Speaker 1: Okay, we're going to say something before we start our
usual introduction. We just want to take this time to
say thank you.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: We are overwhelmed by the positive response that we've gotten.
When we started this podcast, we figured there would be
about three people listening, including both Jason and I and
my mom. Right and at the time of this episode's release,
we were over seven hundred and fifty downloads. All of
our episodes have been downloaded over one hundred times. We're
floored and we just want to say thank you very much.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: We're super excited. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: And so you the gentleman who's driving in his car,
or the lady who's sitting at one of their kids practices,
or the guy at lunch, or whoever it is right
now you listening to us, I want you to send
us a message, Send us a message on Facebook, send
us a message on Twitter, Email us. You can email
us at Shirley Podcast at g email dot com. But
we've got fans out there that are giving us feedback,
and we want to say an extra thank you to
them right now.
Speaker 4: Our first five star review.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go.
Speaker 4: Ahead and read this, Yeah, I'd love it. Our first
five star review. It's listed as Gaila Julia, but I
know this is Tristan Martin. He contacted me so. Tristan
Martin wrote the title says so much fun. This show
is a blast. The guys come up with topics that
force the listener to take a side and want to
jump in the Battle Royale. The first two episodes were
so much fun. They really took me back. I can't
wait for the next one. Thanks Tristan, I really appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Tristan. That's awesome. I'm going to give a
shout out to a couple of our fans on Facebook.
We have fans that are friends of ours, but we've
also got fans from across the world. Actually, our first
fan that I'll give a shout out to is Darra Ferrell.
Forgive me if I'm pronouncing that wrong, but he is
from Dublin, Ireland, and so I'm sure that I pronounced
that wrong. And hope you look for to our Brave
Heart versus Gladiator episode where Jason and I will both
be doing very bad Scottish and Irish accent.
Speaker 4: That's right. Quick shout out also to our Facebook. One
of our Facebook top fans Sherman Black, Yeah, from Charlotte, Charlotte,
North Carolina. Yeah, he's been very active on Facebook with
us and we sure appreciate it. We have some other
top fans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and on Twitter, we're just gonna I want to
say a quick shout out to Greg Greenoff, who is
the author of Van Halen Rising, and that's his Twitter handle.
The book van Halen Rising, I really wish we had
read before we did this episode that's coming up, because
it would have been much easier for the research. But
it's fantastic and he's got a new book coming out,
which we'll talk to you in a few minutes about
in the middle of the episode.
Speaker 4: Great, all right, So we want to quickly just give
quite a quick overview about what we're going to be
doing in the next three weeks.
Speaker 1: Right, the next three weeks are going to be Van
Halen episodes, and it's going to be Van Halen versus
Van Hagar. But our first episode, in the words of
my friend Jason, is going to be about the birth
of the band.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 4: That's right. So part two that's going to be the
rise and fall of Daily.
Speaker 1: Roth, right, and then Part three will be Van Hagar,
where we hear about Sammy and his stint with the band,
and then we finish up with our final judgment.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 4: Well, hope you'll stick around for these three episodes. One
of the big debates in the nineteen eighties. I'm super
excited to dive into this one.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get started.
Speaker 5: Okay, Hello everybody, and welcome to the Surely You Can't
Be Serious Podcast, discussing and debating the iconic and the
forgotten of eighties and nineties pop culture.
Speaker 1: With your co hosts James D.
Speaker 4: Graves and Jason Colban.
Speaker 3: Hey, Jason, what's up?
Speaker 4: How's going man?
Speaker 1: I'll run a little bit hot tonight.
Speaker 4: I don't feel tardy.
Speaker 1: How exciting. 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 4: 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 eighty that we're going to talk.
Speaker 1: About absolutely, and you know, the band has come full
circle now. They lost Sammy Hagar. They had that weird
brief moment with Gary Scharon, which I mean it was
like a three year thing. It was, yeah, but not
their best move. And now they're full circle back to
David Lee Roth for the last few years as well.
When comes 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.
That's right.
Speaker 4: You can catch us on Twitter at Surely Podcast on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Twitter, and that's Shirley su R E L Y,
not s h I R because that's right. Be don't
call me Shirley.
Speaker 4: Don't call me.
Speaker 1: I don't call me Shirley. Today we're going to talk
about Van Halen and Van Hagarth.
Speaker 4: And the birth of the vand Van Halen and how
it changed and changed back.
Speaker 1: And changed and changed back again.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: I guess we did kind of talk about that. Yeah, sorry,
I didn't mean this stuff.
Speaker 1: That's right. That's the beauty of editing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: The Van Halen Boys are born in nineteen fifty.
Speaker 4: Fifty three Alex fifty five for Reddy.
Speaker 1: And so they're born in Amsterdam. Their father is a musician.
He is a big band player. But this is the
early in 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 4: Moved to Beverlee Hills that is, yes, slash Pasadena, Yes.
Speaker 1: Close enough, 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 Yon plays
music with the band, and then after a few nights
they the boys, who had been classically trained in piano
at that point 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 table.
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 4: It doesn't take very long to figure out there are
benefits to being the performing all right.
Speaker 1: So they make the journey in nine days over to
the United States. 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 4: That's right. Alex says that he when they came over
they knew two English words. One was yes and the
other was accident.
Speaker 1: Accident, which apparently was just the first word in the
book that their mom was trying to teach them English from.
Speaker 4: They actually Alex is encouraged to pick up the guitar.
Speaker 1: 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, and 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 4: While he was working hard to pay for the drums,
his brother was learning the drums.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 3: Hey man, did you touch my drum set?
Speaker 4: Nope, because it's just weird because seems like someone definitely
touched my drum set.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is weird because I didn't touch them. 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 4: First band that they had was called the Broken Combs.
Speaker 1: It sound 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 got 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, 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 4: That's right.
Speaker 1: 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
at 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 when 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 Hendrixon.
Definitely caught the bug at that point and new 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 like 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 4: I heard Eddie talk that Dave actually very much enjoyed disco.
Speaker 1: 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. So also in 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 and David Lee Roth's band is.
Speaker 4: Called Red Ball Jets.
Speaker 1: Red Ball Jets alright, And so 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 4: Was this kid named Davie Ruff.
Speaker 1: 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 her
lead singer.
Speaker 4: In a matter of ten dollars, they land one of
the greatest frontmen of any rock band of all time.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it's incredible. Yeah, there are very few lead guys,
lead singers that stand out as performers, the guys that
ring the live show to life. And there's no question
that David Lee Roth is one of those guys, no doubt. 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 4: No, he's too busy making grades. And his dad came
to him and said, you.
Speaker 1: Need to go to school. Go 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 4: Yeah, oh, by the way, we're going to become one
of the greatest rock bands of all time.
Speaker 1: 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 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 4: We'll get into a little bit later, but his voice
actually provides many of the harmonies that I mean, it's so.
Speaker 1: Important, unquestionable that van Halen does not sound like van
Halen without Michael Anthony providing these 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.
That's right 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 idea. Absolutely yeah, really cool. I
get him, and so they become van Halen. Then Michael
Anthony joins and they are off and run. 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 4: That's right, that's in.
Speaker 1: 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 that we need to keep in
mind about both our 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 instrums, 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.
Speaker 4: He was like he was lost.
Speaker 1: He was lost. He was just like, what do you
why don't you turn the pages? Like I 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 liked I said 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 4: As Mackie had call in the podcast, we want to
hear from.
Speaker 1: You, right and say hello to Jesus for us.
Speaker 4: Go ahead, just so everybody knows you are a guitar
player and I am not.
Speaker 1: Well. I love talking about some of the things that
have gone on with the guitar. And Eddie was obviously
an inspiration to be playing guitar in the first place.
Speaker 4: He had a special guitar.
Speaker 1: 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 Eddie's like, I don't know
what that means.
Speaker 4: Second?
Speaker 1: What second? The second up? Okay, that's good, I'll take
that one. Then, not realizing that it meant 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 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 plastics
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.
Speaker 3: Hube lewis right, I'm afraid you just out.
Speaker 1: 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 get
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, is 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 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.
Speaker 4: With that that's become their iconic look. And later he
puts more tape on it, paints it red red.
Speaker 1: 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 the red with the
black and the white.
Speaker 4: It's so cool. Yeah, my gosh, it's great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, work of art, just out of just kind of
dumb luck really.
Speaker 4: So now they're playing the clubs.
Speaker 1: They're playing the clubs, and they've got a huge following
when they're in the when they're in gazaaries, they've got
fifteen hundred people in there listening to him. But the
problem is the rest of the world doesn't care about
rock and roll.
Speaker 4: It's right late seventies. This is the time of the
beg's and disco Saturday night fever.
Speaker 1: The only guys who are getting any songs out there
even a little bit are like Aerosmith and Kiss.
Speaker 4: So, speaking of Kiss, one night, while Van Halen's.
Speaker 1: Playing, Yeah, it's at the Starwood, which is another club
there on the Sunset Strip, Gene 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.
Speaker 3: You guys signed.
Speaker 1: 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 4: 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 1: 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.
Speaker 4: Problem is that album promptly does.
Speaker 1: Jack Swatt yeah, because Gene Simmons said, I don't think
you guys should yourself saying, Halen.
Speaker 4: I think you guys ought to change your name to
Daddy long.
Speaker 1: Legs, Daddy long Legs, Long Legs, which who knows, maybe
that would have worked. I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't think so.
Speaker 1: No, it's not the same.
Speaker 4: And they do the right thing. When Gene Simmons tells
you to do something after he had branded Kiss, there's
gonna be a big temptation to change.
Speaker 1: 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 4: You're worth a bazillion dollars, mister Simmons, I'll do whatever
you say, right, But they say no. That irritated him
and he made the comment that these guys are never
going to make it right.
Speaker 1: 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 played on their own instruments.
Speaker 6: Okay, let's give a quick shout out out to a
friend of the show and another guy from Tulsa, Oklahoma,
my hometown, Greg Greenoff.
Speaker 4: He's got a new book out called Ted Templeman, A
Platinum Producer's Life in Music.
Speaker 1: Yes, this book will be released in April of this year,
and here's just a quick description. This autobiography recounts Templeman's
remarkable life from a child jazz phenom in Santa Cruz,
California in the nineteen fifties, too Grammy winning music executive
during the seventies and eighties. Along the way, Ted details
his late sixties cent as an unlikely star with the
Sunshine pop outfit, Harper's Bizarre and his grinded out days
as Warner Brothers tape listener, including the life altering moment
that launched his career as a producer, his discovery of
the Doobie Brothers. Ted Templeman, A Platinum Producer's Life and
Music takes us into the studio session of number one
hits like Blackwater by the Doobie Brothers and Jump by
Van Halen. As Ted recounts memories and the behind the
scenes dramas that engulfed both massively successful acts. Throughout Ted
also reveals the inner workings of his professional and personal
relationship with some of the most talented and successful recording
artists in history, including Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith,
Eric Clapton, Lowell, George Sammy Hagar, Lynda Ronstadt, David Lee Roth,
and Carly Simon.
Speaker 4: Thanks Greg.
Speaker 1: Marshall Burrow is the one who talks to O'siston and
Ted Templeman and says, these guys are going to be
playing at the Whiskey, Go 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.
Speaker 4: The big wigs, the.
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers Records.
Speaker 4: And they liked it.
Speaker 1: 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 joined the
tour of a band called Montrose and a band called Journey,
Uh huh. 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 4: Sammy Hagar.
Speaker 1: 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 Sammy 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 to take Dave's spot, and
unbeknownst to the rest of the band.
Speaker 4: 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 1: 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.
Speaker 3: Off the stage.
Speaker 4: Wow, that's really cool.
Speaker 1: 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 4: I'm guessing that the single was You Really Got Me?
Speaker 1: 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 4: And that makes sense to me because Running with the
Devil is a very strong song and seemingly imperfect. Yeah, leadoff.
Speaker 1: 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, yep. 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 4: Okay, Barry Brandt.
Speaker 1: 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?
Speaker 4: Not until you just mentioned it?
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 3: Rock You really got It Got It an awesome, awesome song.
Speaker 1: 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. 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 5: You Really Got It Now?
Speaker 7: You Got us On?
Speaker 2: I don't know who too were You really Got It?
Speaker 7: Now?
Speaker 2: You Got us on?
Speaker 4: That's so awesome.
Speaker 1: It is so awesome. You Really Got Me reached number
thirty six on the Hot one hundred among a whole
bunch of disco and pop 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 4: That movie is so funny.
Speaker 1: 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 partied hard
with half naked prostates. It's all over the place, and
Henry Winkler is freaking out.
Speaker 2: I even know about your people.
Speaker 4: This is a morgue. You're partying in a morgue.
Speaker 3: You don't believe me, that's.
Speaker 1: And he tries to pull out this dead body to
show him. Turns out it's just a frat boy and
a prostitute inside of the cadaver box and the.
Speaker 4: Board Howard, So you Really Got Me?
Speaker 1: 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 then
that place coming in.
Speaker 7: I live my life back. This don't tomorrow. All I've
got feel he's doing on me. It's a battle borrow
your I'm living at us facetack.
Speaker 1: So that sound that you hear at the beginning that
is obviously not a musical instrument is car horns and
is 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 them
into the studio. Ted Templeman slowed him down there a
bit at the end that you can you can hear
the slow down. 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 O Houw to play guitar, and they start the
first song on the first album with car horns.
Speaker 4: And the bass.
Speaker 1: But they're letting, they're letting everybody know where about hard rock.
This is one of 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
or you can get two guitar solos. But why wouldn't
you do that? If you've got Eddie van Handls.
Speaker 4: You got j van Halen, you let him play as
much as possible.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, you want to play more.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's right.
Speaker 4: They recorded this album for forty thousand dollars to three
weeks to record and that's it.
Speaker 1: 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 4: Yes, so tell me about fingertapping and eruption.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the b side to Running with the Double
is Eruption. It's also the second song 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 van Halen when
I was the three years old. The introduction that I
had to van Halen was nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 4: Me too, Right, I was born in nineteen seventy three, Okay,
but nineteen eighty four was first time I was paying
attention to.
Speaker 1: Right, nineteen eighty four was on 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 here 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
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 finger tapping and what was involved there. But this
this finger tapping that he does in Eruption, 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
rocky 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 4: Hey, that's been about the time chipbunk punk came out
and there.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, so I was listening
to the Chipmunks and Bach and Beethoven and Mozart.
Speaker 4: All right, that's right, good job.
Speaker 1: 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 get the big
squid that attacks them. Well, familiar with it, but I've
never seen it. 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 4: George everybody, George Mason, George Mason, George Mason.
Speaker 1: And so he's Captain Nemo and he's got this organ
and they kind of read if you watch any of
the Pirates of the Caribbean, they've kind of done the
same type of the 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. 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
miss the part that's from Leoney Tunes right there, right,
So that one is probably that one is probably actually
from Franz 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, right,
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 fretboard, 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. And 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 tapping 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 4: All right, So that's the end of episode one.
Speaker 1: Van Halen, Yeah, we're gonna come back next week and
do part two, the Rise and Fall of Daily Rock. 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 4: And eleven months of killing it every night, hard work.
They get back, the manager of the record company says,
great job, you guys did awesome. You host three million
dollars in a new record. What squeeze So Guinness Book
World Record. They got one point five million dollars for
a ninety minute set.
Speaker 1: They make more money than anybody has for that. But
tensions are still high.
Speaker 4: The 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 1: 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 those guys.
Speaker 4: Her teacher comes out with the young van Halen boys
running around the school terrorizing. Right, you've got miss fed
his ed and miss spelled and miss science or whatever,
and those spelled teachers running around.
Speaker 1: You've got his kind of awkwardly cyghing mother. And then
when Waldo speaks, he's got this unusually deep voice.
Speaker 4: Oh mom, yeah, no, I'm not like other guys.
Speaker 5: I'm nervous.
Speaker 1: Then my socks there too.
Speaker 4: You know who that voice is right now? That voice
is Phil Hartman of Saturnyntlin.
Speaker 1: Oh Phil Hartman, God rest his soul. Their success is
beyond what it has ever been in history. They are
literally at the top of their game, and.
Speaker 4: 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.
Speaker 1: And then 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 has 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 2: 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 1: When you're doing solo work. Is the is the Does
this mean that the band will soon be breaking up?
Speaker 5: No, No, that happens, you know.
Speaker 2: 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 1: 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 rates somebody for
going and doing work with other people and then pull
off this stunt and expect to remain in a band.
Speaker 2: Boom Budda Boom Badida, Boom Badida, Boom Buddy.
Speaker 1: Dave is out.
Speaker 4: Dave's out in nineteen eighty five, right at the pinnacle
of their professional career. Do van Hagen?
Speaker 1: The first time I heard it was on the movie
Joe Dirt.
Speaker 3: No, sir man, I don't like that crap. I'm a
rocker dude through and through.
Speaker 6: Here's my favorite bands, AC DC, van Halen, not van Hagar.
Speaker 7: Who cures about the clouds When we're.
Speaker 4: To Sammy officially joins the band end nineteen eighty five,
just sing us song and thing bout Sonny.
Speaker 1: All right, guys, don't forget to follow us on Twitter
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