Speaker 1: Hello everybody. Before we get started, I just wanted to
let you know we have published our first episode to YouTube.
So if you want to know what Jason and I
look like, feel free to check out the link in
the episode description below or just search us up Surely
you Can't Be Serious Podcast on YouTube.
Speaker 2: On with the show. Hello everybody, and welcome to the
Sure That You Can't Be Serious Podcast. We are here
today for a special rerun episode. We watched reruns when
we were kids. We can we can put them out there.
I watch reruns all the time. That's what you did
during the summer.
Speaker 3: I know you don't want to miss anything that happened
a long time ago, right, yeah, bring the things up
here exactly.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 2: This episode came out when we very first started together.
We jumped in with just a few pairings before this,
just two, I think, and then we decided it's time
to do Van Halen Versus Van Hagar.
Speaker 3: It's one of our most popular episodes to date.
Speaker 2: Now, when we recorded this, all of the members were
still alive at that time. Right, We've lost Eddie couple
of years ago, not too long after it came out, honestly,
so it's nice to go back and listen to it
and revisit it. That's what we're doing today.
Speaker 5: Guess, if I may be so bold, I am going
to prepare you guys for this summer when we finally
tackle a Van Halen album track by track, nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3: Eight's OHU eight one two, and we're going to compare
it with another album from nineteen eighty eight. I'll save
the matchup for down the road.
Speaker 5: So this is kind of a taste.
Speaker 3: It'll get you going enjoy our comparison van Halen Brisbin Here.
Speaker 2: Hello everybody, and welcome to the Surely Can't Be Serious
Podcast with your co hosts James D. Graves and Jason Colbn.
Speaker 4: Hey Jason, what's up?
Speaker 3: D How's it going man?
Speaker 2: I'll run a little bit hot tonight.
Speaker 3: I don't feel tardy.
Speaker 2: How exciting.
Speaker 4: I love that we're going to talk about the van
Halen van Hagar dispute today, and I love that you
really like van Hagar because I really like van Halen.
Speaker 3: I like them both. But this is a very interesting
argument to get into because this is a definite line
in the sand. There's different people on both sides of
this argument, but it's one of the biggest arguments of
the nineteen eighties that we're going to talk about.
Speaker 2: Just like always, catch us on Twitter, chime in with
what you think about what I say, what you think
about what Jason says, or what you know where we
both get it wrong and what we're missing here.
Speaker 3: You can catch us on Twitter at Surely Podcast.
Speaker 2: That's Sureley s You are why I'll call me Shirley.
The Van Halen Boys are born in nineteen fifty fifty
three for Alex, fifty five for Reddy and so they're
born in Amsterdam. Their father is a musician. He is
a big band player. But this is the early and
mid nineteen fifties, which means that music is changing. Elvis
and Chuck Berry have come out and rock and roll
is the thing, and big bands are out. They decide
we're not going to stay here anymore. We're going to
pack up and chase the American dream.
Speaker 3: Moved to Beverlee, yes slash Pasadena, Yes close enough.
Speaker 2: Right right, And so they take their two young boys.
In nineteen sixty two. It's nineteen sixty two, they get
on a large boat to trans the Atlantic and to
help pay the way, the dad Yan plays music with
the band and then after a few nights, they the
boys who had been classically trained in piano at that
point were still very young, but could play the piano well.
They had them get up in between sets, and then
the next night they were sitting at the captain's stable.
Because the star little boys won everyone's hearts, and so
they became the star of the show. I think at
that point the seed was planted and they were ready
to be stage musicians for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 3: It doesn't take very long to figure out there are
benefits to being the performance.
Speaker 2: I don't know, have you ever been in a performance where,
like at the end of the performance, everybody's standing up
and cheering. It is more addictive than I think I
could think of anything else that could be. It is
an amazing, amazing feeling, and so I can totally understand
anybody's desire to chase that monster once you've seen it. Cool,
all right, all right, So they make the journey in
nine days over to the United States. They they moved Pasadena, California,
as we said, And when they arrive they don't know
any English. They know two they know two English words.
Speaker 3: That's right. Alex says that when they came over. Theyknew
two English words. One was yes and the other was accident.
Speaker 2: Accident, which apparently was just the first word in the
book that their mom was trying to teach them English from.
Speaker 3: Ac Actually, Alex is encouraged to pick up the guitar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they buy him a electric guitar silver tone, and
Eddie decides that he's going to go out. He enjoys
the drums. They came over in nineteen sixty two, and
then nineteen sixty four, of course, is when you have
the British invasion, and so they are introduced to the
rock and roll of the Beatles and of the day
of Clark five and Dave Clark five is the drummer
who Eddie wanted to be. He wanted to go and
play drums like that guy, and so he got himself
a paper route. He worked hard, just like you would
in the movies. He saved up Paul his money and
got himself a drum set. And then while he was
away on his paper route, Alex would go and pound
on those drums.
Speaker 3: While he was working hard to pay for the drums.
His brother was learning the.
Speaker 2: Drums right, and he was actually quite skilled at it,
and when Eddie realized what was going on. You know,
I can imagine the challenge kind of like out of
Step Brothers. Hey mean, did you touch my drum set? Nope,
because it's just weird because.
Speaker 3: Seems like someone definitely touched my drum set.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is weird because I didn't touch him. And
then it was you know, you're better than me, so
the heck with it. I'll just play your dang guitar.
First band that they had was the.
Speaker 3: First band that they had was called the Broken Combs.
Speaker 2: The Broken Combs like a junior high name. To you,
it does sound like a junior high name. And then
a little more sophomore. They played with a guy for
a while who was playing bass for him, and then
his dad get a job as a preacher about three
hundred miles away. So they're out their basis, they're out
their place to practice. They had to find a new basis,
which they did, and his name was his name is
Mark Stone, Mark Stone. And so they actually had another
band that they called the Trojan Rubber Factory. But they
kept playing hard and they were hard working musicians. They
would pound the pavement, they would put up posters everywhere
to let everybody know what they were doing, and they
were obsessed with the band. And at this time Eddie
is the one that's doing all the lead singing.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: And they are going to parties. They're usually like backyard parties,
which was pretty popular back in the day. Not only
would they go out and invite everyone that they could
to the party, their music was really, really loud, and
so frequently it wasn't just a question of if the
cops would show up. It would be men, are the
cops going to show up? And at one point the
cops showed up and said, you guys are so loud.
We were looking for you four blocks away. At the
same time, young David Lee Roth, who was born in Indiana,
had some experiences in New York City with his uncle
getting to go to some of the clubs there in
New York City, got to see Bob Dylan and Jimmy
Hendrix and definitely caught the bug. At that point, knew
that that was the type of lifestyle, the New York
City lifestyle and the stage lifestyle that he wanted to
be a part of. But as it turns out, he
wasn't really into rock and roll so much as the
other guys were he liked listening to kind of the
swing and some of the stuff that you most of
the kids those days just weren't listening to.
Speaker 3: I heard Eddy talk that Dave actually very much enjoyed disco.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, and we'll see later on when he comes
into the band he really kind of brings that element
which then helps them come into the public eye. Okay, Jason,
So I can remember when I was a little kid
watching Van Halen perform, watching the Jump video, thinking to myself,
I cannot wait until I have a full head of
chest hair like David.
Speaker 3: He's got some amazing chest hair.
Speaker 2: He has got the best chest hair ever. Like He's
he's thin, and he's not rough and tough at all,
but he's got that rough and tough manly hair. You
know who likes that?
Speaker 6: Now?
Speaker 3: Who's that?
Speaker 2: Nobody? Nobody likes the big fluffy hair on your chest anymore.
I mean, there may be a few folks out there,
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Speaker 6: Oh my.
Speaker 3: Yes, wack it wack it so.
Speaker 2: Also born in Chicago around the same time as these
guys is Michael Anthony and his family has moved to
Pasadena as well. He started a band. He's playing bass
and singing for the band as well. So these guys
are all doing their own thing around each other. Michael
Anthony's band is called Snake Snake and David Lee Roth's
band is.
Speaker 3: Called Red Ball Jets.
Speaker 2: Red Ball Jets alrighty, and so the the guys have
Mark Stone, Eddie is singing, and Alex is telling Eddie,
you're really not carrying it as a singer. Nobody would
ever question your abilities as a guitarist, but we need
to find another singer. And as it turned out, they
had to rent their PA system, and so they would
pay somebody ten bucks per show to go rent the system.
And one of the guys they were renting from.
Speaker 3: Was this kid named David Roth.
Speaker 2: Kid named David Lee Roth. His dad was an i surgeon,
and so he had a little bit more money than
the rest of the boys. And so after a while,
Alex just said, you know, we need a lead singer,
and we need his PA system. Might as well get
two birds with one stone here and just have him
join the band and be our lead singer.
Speaker 3: In a matter of ten dollars, they land one of
the greatest frontmen of any rock band of all time. Absolutely,
it's incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are very few leadys, lead singers that stand
out as performers, the guys that bring the live show
to life. And there's no question that David Lee Roth
is one of those guys.
Speaker 3: No doubt.
Speaker 2: Now. At that time, they still had mark Stone as
a basis. But mark Stone was an honor student, straight
a student, and the boys felt like he wasn't he
didn't have his priorities in the right place.
Speaker 3: I know, he's too busy making grades. And his dad
came to him and said, you.
Speaker 2: Need to go to school, to school, right, No dad
is going to say you need to choose joining some
silly rock and roll band with a guy who wears
skin tight buttler's pants. And so they go. The boys
actually go to mark Stone and say, listen, we just
we don't think that you're committed like you need to be.
And they let him go.
Speaker 6: Ye.
Speaker 3: Oh, by the way, we're going to become one of
the greatest rock bands of all time.
Speaker 2: See you later, Sorry about that. So they they they
as I said, they're all performing in similar stages, and
at one point that PA system that had brought them
together with David Lee Roth goes out and they're stuck
at the show with no PA, and as it happens,
Snake is performing at the show and Michael Anthony's like, hey,
you can use our PA, no problem, And within just
a few days they're calling him up and saying, hey,
would you like to come be the bass player for
our band.
Speaker 3: We'll get into a little bit later, but his voice
actually provides many of the harmonies that I mean, it's so.
Speaker 2: Important, unquestionable that van Halen does not sound like van
Halen without Michael Anthony providing those backup vocals. That high
pitched tenor that he has is amazing. So we've gone
we go through a few band names here. We hit
with the Broken Combs. We had the Trojan Rubber Factory.
They were called They called themselves Genesis for a while
and then they're like, oh wait, there's a really successful
band out of England that everybody knows now called Genesis.
So they had to give that one up as well.
Where Mammoth for a bit, and then David Lee Roth
was like, you know what, van Halen sounds cool and
it's your name. Let's make the man, let's make the
band name.
Speaker 3: Ross's idea. Absolutely yeah, really cool, I.
Speaker 2: Get, and so they become van Halen. Then Michael Anthony
joins and they are off and running. Once they had
gained that big following, they finally landed a gig as
kind of the house band for a place called Gazari's.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's in.
Speaker 2: And oddly, from time to time Bill Gazari would come
up to David and say, hey, Van, you guys did
last night a couple extra bucks. I guess he thought
he was like Van Morrison or something. So that's awesome.
The thing about that we need to keep in mind
about both Alex and Eddie is that they were they're
classically trained and that translated into their music. The interesting
thing about the classic training that Eddie had is that
he never ever learned to read music, which, given his
capacity with both keyboards and with guitar and several other instagrams,
is an amazing Yeah. That means that he can't read it.
He's able to do what he does just from listening
to it. And not only that, he fooled his music
teacher at the time into believing that he could read music.
It was five years before the music teacher was performing
a new piece of music for him and told him
he needed him to turn the pages for him, and
he was like.
Speaker 3: He was lost.
Speaker 2: He was just like, what do you why don't you
turn the pages?
Speaker 4: Like I.
Speaker 2: Don't have any idea where you are right now? And
this I had a piano teacher when I was a kid,
and my gosh, I could not have lasted like he did.
I just it was painful for me to go to
those music lessons. She was probably one hundred and seventy
five years old, had translucent skin. I mean, I just
remember Missus Mackie. I got to rest her soul.
Speaker 3: Miss Mackie had call in the podcast we want to Hear.
Speaker 2: From You, right and say hello to Jesus for us.
Missus Mackie was the organ player at my church. Always
had a little tic tack that she would put in
her mouth while we had our music lesson. And I
never learned a thing in that.
Speaker 3: Go ahead, just so everybody knows you are a guitar
player and I am not.
Speaker 2: Well. I love talking about some of the things that
have gone on with the guitar. And Eddie was obviously
an inspiration to me playing guitar in the first place.
He had a special guitar. Yeah, absolutely, I had a
special guitar. So here's something, here's something that many people
don't know about Eddie, which is just absolutely amazing. The
man was an inventor. He wasn't. He didn't just redefine
the way that you play the guitar. He created his
own guitar. The guitars at the time, the two primary
guitars that anybody was going to use were Gibson Less
Paul and a Fender Stratocaster. And Eddie loved the whammy
bar on the Fender Stratocaster because you could you could
change the tone of the notes, You could do different
sounds with that whammy bar. But it only had a
single coil pickup, which means that it would have these
high pitch kind of twangy things that would happen when
you turned it up. Now, the Less Paul had these
hum They called him humbucking pickups, which means they bucked
the hum. They didn't the hum wasn't there for him.
And so what Eddie did was he decided, I'm just
going to make my own guitar. And he goes to
a parts a guitar parts store and says I need
a body and I need a neck, and the guy's like, well,
you don't want that body because it's a second and
and he's like, I don't know what that means. Second
what second? The second up? Okay, that's good, I'll take
that one. Then, not realizing that a minute it was
like naughty and not goodwood, and horrible sound would come
out of it. But it didn't matter because what he
was about to do didn't. It changed. It corrected all
of those problems. So he takes that guitar body home
and he starts chiseling out the wood to put the
humbucking pickups inside of the Fender style body so that
he can have his have his humbucking pickups and his
whammy bar. And the result is a guitar that doesn't
sound like any other guitar. It has corrected the hum
problem with the fender, still has the whammy bar that
he can use. And then he had other issues with feedback,
and who knows why he decided to do this. I
don't know what caused it in his brain, but he
decided to take the pickups. He's thinking and maybe those
little wire coils or what's causing all the feedback. They're
vibrating in there. And he's got a coffee can and
some paraffin wax melted the paraffin wax, stuck the pickup
inside of it and just kind of waited until the
plastic started to melt and yanked it out of there.
And the paraffin wax then sealed all those coils so
that they didn't have the feedback, and so once again
he's created something new that nobody at the time was doing,
but now is a standard practice of the industry. And
so he's now has a guitar that he can crank
all the way up, doesn't have all of the sound
problems that he had before, and he's super excited. He's
working at a music store and they get in a Marshal.
Now he's had his little his brother's little silver Tone,
which you're not going to get any real sound out
of that, but the Marshal was like the gold standard,
and so he worked for the rest of the summer
to buy this Marshal and he plugged it in and
turned it all the way up, and it sounded awesome
and really really loud, really loud, like I can imagine,
you know, Huey lewis right, I'm afraid you're just so.
He couldn't get the sound that he wanted out of
this thing because he had to turn it up all
the way to get the right sound. And then oddly
comes across this classified ad selling a different Marshal, and
so he's like, maybe this one will be better. He
buys that Marshal, he plugs it in, He plugs the
guitar in, and it doesn't play, and he walks away
and he leaves it open. It leaves it on, and
he comes back and he's like, I'm gonna give it
another try, and just picks it up and he realizes
he can hear sound. Well, what's happened is he didn't
realize that the Marshal was a European style power supply,
and so he had had it at the two twenty
instead of the one ten, and so it had taken
just longer to charge up. But what happens is he
plays it as it's halfway warm, as it's gotten that
slow build of voltage, and he gets the sound that
he wants without the volume problem, and that gives us
that sound of the guitar, the one that everybody knows
that everybody's like, yeah, that's Eddie's guitar. We know that sound.
And then he's got it all put together. He paints
it black. That's kind of boring, right, So he's got
some tape laying next to him and just randomly decides
out just put some tape in, kind of a crisscross
pattern on the guitar, and then I'll paint it white
and creates the franken Stratt look, which is the thing
that we all associate, all associate with.
Speaker 3: That that's become their iconic look. And later he puts
more tape on it, paints it red.
Speaker 2: Red. Yes, the first one. If you look at the
if you look at the Van Handelin debut album, you'll
see he's got a white guitar with black stripes. Later on,
like you said, paints puts more tape on it, paints
it red, and then you've got red with the black
and the white.
Speaker 3: It's so cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh my gosh, it's great. Yeah, work of art,
just out of just kind of dumb luck. Really.
Speaker 3: So now they're playing the clubs.
Speaker 2: They're playing the clubs, and they've got a huge following
when they're in the when they're in gazaries, they've got
fifteen hundred people in they're listening to them. But the
problem is the rest of the world doesn't care about
rock and roll.
Speaker 3: It's right late seventies, this is the time of the
beg's and disco Saturday night fever.
Speaker 2: The only guys who are getting any songs out there
even a little bit, are like Aerosmith and Kiss.
Speaker 3: So speaking of Kiss, one night, while Van Halen's.
Speaker 2: Playing, Yeah, it's at the Starwood, which is another club
there on the Sunset Strip, Geene Simmons happens to be
in the audience and he's he comes to them immediately
after the show and they're like, oh my gosh, there's
Gene Simmons and he doesn't have any makeup on and
it's amazing and he's like, has anybody signed you guys,
and they're like no, they well who's managing nobody? Well, okay,
come with me. I'm going to take you to New
York City. We're going to make a demo and we're
going to get you guys signed. That's right, And that's
exactly what they do there. They go, this young, excited
band that's been playing hard for four or five years now.
They go and they they do the songs they by
the time.
Speaker 3: At this time, I mean at this time, Gene Simmons
is one of the biggest rock stars in the world, absolutely,
and he shows up and says, I want to make
you guys the next big thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which to I mean, if I was in that situation,
I'd be like, that's it, We've made it. We don't
have anything else to worry about. Gene Simmons loves us.
We've got a full album worth of original material that
we know backwards and forwards because we play it every
single night. They go and they record their album. One
problem is they can't use their own instruments, so they
lose the sound that Eddie had spent so long creating.
And then the other problem is that album promptly does
check Swatt. Yeah, because Gene Simmons said, I don't think
you guys should call yourself in Halen.
Speaker 3: I think you guys ought to change your name to
Daddy long.
Speaker 2: Legs, Daddy long Legs Long Legs, which who knows, maybe
that would have worked. I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't think so.
Speaker 2: No, it's not the same thing.
Speaker 3: And they do the right thing. When Gene Simmons tells
you to do something after he had branded Kiss, there's
going to be a big temptation to change.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how do you not how do you I mean,
if you're if you're with that iconic figure, how do
you not go? Yeah, that sounds great. Whatever you say, Gene,
you're the man.
Speaker 3: You're worth a bazillion dollars, mister Simmons, I'll do whatever
you say, right, but they say no. Dad irritated him
and he made the comment, these guys are never going
to make.
Speaker 2: It, right yeah, And then and his management thought the
same thing, They're never going to make it. So all
of this excitement, all of this anticipation, and the result
is a demo tape with songs that aren't aren't played
on their own instruments. Marshall Burrow is the one who's
who talks too Suston and Ted Templeman and says, these
guys are going to be playing at the Whiskey, Go
go tonight, go check them out. And this rainy, slow evening,
maybe forty people in the crowd, not really the best
crowd to be doing an audition for the Warner Brothers records.
Speaker 3: And they liked it.
Speaker 2: They heard yeah, yeah, they loved it. They came back
and they said, boys, we want to sign you. So
then the next thing that happens is they've signed this contract.
They're ready to start touring to put their put their
performances on the world stage. And so they join the
tour of a band called I Don't Know Montrose Mantos
and a band called Journey.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure everybody's heard of Journey, and most of
you've heard of Montrose. But what you may not know
is who the lead singer of Montrose is.
Speaker 3: Sammy Hagar.
Speaker 2: Sammy Hagar, that's right. So yes, an odd coincidence. And
here's an interesting bit of information that came out. You know, people,
a lot of people were not impressed with David Lee Roth,
and among those were the Warner Brothers. Guys. They didn't
appreciate what he brought to the stage. And to be honest,
David Lee Roth doesn't have a stellar voice. And as
it turns out, they proposed some other singers and propositioned
some other singers, and one of the singers that they
propositioned was Samy Hagar. Sammy Hagar. Yeah, And he did
not disclose this until just in the last I don't know,
three or four years, I would say, but he yeah,
he was approached early on. You take Dave's spot, and
unbeknownst to the rest of the band.
Speaker 3: It's incredible. You know, Dave brings charisma, a stage presence.
As we see later, the splits and the jumps and
the yells. It's crazy that he was that underappreciated right
out of the gate.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And so they're so good on tour, they're so
incredible that they are outperforming Montrose, they are out performing Journey.
And their sound guy has said, you know, the Montrose
guys were cool, but I know that the Journey guys
were mad that they were losing cheers and girls and
other stuff, and I know they sabotaged our sound system.
Things would happen. Then there was just no way that
that happened unless we were being sabotaged. And so they
changed their tour. They took them instead of playing the US,
they took them out to Europe to start opening for
Black Sabbath. Now, Black Sabbath was a band that they had,
they had sat and learned the songs they were the
I mean, you listened to Van Halen's music and you
you know, oh yeah, those guys had to be influenced
by Black Sabbath. And now they're opening for them, and
as it turns out, they're also blowing them off the stage.
And that's a quote from Ozzy Osbourne himself. Ozzy Osbourne said,
every night they would blow us off the stage. Wow.
Speaker 3: That's really cool.
Speaker 2: So they're doing these tours. They had released the album
which we're about to jump into here in a second,
in early nineteen seventy eight. But before even they did
that early release album, before they started all these tours,
they released a single. Do you know the single that
they released.
Speaker 3: I'm guessing that the single was You Really Got Me?
Speaker 2: That is correct. That was the first single that they released,
and it's questionable whether they really wanted that to be
their first release. I know for sure that Eddie didn't
want it to be their first release. He was actually
really disappointed that their first that their debut single was
a cover.
Speaker 3: And that makes sense to me because Running with the
Devil is a very strong song and seemingly perfect leadoff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had been playing it for years. It was
on the demo tape that they had done with Gene Simmons.
It is an awesome song. But here's the story behind
the story on this one. Okay. So they've got their
demo tape that they've done with Ted Templeman, the guy
from Warner Brothers, and Eddie is super excited and he's
playing it for friends and acquaintances and acquaintances of acquaintances,
and one of those guys that he plays it for
is Barry Brandt.
Speaker 3: Okay, Arry Brandt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Barry Brandt, who none of us know, right, but
who happened at the time to be the drummer for
a band called Angela. Angel was another band that Gene
Simmons had discovered, but one that had actually signed with
the record label. Now have you heard of Angel before?
Not until you just mentioned it, No, right, So I
hadn't either. Now we talked about the fact that that
they had done a cover for their original release. This
Really You Really Got Me was originally sung by The
Kinks back in nineteen released back in nineteen sixty four,
and it's the perfect type of song for some hard
rock You really Got Me, No, it got It's an awesome,
awesome song. It was a great hit for the Kinks
and influenced a lot of the hard rock that came
after that. But the idea that hey, fourteen years later,
it's going to be popular again suddenly was very enticing
to Barry brand Because the next day Ted Templeman calls
Eddie and said, did you play the tape for somebody?
And He's like, I played it for a bunch of people.
What are you talking about? He's like, you a hole
that there's a band out there called Angel that's about
to try to record that song and release it. We
have to record it first and release it, or we're
going to be the second ones to the table. And
so in a mad dash, they go and record their
studio version that we've all heard and get it out
and release it to the public before Angel is able
to do the same, and his history is written. That's incredible,
and Angel fades into the cloudy dust of history. So
now that we're here, let's start talking about the actual
debut album's way yeah, oh yeah, okay, fantastic, Okay. So
it's nineteen seventy eight. They're putting together this album. Their
first release is You Really Got Me. It blows up.
Speaker 7: You really got it now?
Speaker 4: Go on, don't know what.
Speaker 5: You really got it?
Speaker 6: Now?
Speaker 3: Who got us?
Speaker 4: On?
Speaker 5: You have some bad?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 3: That's so awesome.
Speaker 2: It is so awesome. You Really Got Me reached number
thirty six on the Hot one hundred among a whole
bunch of disco and op and punk rock songs. Not
bad for your first thing, No, not bad at all.
And so the first time I ever heard. It was
when I was watching the movie night Shift, which right right,
a movie by Ron Howard, Michael Keaton and Michael Keaton
and Henry Winkler the fauns himself. Yes, And the premise
of the movie is these guys work in a morgan
and decide to open a prostitution ring inside of the morgue.
Speaker 3: That movie is so funny.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. So there's a scene where Henry Winkler, who
is so not the fawns in this movie, here's you
really got me playing, as he's walking into the building
and he's all confused and he opens the door to
this ridiculous frat party and Michael Keaton's got like a
belt around his head like a headband and party a
hard with half naked prostitutes all over the place, and
Henry Winkler is freaking out, I don't.
Speaker 7: Know about your people, this is a morgue.
Speaker 5: You're partying in a morgue.
Speaker 4: You don't believe me, let's.
Speaker 2: And he tries to pull out this reality dead body
to show him. Turns out it's just a frat boy
and a prostitute inside of the cadaver box. And the
boy was Howard Clint Howard, So You Really Got Me
is released, and then they released the album itself. Now
imagine how everyone felt the first time that they plug
that album in and listened to that sound and that face.
Speaker 6: Coming, I live my life back this, don't borrow all
I've got feel he start on me stuck that over
road you son living.
Speaker 7: At us pas.
Speaker 2: So that sound that you hear at the beginning that
is obviously not a musical instrument is car horns, And
as it turns out, it's it's a stunt that they
did a tactic that they used on stage. They took
the car horns out of their cars and hooked them
up to a car battery and would play. Even when
they played the show live, it would have that car
horn introduction. And so they went ahead and brought him
into the studio. Ted Templeman slowed him down there a
bit at the end that you can you can hear
the slowdown. It's almost the Doppler effect as though it's
going by, and then that hard hitting bass, and you know,
God bless them. They've got the guy who's redefining how
to play guitar, and they start the first song on
the first album with car horns and the bass. But
they're letting, they're letting everybody know where about hard rock.
This is one of the those rock songs that has
two guitar solos in it, which is pretty unique for
that for any time. Really, not a whole lot of
songs you can get two guitar solos. But why wouldn't
you do that? If you've got ady van hands, you.
Speaker 3: Got a n van Halen, you let him play as
much as possible.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, you want to play more.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's right. They recorded this album for forty thousand dollars,
took three weeks to record and that's it.
Speaker 2: So Run with the Double is not only the first
song that you hear on the album, it is their
second single that they released. Yes, and it does well.
It reaches number eighty four on the Top one hundred, which, again,
at this time, with the taste in music as it is,
that's a great feat for a band's debut album.
Speaker 3: Yes, so tell me about fingertapping and eruption.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the b side to Running with the Douvil
is eruption. It's also the second song on the on
the album, and it's almost all Eddie, so I can
remember vividly watching Eddie perform this live on stage. I
hadn't you know. We should probably explain that I was
born in nineteen seventy five. I was not listening to
to Van Halen when I was three years old. The
introduction that I had to Van Halen was nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 3: Me too, right, I was born in nineteen seventy three, Okay,
but nineteen eighty four was first time I was paying
attention to him.
Speaker 2: Right. Nineteen eighty four was one of three tapes that
were the first three tapes that I ever owned. It
was nineteen eighty four minute work and Wham a collection
of music there for you. That was a great song.
So Eruption, I can remember the first time I saw it,
and it was a live performance and it was actually
at the time that they were with Sammy Hagar. That
way was by then that I had actually I heard
Eruption for the first time and was was floored by it.
And so I knew at that point that that Eddie
did fingertapping and what was involved there. But this this
finger tapping that he does interruption. I looked at that
and I was just like, this isn't this isn't rock
and roll. This is classical music. Okay, it's rock and
roll and class it's I don't know what it is.
It's like something amazing and undefinable. But I totally so.
When I was growing up, I was I was into
classical music. There was an album called Hooked on the
Classics that came out and like I think eighty two,
and I loved it.
Speaker 3: Hey, that's spent about the time chipbun punk came out
and there.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's exactly right. Yes, yeah, so I was
listening to the Chipmunks and Bach and Beethoven and Mozar.
Speaker 3: All right, that's right, good job.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, so I don't know what kind of street
cred I'm gonna get for that. But anyway, when I
heard Eddie van Halen performing Eruption, I was like, this
is classical music. And not only that I knew the song.
Did you ever watch twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea,
the Disney movie that had like it, no Captain Nemo
and they're in the submarine and they got the big
squid that attacks them.
Speaker 3: Well, familiar with it, but I've never seen it.
Speaker 2: There's a part of that movie for anybody who's seen it,
where Captain Nemo, who's played by George good Old George.
Speaker 3: George Everybody, George Mason, George Mason, George Mason.
Speaker 2: And so he's Captain Nemo and he's got this organ
and they kind of read if you watched any of
the Pirates of the Caribbean, and they've kind of done
the same type of they reimagined that with the squid
guy there. But anyway, he's playing this song and the
song is boxed Takata and fugue, and it kicks but
I don't care if it was written several hundred years ago.
It kicks butt. And when I'm listening to Eddie van
Halen playing Eruption live on stage, I'm like, that is
Takata and fugue, but it's not. It is, but it's not.
So I want to I want you to listen to it. Okay,
you see what I'm saying here. Let's here, Okay, So
this this is the scene from twenty thousand Leagues. So
now let's listen to the live performance by Eddie. So
we can't is to part Now that's from Learning to
Hims right there, right, So that one is probably that
one is probably actually from Franz's list which was a
very prominent song that you would hear in looney Tunes.
But remember Eddie's classically trained on the piano. Of course,
that's his influence. Say what you will about his influences.
He'll say that pretty much his only influence was Eric Clapton,
and he would learn all of Eric Clapton's songs. Eric
Clapton was called slow hand Eddie. No one would dare
call that to him, but that was it. That's all
he'll say. But there's no question that the classics, the
classical composers, are the ones that really influenced the music
that he plays, especially on eruption. So as you pointed out,
there are special techniques that are involved there with eruption.
So Eddie goes when they're younger, he goes and they
get to watch led Zeppelin play, like led Zeppelin's playing
in California at that time, and so he gets to
go see him. And at some point Jimmy Page has
got his guitar. He's got his left hand on the guitar,
which is where he pressed the front board, and your
right hand is normally what strums, but Jimmy's got his
hand up in the air like pointing like I'm number one,
like we're awesome, that kind of thing. But he's still
playing with his left hand, and he's what he's doing
is he's pounding on the string with the finger, which
causes it to make a sound, and then pulling that
off as though he's kind of plucking it to also
make it make another sound. And so that's Those are
called hammer ons and pull offs. Not terribly creative, but
easy to understand, right, right, So Eddie's watching this, he
sees him do this, and the inspiration is there for him,
and he's like, I can do that. I could do
that with both hands. Yeah right, I mean he's got
one hand in the air. He's not even using the hand.
If I took that hand and put it on the
front board with the other fingers, I'm not just able
to play two notes now, I'm not just able to
play three notes. I can play four and five notes.
I could because I can tap on the strings and
do my hammer ons and my pull offs with my
right hand. And that's tap and that's the that is
that that is really the key thing that he brought
to the lead guitar scene for the next twenty years.
Speaker 3: All right, So that's the end of episode one Van Helen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're gonna come back next week and do part two.
Speaker 3: The Rise and Fall of Daily Rock.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so hang on for that one. Come join us
and you'll get to hear some fun stuff. We'll play
a little bit of that for you right now. They
came back from the tour and they were exhausted. Eleven
solid months on tour.
Speaker 3: And eleven months of killing it every night, hard work,
and get back. The manager of the record company says,
great job, you guys did awesome. You go us three
million dollars in a new record.
Speaker 2: What sweezee.
Speaker 3: So Guinness Book World Record. They got one point five
million dollars for ninety minutes.
Speaker 2: They make more money than anybody has for that. But
tensions are still high.
Speaker 3: Tensions are high. Even a million dollars an hour can't
cure some of the tensions that are going on now.
So during nineteen eighty three, they begin working on a
new album, YEP, to come out at the very end
of nineteen eighty three YEP, and that album is called
nineteen eighty four. This is a new Van Halen.
Speaker 2: The diehard Van Halen fans are getting mixed reviews. Some
of them are sticking with them. Some of them are like,
I don't know what's going on with these guys. You
get those guys who think they sold out, and so
then all of a sudden, if it's popular, they're not
interested anymore. Yeah, I don't care about you, right.
Speaker 3: Guys, Hot for Teacher comes out with the young van
Halen boys running around the school terrorizing. Right, you've got
miss fed fized and misspelled and miss science or whatever,
and the misspelled teachers running around.
Speaker 2: You've got his kind of awkwardly sighing mother. And then
when Waldo speaks, he's got this unusually deep voice. So, oh, mom, Yeah, no,
I'm not like other guys.
Speaker 3: I'm nervous than my socks there too. You know who
that voice is right now? That voice is Phil Hartman
of Saturday Nightliner two.
Speaker 2: Oh Phil Hartman, God rest his soul. Their success is
beyond what has it has ever been in history. They
are literally at the top of their game.
Speaker 3: And this is where it falls apart. So eight o'clock
in the morning, they're supposed to be there to write
and play music. Dave would show about eleven, start a
fight and then.
Speaker 2: He, unbeknownst to them, goes and finds another group of
guys to play with, produces an album, a four song album,
which he says, Hey, you know, any album's only got
four good songs on it. Anyway, I'm just cutting off
the fat. As it turned out, there are only really
two good songs on the album. This is the ego
speaking right here. He does an interview with David Letterman
in early eighty five talking about that album, and Dave
is trying to find out what's going to happen with
the rest of the band.
Speaker 7: I think now's a good time on New Year's to
decide whether you're going to be a hot dog or
a little weenie.
Speaker 2: When you're doing solo work. Is the is the Does
this mean that the band will soon be breaking up?
Speaker 7: No, No, that happens, you know. No, I still have
very I still have very strong tribal instincts. And we'll
be going into the studio like the middle of this
month and start arguing again, and we'll come back out
with an album sometime this year, hopefully.
Speaker 2: He has this full expectation that the band's going to
stay together. But you can't be the guy who goes
and trashes the meetings. The guy who orates somebody for
going and doing work with other people and then pull
off this stunt and expect to remain in a band.
Speaker 7: Boom Buddy, Boom Badia, Boom Buddy Buddy.
Speaker 2: Dave is out.
Speaker 3: Dave's out in nineteen eighty five, right at the pinnacle
of their professional career. Do van Hagar?
Speaker 2: The first time I heard it was on the movie
Joe Dirt. No, sir man, I don't like that crap.
Speaker 3: I'm a rocker dude through and through.
Speaker 5: Here's my favorite bands, AC DC, van Halen, not van Hagar.
Speaker 7: Who cureous about the clouds when we're to.
Speaker 3: Call Sammy officially joins the band in nineteen eighty five,
just sing us ang and thing bout Sonny.
Speaker 2: All right, guys, don't forget to follow us on Twitter
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