did not think that I would be seeing quite so much of Eddie Van Halen’s dick.)

Obviously, Dave was the Bobby and Eddie was the Garcia, and then there’s the rhythm section, and rhythm sections are like assholes: their appearance is not the point. Michael Anthony was shaped like a balding fireplug, and Alex looks like the fucking devil, or maybe Keanu Reeves’ mean and shiftless brother. Like, if Keanu Reeves had a Frank Stallone: that’s what Alex looks like.

(Two good-looking guys might be the most any four-piece band had. Cheap Trick had two, and so did The Doors; Morrison and Manzarek were both beautiful, and the other two were total mutants. Joe Strummer and one of the other guys who wasn’t Mick Jones were handsome. Zeppelin? No one had a crush on John Paul Jones, did they?)

I didn’t mean for Thoughts on Van Halen to last as long as it has, and apparently it isn’t over; sometimes you catch a band like a cold. Tomorrow: California conquers the world, and then it all just peters out into shit.

There’s an adorable part of this picture, Enthusiasts, I swear. It’s not the platform clodhoppers, and it is not the always vaguely-Satanic Alex, and it certainly isn’t the pistols lying around for no good reason. (Seriously: those little tables are made of lacquered pressboard; they’re slippery, and so if the bus brakes suddenly, then now you have flying guns. Flying guns do no one any good, Van Halen. Holster those weapons.)

See it yet? It’s cute, I promise.

See it?

…

Right before the picture, David Lee Roth made fun of Michael Anthony for drinking a soda, and told him to drink a beer like a Rock Star, and so Michael Anthony put his Pepsi under the seat and popped open a Colt 45. Told you: adorable.

I speak once again, if I may, to the possibly apocryphal Younger Enthusiast. (Most of you geezers are just as old as my crinkly ass.) But there used to be a job called Rock Star, and another one titled Guitar God.

There may still be rock stars, but there are certainly no more Rock Stars, and no one has seen any Guitar Gods for a while and we won’t again, probably. The only reason for the continued existence of rock stars, though, is the malleabilifying of the term: “rock star” has been stretched like cheap taffy to mean “anyone who did anything even vaguely cool at any time.” It’s more of an adjective than a noun lately.

Rock Stars were winners, amplified triumphant, and they would put their feet up on the monitors and lean out so the crowd could see just how cocky they were; they were never the underdogs: Rock Stars were the cool kids. They would come to town, fuck the hottest chicks, burn down the Ramada, and make you look at their crotches for two hours at the local sportatorium.

There was no one who looked like this where you lived, and they did not sell these clothes at your local mall. They were prancing erections with good hair and the ability to throw tantrums. (There are entire sub-categories in the Encyclopedia of Rock Stories dedicated to various Rock Star tantrums: backstage, offstage, onstage, in the studio, on a plane, at a party, during an interview. A true Rock Star could throw a tantrum no matter the environment: they were like Marines when it came to being petulant; they improvised, adapted, overcame, and then threw a chafing dish full of ribs at the promoter.)

Rock Stars were allowed to kill people, Younger Enthusiasts. (Go look up “Razzle Dingley” and then come back and apologize for doubting me.) And fuck 14-year-olds, and walk around in short-sleeves with caked blood in the crook of their elbows. They emigrated to avoid taxes, put on charity concerts to avoid jail time, and fled the jurisdiction in a Learjet to avoid prosecution. (I make no value judgement about the very last thing in the preceding paragraph; everything else, I reserve the right to be self-righteous about. If the DA wants to ask you questions and you have a Learjet, then you should get in the plane and fly away.)

The 50’s had the Angry Young Men, but the 70’s and 80’s had Horny Young Men: it is impossible to overstate pussy’s pervasiveness. Getting pussy, looking for pussy, on the pussy hunt, pussy pussy pussy. Groupies and chicks and stone-cold teen foxes, and road skank: Rock Stars got more pussy than you, and better pussy than you, and they let you know it simply by the tightness of their trousers.

You’re saying, “TotD, these behaviors still exist,” and I congratulate you on your cynicism; the difference is the celebration. There no longer is applause for open substance abuse, and fucking everything that moves, and punching strangers on airplanes; in 2016, that’s not a sexy rebel, that’s next year’s reality show (and not even on a good network).

Rock Stars were braggarts, fit for the Roman Republic. We’re an Empire now. Their like won’t be seen again: there are no more Horror Hosts, and there are no more Pin-Up Girls, and there are no more Pen Pals, and there are no more Rock Stars. What’s the point of being on the cover of the Rolling Stone any more?

And there are most definitely no more Guitar Gods. Garcia was one, and so was Eddie Van Halen. You needed an origin story (wood-chopping accident with brother; switching instruments with brother), a distinctive look (muppet beard, goofy smile), and it helped to be standing next to a handsome guy with great hair (Bobby, David Lee). Angus Young, Jimmy Page, etc. All iterations of the same Christ.

A Guitar God also needed a magical guitar. Excalibur, the General Lee, Luke’s lightsaber: heroes get a gift at the beginning of their journeys; it identifies them as the protagonist, and enables them to defeat the bad guy in the third act.

And damn the facts, of course. B.B. King had Lucille, but Lucille was actually over a dozen Gibsons, replaced over the years like Lassies on a backlot. Jimmy Page played a Les Paul through a dozen Marshall amps, except he didn’t. Go ahead, think of a Led Zeppelin song. Chances are the guitar sound you were thinking of was made by a paisley-pink Telecaster run through a tiny little Fender.

Perhaps you could have a unique guitar: Randy Rhoads had his Jackson Flying V, with its asymmetrical points, painted with polka dots; Brian May built his legendary Red Special out of wood from medieval fireplace and smelted the copper for its pickups in his shed. Like May, Bo Diddley was his own luthier, but he was a bit less elegant and went with “rectangular” for the shape.

Eddie Van Halen was the greatest of all the Guitar Gods–Zeus, if we’re to continue the metaphor–and so his Magic Guitar was the most specialest of all. It looked like this:

He called it the Frankenstrat, but there were no Stratocaster parts in the thing, just local Southern California shop pieces: Eddie got a discount on the body because there was a knot in the wood. It’s in the Smithsonian now, but the object itself is a bit of a ship of Theseus; Eddie replaced parts on the sucker constantly: new necks and pickup and electronics.

But the paint scheme stayed. It’s tough to go wrong with red, black, and white; it is fairly easy to go Nazi, though. (You have to be conservative with the black; that’s the key. What you want is a lot of red and white, with some black highlights. If the three colors are in equal parts, then you’re evoking unpleasantries.) Eddie would play other guitars in his career, but the paint scheme stayed.

The Guitar God got a solo in every song, and a spotlight, too. Sometimes–often, actually–the whole show would stop so that the Guitar God could deedle and bwee for ten minutes in front of a stadium, unpestered by pedestrian bassists and workaday drummers. He would make faces while playing his guitar, and then he would lean way back–the guitar has so much power!–and sometimes his picking hand would be blown skyward by the fierceness of his riffery. Were he to drop to his knees, it would be understandable.

Like that.

Before Eddie Van Halen, there was Jimi Hendrix (and Clapton, I guess, fine, whatever); after Eddie Van Halen, there were no more; not for lack of trying on C.C. Deville’s part, or Don Dokken, or Steve Vai, or any other of those Guitar Center wieners.

It wasn’t the guitar (though Eddie has the coolest guitar), and it wasn’t the hair (he had awesome hair), and it wasn’t the trousers (so very tight): he was a musician, while his imitators were guitar players.

Here, listen to this. You’ve heard it before:

Now listen–fucking listen–to it: it’s a three-act story. Classic Rock radio has inured you through repetition, but hear it again deeply and for the first time, with zits on your face and a mullet cascading proudly down your neck.

It starts loudly, the whole band, but by ten seconds on we’ve gone to a confusing and questioning chord; at 00:30, Eddie does the fast-picking thing–like Garcia’s fanning but way speedier–and the hero is in danger. The chord–minor? diminished?–is discomfiting and the notes sprint through the woods ahead of monsters and madmen.

And now go back–please go back, it’s worth it–go back and listen to 00:47. After the danger, there is silence. A second-and-a-half of atmospheric nothing, just the sound of thick air, and then BRANGdiddleiddlediddle Eddie attacks: it is a brilliant sound, and violent, but listen underneath the notes because like a boxer he is only seemingly flailing and punching; the chords underneath set up the next bit, the famous bit, the cool bit, the star-making bit. The finger-tapping section.

For years, guitarists had thought they knew all the ways to play a guitar: pick, fingers, lap, etc. Then, at 00:58 of Eruption (and that is a perfect name), guitarists discovered that their knowledge had been incomplete. If, instead of plucking the string with your finger or a plectrum, you bipped at the sucker with your fingertip right onto the fretboard, it made a completely new noise. Playing with a pick real fast sounds like DEEDLYDEEDLYDEEDLY, but this new thing sounded like BOODLYBOODLYBOODLY, and many record buyers were interested in these new findings.

That’s the famous part, the mold they cast an idol out of, but the passage isn’t famous for just technique. Fuck technique: tricks last for a night, but stories last forever. Go back again, just one more time, for your buddy TotD, and listen to 00:58.

Don’t listen to the notes. Listen to the chords. Listen to the melody, which is not spelled out for you like you’re a moron; it is more than a little Bach, obviously. A current in the stream of the same story we’ve been telling ourselves for hundreds of years. Johann Sebastian, whose children grew up to be musicians, refracted through a grinning and coked-up guitarist from Pasadena, the son of Jan, who was a musician.

That which is glorious iterates, and never dies.

There are no more Guitar Gods. Songs don’t even have guitar solos now: the featured rapper takes a verse. Eddie Van Halen was the last one, and I don’t know if he is any more, Younger Enthusiasts; I don’t know if you can keep showing up at a job that no longer exists; I don’t know so many things.

I know that there are no more Rock Stars, and certainly no more Guitar Gods; they used to look like this:

But they don’t make buggy whips any more, and the factories that made mimeograph machines are long closed.

This is the best Billy has ever looked.