Everybody Wants Some (17 page)

When Dave broke from Van Halen, with him went a major part of Van Halen’s support system, including designers, truck drivers, merchandisers, stagehands, and creative director Pete Angelus, who had been working with Roth on the movie script. To illustrate how the Van Halen organization was gutted by the divorce, Angelus had been the sound engineer at Gazzari’s. He had joined the adventure early and had done everything from lighting design to stage production to drawing storyboards for the band’s videos. Van Halen’s support system was ravaged. They dissolved their in-house merchandise arm, Van Halen Productions, and in the future simply licensed their name to professional manufacturers of memorabilia. The party seemed to be over.

The 
Crazy from the Heat
 EP went platinum in June 1985, a promising augur of future success. “Just a Gigolo”/“I Ain’t Got Nobody” rose to number 12 on the singles chart. Roth appeared to have judged his massive appeal correctly and enjoyed being the undistracted center of undivided attention from an adoring public. After all, he had given thousands of high kicks and primal screams for the greater glory of the Van Halen family name for over a decade. Fostering jealousy and tension from his main meal ticket, “California Girls” became a Top 10 single.

For Roth, the urge to excel must have been enormous. He had proven all the high school guidance counselors wrong. He was successful beyond his wildest dreams. The sky was the limit. Yet he was still stuck with the same guys who knew him ten years ago, when he couldn’t get a date because he was too talkative, always 
on
, scaring away the local girls. Now he could have anyone he wanted.

“He treated everybody like a little lower than him,” Eddie said shortly after Roth left, “including us in the band.” And so the five-time guitarist of the year, the older brother, and the world’s largest collector of Mickey Mouse watches applied the brakes on their glamour machine, and Roth went flying out of Van Halen, mouth first.

Curiously, even Ted Templeman, one of the band’s closest colleagues, claimed he never saw the split coming. “I never saw any of it,” he told 
Rolling Stone
. “We were in there for seven years, we never had any fights—what was it? They told me they used to fight it all out in the basement before they got to me. So what the fuck’s the matter? So does everybody else!”

Now billing themselves as the Picasso Brothers—part art, part pizza delivery—Roth and Pete Angelus plotted Roth’s ascension to Hollywood stardom, pitching a project about the zany adventures of a fictional larger-than-life rock star, a ninety-minute explosion like the “California Girls” video done coast to coast. They sold the story successfully to CBS Films, and the road ahead for their deal was a short run of green lights.

“I think I can do just about anything as long as it’s within my character’s frame of reference,” Roth told the 
San Francisco Chronicle
. “Everything you’ve seen is part of me. We may have blown it out of proportion so it fits on your TV screen better, but I want to go on and do something bigger than that.”

Roth had already done a boffo job of scripting the look, attitude, and public perception of Van Halen. Now he promised a rocking, whacked-out rebirth of the attention-addled stream-of-consciousness comedy that had made 
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
 a household name in dorm rooms.

Off to a flying start, Roth and Angelus posted an open casting call for their 
Crazy from the Heat
 movie, seeking actresses and personalities with the following requirements: “If you are a woman, and you think you have an unusual character face and a beautiful body, or if you have an unusually beautiful face and character body, or any combination thereof, you’re perfect.”

Having narrowed down the field to virtually any woman alive, Dave’s TV party commenced. “Let’s find our women on the street, because that’s where I found my music,” he told Joan Rivers on 
The Tonight
 
Show
. “It’s funny, nobody’s ever entrusted a zillion-dollar project before to a couple of schnooks like us, Pete Angelus and myself.” Their script was finished and shooting was scheduled to begin in January 1986.

Roth appeared at the wrap party for 
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure
 making a big noise that he had bet his producer he could make it to the MTV Video Music Awards in New York three days later in his red Mercury lowrider. With fanfare, he headed east, and then ducked into the first desert airport outside of L.A. The night of the awards, Roth wiped some dirt on his face and drove up well rested to the awards ceremony, where he stole the show—a variation on the bait-and-switch parachute stunt Van Halen had pulled in Oakland years earlier.

Up for several MTV Video Awards that night, Roth didn’t win any. He partied with the Go-Gos, while Don Henley and “We Are the World” by USA for Africa notched award after award on the feel-good vote. Roth claimed Michael Jackson called him soon after to say he was “furious when you didn’t win an award”—begging the question of what Michael Jackson looked like furious.

Roth appeared on 
The Tonight Show
 in late 1985, breaking the news that he had just ended a relationship with a girl. “When you fall out of a major love affair,” he told Joan Rivers, “that’s God’s way of saying it’s time to buckle down and make a lot of money.” He cast his line out for Princess Stephanie of Monaco, admiring her broad shoulders—he was the “It” boy, he could marry royalty.

Then the unthinkable happened—or more like the typical Hollywood bullshit. Following a shakeup of the brass at CBS Films, Roth was left without a lifeline. He went from a $10 million budget to not having a deal, as the studio shuttered its doors. His only appearance on the silver screen in 1985 was in claymation form during a dream sequence in the John Cusack teen film 
Better Off Dead
, where a heavy metal hamburger based on Roth and Eddie Van Halen holds court over a deep fryer full of bikini-clad French fries.

Roth sued CBS Films the following summer for $25 million, claiming breach of contract over their sudden disinterest in 
Crazy from the
 
Heat
. Ultimately, he missed the brass ring—he couldn’t litigate himself onto a movie theater marquee—but Van Halen hadn’t been signed on the first try, either.

Afterward, Roth dismissed Van Halen’s claims that he left to be a movie star as “a lot of B.S. It’s a lot of excuses that are being peddled because these guys couldn’t get off their butt and make a record. We sat out in front of that backyard studio, in front of 5150, because Mr. Fingers couldn’t get out of bed for four days in a row. And Mr. Sticks was out driving across the country with his new wife, and he wasn’t on time either. And I wanted to make a record.”

Millions of divorced kids listening to Van Halen in 1985 had just accepted that Mom and Dad weren’t going to get back together, and now they were expected to deal with David Lee Roth leaving Van Halen. Against all advice, these playboy musicians were now role models. For many, without David Lee Roth there could be no Van Halen. Sour comments coming from both camps after the split didn’t help. Like the end of every love story, both parties tried to minimize their attraction and the intensity of their relationship. In this case, twenty million interested fans were caught in the middle of the breakup—and the fallout of their emotional stress was toxic.

The Hagarlithic Era, 1985–1996

• October 13, 1947: Sammy Hagar born in Monterey, California.

• 1973: Sammy Hagar joins Montrose, records two albums, and tours heavily.

• 1976: Sammy Hagar leaves Montrose, launches solo career.

• September 1985: Eddie Van Halen announces at Farm Aid that Sammy Hagar is Van Halen’s new lead singer.

• November 19, 1985: Sammy Hagar’s ninth studio album, VOA, becomes his first platinum-selling disc

• March 24, 1986: Release date of 5150; first “Van Hagar” album sells triple platinum by October.

• July 4, 1986: Release of David Lee Roth’s platinum solo debut, Eat

‘Em and Smile.

• December 1986: Jan Van Halen dies.

• May 24, 1988: Release of OU812, followed shortly by Roth’s Skyscraper.

• Summer 1988: Eddie attempts sobriety while Van Halen tours with Metallica, Scorpions, and Dokken.

• February 1989: Tone Lo-c’s “Wild Thing” reaches number 2, a rap single that samples Van Halen’s “Jamie’s Cryin.’”

• April 22, 1990: Van Halen performs at opening of Cabo Wabo Cantina in Mexico.

• February 2, 1991: Release of David Lee Roth’s A Little Ain’t Enough,

his last gold record as a solo artist.

• March 16, 1991: Eddie’s son Wolfgang Van Halen born.

• June 17, 1991: Release of For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, Van Halen’s third-straight number 1 album.

• January 1991: Eddie debuts the EVH Music Man guitar and the Peavey 5150 amplifier line.

• February 23, 1993: Release of first official live album, Right Here, Right Now.

• October 16, 1993: Van Halen’s manager since 1985, Ed Leffler, dies.

• March 14, 1994: Sammy Hagar releases solo collection, Unboxed.

• October 2, 1994: Fresh from rehab, Eddie Van Halen announces he will never drink again.

• January 24, 1995: Release of Balance, the fourth consecutive number 1 studio album.

• April 7, 1995: Eddie arrested at Burbank Airport carrying a loaded gun.

• April 26, 1995: Van Halen returns to Europe after eleven years, as an opening act for Bon Jovi.

• Fall 1995: David Lee Roth appears in Reno and Las Vegas with a fourteen-piece band.

• November 29, 1995: Sammy Hagar marries second wife, Kari.

• June 1996: Eddie and Sammy fight during phone call; Sammy Hagar leaves Van Halen.

• September 4, 1996: Original members of Van Halen appear together at MTV Video Music Award, leading to renewed quarrels.

• August 7, 1996: Van Halen certified diamond for ten million sold.

• October 22, 1996: Release of Best of Volume I, with two new songs featuring Roth; despite the recent split with the band, it is his first number 1 album.

With his torso bent back and striped guitar in the air, Eddie Van Halen had become an electric guitar icon. David Lee Roth, on the other hand, had become something even bigger—a celebrity representing all things rock and roll. Before the search to replace the irreplaceable could begin, Alex had to once again convince Eddie to continue with Van Halen. “During
Fair Warning
I wanted to quit,” an exasperated Eddie told
Guitar World
, “but I stuck with it, and that’s what burns my ass even more. If I would have quit then I wouldn’t have spent an extra four years putting up with [Roth’s] attitude.”

Outside the band, the juicy sport of speculation began. Reports emerged that Van Halen would not replace Roth with any one con-tender but a constellation of stars. Eddie’s collaborator Brian May from Queen offered his help. Phil Collins, Joe Cocker, Mike Rutherford, and Pete Townshend were all rumored to be lined up to work with the band, possibly sharing the limelight with several songs each on a glorified Eddie Van Halen solo project. Townshend wasn’t free until the end of the year, however, and the band increasingly felt the need to put a more permanent band together as quickly as possible.

Also thrown in the rumor mill was Australian screamer Jimmy Barnes, a frequent INXS collaborator who had just left his band Cold Chisel. The band liked his unique voice, but “nothing really happened,” according to Michael Anthony. Another candidate was twenty-year-old Eric Martin, who spoke with Eddie on the phone about Van Halen wanting a “soulful rock singer” in the vein of Paul Rodgers of Bad Company. Martin drove to Eddie’s house and spent an afternoon waiting for him in 5150. He left without meeting the guitarist, and never worked up the nerve to return. “I chickened out, totally,” he told Melodicrock.com.

After Eddie joined Patty Smyth onstage for two songs in Los Angeles, followed by two surprise appearances in Houston and Austin, Texas, her name also entered the mix. Smyth, a friend of Eddie and Valerie whose hard-edged Scandal scored a Top 10 hit in 1984 with “The Warrior,” made music that was about as tough as rock radio sounded at the time, and replacing Roth with a leather-lunged woman would surely have been sweet comeuppance. Instead, Smyth married New York rocker Richard Hell in 1985 and became a mother.

In a show of support for Eddie from the music industry, in 1985 he was nominated for the first time for a Grammy for Best Instrumental Performance on “Jump.” The record company was less nurturing. Anxious for the bounty of their prized animal, Warner Bros. asked Eddie for a solo album while the band deliberated over what to do next. Label boss Lenny Waronker also urged the band to change its name.

The solution came while Eddie was dealing with his daily errands. For some time, he had owned a couple Lamborghinis—cars that required more special care than his old $150 black 1959 Volvo. He was self-admittedly prone to spinning his fancy rides during late-night high-speed runs, causing the kind of wear and tear that he couldn’t patch up quickly with chewing gum and a broken guitar string. He saw his mechanic often—elite import car specialist Claudio Zampolli, whose shop in Van Nuys, California, served celebrities with a taste for six-figure star vehicles.

Another regular fixture in Zampolli’s showroom was Sammy Hagar, the so-called Red Rocker, a high-energy solo artist whose one bona fide hit was a social anthem for fast drivers, “I Can’t Drive 55.” Zampolli inadvertently brokered his biggest sale of the year when, after a chance meeting at the garage, he gave Hagar’s number to Eddie and hinted that Sammy would love to hear from him. When Eddie phoned to talk about Van Halen, Hagar was in the kitchen with his wife, Betsy. Hagar later claimed he felt butterflies in his stomach, a weird premonition of des-tiny calling,

Butterflies became biting flies, however, when the two sides first tried to kick-start their courtship in a record company boardroom. As a coterie of managers, agents, and lawyers talked through the technicalities, any chemistry in the water was in danger of stagnating. During a cigarette break, the four musicians pulled one another aside and decided to play some music first and ask questions about the legalities later.