Another Rock and Roll soap opera? Yeah, but I’m not even going to mention Valerie or Wolfgang. I’m also going to talk about David Lee as little as possible. I’m going to focus on Eddie (the legend, the true American guitar hero, the kid with the ‘tude, the talent and the balls to back it all up)
Eddie knew what rock and roll was and he knew how to deliver it to his audience. An experimental prodigy with a smile, a guitar and a bottle.
Through all the turmoil in his life, it never showed on stage. When he had his guitar in his hand everything seemed natural, fun and careless. His name is right up there with Clapton, Hendrix and Page as the very best rock guitarists of all time. When confronted with this fact he simply, and proudly, states that he is the "youngest of the four." What do you say or ask to that? The moment of silence is just meant-to-be and all anyone can really do is nod their head and smile with him.
David Lee Roth states that no one can compete with this band because they write and play rock and roll that you can actually dance to. If you ask me, David should’ve said, "no one can compete with this band because they have the best guitar player and songwriter alive."
David was also quoted as saying, “when you cover a song that’s already a hit, half the work is done for you. The song has already proven itself.” I hate to keep pouncing on Mr. Roth but the fact is…. Karaoke bars are filed with cover bands who aren’t going anywhere outside of their hometown. The reason Van Halen cover songs were/are "hits" is because of Eddie’s arranging, guitar playing, sound, experimentation and sheer guts to make the song his own.
America’s AC/DC? That’s what everyone was talking about and so be it. In this case, I disagree with everyone. They were, and still are, America’s Van Halen!
In 1982, Eddie did a phone interview with Guitar World (A Monthly guitar magazine specializing in guitar tablatures)
GW - Hey – how ya doing?
Eddie – I ummm. Ahhh fuck! I stayed up till like ten o’clock in the morning driving on the bus. It was a longer drive than I thought so I just gave up playing guitar. All of a sudden it starts getting light. We got here about 9 o’clock in the morning and I didn’t get to sleep ‘til like 10 and I slept all day and forgot to call you.
GW - Hey no big deal. Did you play tonight?
Eddie - Yeah, yeah, I just walked in the door.
GW - What city are you in?
Eddie - Umm… Louisville, Kentucky. They get pissed when you say Louieville. It’s Louilville! So how ya doing?
GW - I’m doing good.
Eddie – I’m not interrupting anything?
GW - No, not at all.
Eddie – Oh, OK.
GW - You good for a few questions?
Eddie - Sure, what time is it there?
GW – It must be about 9:15.
Eddie – Oh, OK.
GW - We wanted to write a story about the “Diver Down” album and have you talk about each cut alittle bit.
Eddie – Sure. Fine.
GW - Did you write most of the music?
Eddie - Actually, it’s like ½ cover tunes and half our own. Ya know, the fucking critics have been giving us shit about that but I think it’s a bunch of crap. Ya kno
Like take “Dancing in The Streets” and “Pretty Women,” “Where Have All The Good Times Gone”… stuff like that… It’s not like the original! Ya know.
Whenever you do a cover tune…like say on the second album when we did “You’re No Good.” Whenever you redo a cover tune, I don’t think you should do it like the original and I don’t think any cover tune we’ve ever done has been like the original. It takes almost as much time to make a cover tune sound original as it does writing a song! Ya know? So fuck the critics.
It just pisses me off. I spend a lot of time arranging and playing synthesizers and shit on “Dancing in The Streets” and they’re just going to write it off like oh it’s just like the original. But that’s bullshit!
GW - There’s such a wide range of music on the album. How much did you toss?
Eddie – I think we did a couple extra ones. One of them is called “Big Trouble” and another was called… Well actually it had no title, but it used to be called “House of Pain.”
GW – “House Of Pain?”
Eddie - Yeah. Don’t even mention that. It was a good riff but… ya know. What we planned on doing this year…. (or last year) we came on with the Fair Warning tour… We were gonna take some time off. Spend a lot of time writing and this and that. Then Dave came up with the idea “Hey, why don’t we start off the New Year with just putting out a single?” And Dave wanted to do “Dancing In The Streets;” and he gave me the original “Martha Reeves and The Vandellas” tape. I hadn’t listened to it before. I’m like, “Fuck, I can’t get a handle on anything out of this song!” Ya know, I couldn’t figure out a riff or…. You know… you know the way I play. I always like to do a riff as opposed to playing bar chords and strumming. So I said, “hey look, if you wanta do a cover tune why don’t we do “Pretty Woman?” And it took one day. We took it to Sunset Sound, recorded it and it came out right after the first of the year and everybody’s just going, “Hey, Fuck man, you got a hit single on your hands. Man we need that album, we gotta have that record!” We’re going, “Wait a minute!” Ya know we just did that to keep the people… to keep us “out there” so people know we’re still alive.” But they just kept pressuring, we need that album, we need that album! So we jumped right back in without any rest, with out any time to recuperate from the tour and started recording.
GW - How long did you spend making it?
Eddie - Twelve days.
GW - Really?
Eddie - Yeah, we had a totally different approach this time. Yeah we used a different studio too.
GW - Where’d ya go?
Eddie - This is kinda funny. It’s now called Warner Brothers Recording studio but it used to be called Amigo. Everyone still calls it Amigo. Ya know, when you call information you ask for Amigo Studios they go, “I’m sorry, no listing.” It’s owned by Warner Brothers and they had a real big room. It was just nice to have a change. Ya know, cause we did every album at Sunset Sound and it was just a lot of fun going to different studio.
Getting back to what I meant about a different approach in recording. The reason it went quicker… I guess Fair Warning took longer than any album we’ve ever done. Just because I did more overdubs and… I don’t know. It just took more time. There were just more things on tape that had to be mixed. I did so many different guitar parts and stuff that the mixing took longer and this and that. But this album was actually cheaper to make than our first one. It cost us like 46 grand. And the reason why (getting back to this again) the different approach was, instead of going into the studio…. Wait,… let me start from the beginning. What we always did was: go down into the basement and work up our new ideas and stuff and then Pat comes down and picks the ones he likes and the ones he doesn’t like. So… we’re already prepared before we go in the studio. You know, where as a lot of bands will go straight in the studio and actually try to write at 150 to 200 bucks an hour, which is bullshit. So we all kind of agreed on the songs that we were gonna do and then, instead of going into the studio and doing ten basic tracks we would do one basic track, come back the next day, or the same day later on in the evening after dinner, and do the back up harmonies and lead vocals. And then that one was gone. Ya know, that one was in the bag. Then we’d record the next basic track and sing and do leads and whatever. So we took each song one at a time as opposed to doing ten songs all at the same time. That way I could concentrate more on each song. What we would normally do is, we would get a basic track and go and listen to it and go hey that’s great and then go onto the next one. Instead of doing another song we’d finish that song completely before going onto the next one.
GW - What was the order of the songs? Which ones did you knock out first?
Eddie - Well the very first one was “Pretty Woman.”
GW - That was a relatively straight cover. Weren’t you tempted to cut loose?
Eddie - Well, it’s actually one of the… I think that and “Dance The Night Away” are the only two songs recorded by us that has no guitar solo. And then OK, well shit ya know? It almost makes me feel bad. It shows you how much guitar solos mean to people. “Pretty Woman” is actually our only legitimate hit. It got to number 11 or 10 or something like that on Billboard. But it’s… I don’t know, it’s more straight forward, but like the way I played… This is going to sound like shit because it’s not plugged in… (Eddie grabs his guitar so he can elaborate on what he’s trying to say) A song like that, that actually has a riff… The acoustic are going to sound like shit but… (Eddie plays the riff to “Pretty Woman”) I don’t know. I just don’t do it for fame. It’s actually updated. Actually people didn’t even know that it was an old song until critics started saying, “Oh here’s Van Halen doing cover tunes again.” And they’re good fucking songs! Why should they not be done, and redone the way we do them, for the new generation of people.
You know, the opening riff (Eddie begins to play the riff) I think it is different than the original; except for that riff and that’s the main reason I wanted to do it. (Eddie sings the main riff to “Pretty Woman”) I love it!
GW - It’s a classic. What song did you do next?
Eddie – Ummm… let me see. OK, well, let me start from the end and work my way back. Oh yeah! I remember the next thing we did!
Have you seen our video of “Pretty Woman?”
GW - No
Eddie - Ohhh god, you missed the best video of your life! You’ll have to see it sometime. It’s… OK you know "Intruder" right before “Pretty Woman?” You know all that weird noise shit that I do? The only reason we did that is because we did a video for “Pretty Woman” and we had a transvestite tied up and two midgets like … you know harassing her… squeezing her ass and doing this and that. And Dave the napoleon and Mike the samurai warrior … and Alex (my brother) was Tarzan and I was like a gunslinger with the pants and twirling a gun and stuff. I guess the plot was… oh and a hunchback was in it. He was like up in a bell tower looking down at these two midgets harassing this, supposedly pretty woman, and he would hop on the phone and call each one of us. And I had to hop on a horse and come to the rescue with Al and Dave and Mike. At the very end Dave pulls up in a limo. He’s always the one that has the classy, crazy shit. Ya know… he pulls up in a white stretch limo and looks at her and she starts running to him like he’s her hero. She pulls her wig off and you see that she’s a dude.
And OK, the reason we did “Intruder” was because the video was longer than “Pretty Woman” so we just went right back in and said we need some more music.
GW - It almost sounded like a jam.
Eddie - Oh hey, all I’m doing, I used a beer can and all kinds of weird stuff just making noise. The first take… it took a minute and forty seconds to do.
GW - How’d you make all the sounds?
Eddie - Just, you know feedback… you know. No overdubs… nothing.
GW - What did you use a beer can for?
Eddie - In the very beginning I twirled my vibrato bar. It kinda sounds like a chain. You know… (Eddie mimics chain sound) You know… like that? Then the next thing ya hear is kind of like (Eddie mimics sound while playing guitar)
GW - Oh the cricket-sound?
Eddie - I don’t know how to explain the sound but….
GW - It almost sounds like crickets to me. Is that done with a can of beer?
Eddie - A can of Schlitz malt.
GW - You just rubbing it on the strings?
Eddie - Yeah just on the low E like (Eddie again makes the sound on his guitar)
I think the cricket sound you’re talking about is more like this (Eddie plays sound) you know like a vibrato bar.
GW - Are you picking above the nut? (editor's note - *The nut* is the string separator above the fret board that guides the strings into the tuning pegs)
Eddie - Yeah – above the nut and the vibrato bar like… all the way down. And you know, I broke the springs in the back.
GW - So there’s a sound in there. It sounds like an elephant sort of.
Eddie – Oh you mean the (mimics the sound) Oh that was so funny. I just took my pick and right.. (oh god damn it’s hard to explain) Ok – my guitar has one pick up and I would take the pick and right where the neck ends, you know – where it joins the body. Where it ends I would just scrape up to you know…(plays the sound) I would scrape the pick up to the pickup and the string would be hitting the poll, you know the magnet of the pickup and it would just go (mimics the sound)
GW - Sounds great.
Eddie - Hey, it was just so much fun.
GW - I know there’s a real sense of humor on the album.
Eddie - Hey listen to all our albums. I think they all have it.
GW - Yeah but it seems that your playing is further out than it’s been in some cases.
Eddie - Further out?
GW - It’s moving further out so yeah…
Eddie - Do you mean that in a good or bad way?
GW - Good
Eddie - Thank you. Hey I just… I don’t know how to explain the way I play. I just… ummm..
GW – Whose idea was it to do “Big Bad Bill?”
Eddie - Oh that was… Dave bought himself one of those Sanyo walkman things. You know, it’s not a Sony. It’s one of those jobs. It has an FM/ AM radio and you can record off the radio if you like something you hear. And he was at his father’s house, up in the bedroom… and all of a sudden you hear…. this… This is funny because it was picked up from the city we’re in (Louisville Kentucky) In a certain spot in his room, if he put the antenna a certain way he’d pick up this fucking weird… like… I don’t know, what would you call that type of music?
GW - It’s like big-band, early thirties…
Eddie - Yeah with just acoustic guitar..
GW - It’s like straight… It’s a little before swing music.
Eddie - Yeah, I guess, whatever. But he just picked it up and recorded it and played it to us. And we just started laughing to ourselves and it was like, that is bad! Let’s do it!
GW - How’d you get your father to do it?
Eddie - It was actually Dave’s suggestion. He said, “shit, listen to this! We’ll get your oldman to play it.” And we said, “sure.” It was so funny because, I tell ya, I couldn’t play the song for you right now. I had to read… (excuse me one second…. I think I have to burp) Umm.. You know there’s so many chords (mimics all the chord sounds) Stuff like that. I just couldn’t remember it. So here’s my father sitting to the left of me with ya know; sitting on a chair with a music stand and sheet music in front of him, I’m sitting next to him on a chair with sheet music and a stand, and Mike too. And he’s playing an acoustic bass. I don’t know it’s kinda weird. It’s like an acoustic guitar…. Ya know when you go to a Mexican restaurant and you know they come up and play in front of your face and aggravate the shit out of you… you know the kind of bass guitars that they play… He played one of those and I don’t know, it was funny as shit. We had a great time. It looked like an old thirties of forties session.
GW - What kind of guitar did you use?
Eddie - I think I used some thick Gibson hollow body.
GW - Did it have the f-holes?
Eddie - Yeah.
GW - How did your father feel about playing on your album?
Eddie - OK, let me explain this. He hasn’t played his clarinet in ten years because he lost his left hand middle finger about ten years ago. He tried to lift up a trailer and it fell on his finger and it just chopped the finger off. So… Ya know he’s been playing a little bit but not… He was nervous as shit and we’re just, “oh hey, just have a good time ya know, we make mistakes, that’s what makes it real.” I love what he did.
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