Speaker 1: Welcome back everybody. There's a lot of music in this
episode today. If you want to purchase some of the songs,
you can always get them on Apple Music or Google Play.
But for your convenience, we have placed links in our
show notes to the vinyl albums if you're into that
kind of thing, so please check those out.
Speaker 2: All right, everybody, thank you for listening. This is episode two.
Speaker 3: Of our Van Helen Breakdown.
Speaker 2: This soone's called The Rise and Fall of davidly Roth.
Speaker 1: We want to thank you guys again so much for
all of the positive feedback that you're giving us. We'd
like to do another shout out to a positive review
that we received on Apple Podcast. This one is from
Jeff harmon five Stars. Is called Eighties Bliss. These guys
start breaking down eighties music and movies, and I'm instantly
taken back to a wonderful time in my life, full
of fun, debate and laughs. Highly recommended. Man, I could
not have picked a better endorsement of what we do
and what we want to do. I'm really glad that
we're taking you back, man.
Speaker 2: Thanks Jeff, appreciate you.
Speaker 4: Ma.
Speaker 1: I also wanted to give a shout out to Dean Marino.
He was our first follower on Twitter. Started talking to
Dean last year when we were first working on the
van Halen podcast. Dean is at dea NS sixty nine
Z and he is the writer of the van Halen
Letter and a Camaro fan. So cars van Halen all
on this episode. Thanks so much for your support, Dean
really appreciate it, and thank you for the conversations.
Speaker 3: Oh real quick.
Speaker 2: This is episode two of a three parter.
Speaker 1: Right, so, if you haven't heard episode one of van
Halen versus van Agar, you might want to push pause,
go back to the previous episode and listen to the
birth of the band. But without further ado, here is
part two, the Rise and Fall of David Lee Roth.
Speaker 5: Hello everybody, and welcome to the Surely Can't Be Serious podcast,
discussing and debating the iconic and the forgotten of eighties
and nineties pop.
Speaker 3: Culture with your co hosts James D.
Speaker 5: Graves and Jason Colban.
Speaker 1: Welcome back for part two of the Shirley You Can't
Be Serious Podcast.
Speaker 2: Here's a quick recap of last week's.
Speaker 1: Episode, nineteen sixty two. They get on a large boat
and then after a few nights 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 sea
was planted and they were ready to be stage musicians
for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 2: It doesn't take very long to figure out there are
benefits to being the performance.
Speaker 1: And so they would pay somebody ten bucks per show
to go rent the system. And one of the guys
they were runting from.
Speaker 3: Was this kid named Davie Ross, kid named David.
Speaker 1: Lee Roth, 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 2: In a matter of ten dollars, they land one of
the greatest frontmen of any rock band of all time.
Speaker 1: And then David Lee Roth was like, you know what
Van Halen sounds cool and it's your name. Let's make
the band name.
Speaker 3: That was Daily Ross's idea.
Speaker 1: Absolutely yeah. 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 Holy.
Speaker 1: And Oddly, from time to time Bill Gazari would come
up to David and say, hey, Van, you guys did
last night? Were a couple extra bucks. I guess he
thought he was like Van Morrison or something. So he
had a special guitar. Yeah, absolutely 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 played the guitar. He created his own guitar.
Gene Simmons said, I don't think you guys should call
yourselves in Halen.
Speaker 2: I think you guys ought to change your name to
Daddy long Legs.
Speaker 1: Which who knows, maybe that would have worked.
Speaker 3: I don't think so. No, it's not the same b
and they do the right thing.
Speaker 2: 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 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 2: You're worth a bazillion dollars, mister Simmons, I'll do whatever
you say, right, But they say.
Speaker 1: No, we're going to pick up where we left off
last time. We had covered the first two singles off
of Van Halen One Awesome.
Speaker 2: This is going to be the rise and fall of Daily.
Speaker 1: Roth and as always, please hit the subscribe button now
so that you never miss an episode of the Surely
you Can't Be Serious podcast.
Speaker 3: So then where are we now? The third single?
Speaker 1: Yes, so yeah. The third single is Ain't Talking About Love.
This is one of those few songs that they did
with Sammy after Sammy joined the band, one of the
few Wroth songs that made it over. And it was
originally supposed to be a punk parody from Eddie, but
he just said, well, it just didn't ever really sound
like punk. I mean, it's be punk. It's only two chords,
it's a minor and it's g It's one I was
able to pick up.
Speaker 2: It's one of my favorite davidly Roth fan Allen songs.
Speaker 3: It's so good.
Speaker 1: But he starts off that song and he's you can
listen to the beginning we'll listen to the beginning of
it real quick. So you hear how the strings sound
different there, They sound muffled, right. It's a technique called
muting where with your right hand you're holding the pick,
but you put your palm against the bottom part of
the strings. You don't press them down so much that
there's no sound at all, but you press it just
enough to mute the strings. And that's what you're doing.
Speaker 3: Cool, okay, And.
Speaker 1: So that's that cool sound. And nobody's going to say
that these songs were amazing. Lyrics wise, David Lee Roth
did pretty much all the lyrics, and I think he'll
readily admit there's no depth. There's no depth.
Speaker 3: From some silliness.
Speaker 1: And so tell me what you remember what you learned
about David and his upbringing as a child.
Speaker 2: So Dave was born into a family of a successful
eye surgeon. We already kind of talked about that while
his dad was bringing them up. His uncle, I think,
is a well known doctor as well, and there's kind
of medical family and they expected Dave to kind of
fall in their footsteps. But Day was known as sort
of the troublemaker, the high hyper energy troublemaking kid, but
not medical school material.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: If anybody can say anything about David Lee Roth's, he's
going to suck the marrow out of life. That's his goal. Right.
Speaker 2: He definitely party follows him around.
Speaker 3: That's for sure.
Speaker 1: So his his motto was, it doesn't matter whether you
win or lose, it's just how good you look. And
so I can't think of for really a more shallow
statement than that, but that was just like that's the
kind of mantra of his life. And then there but
just you know, to kind of psychoanalyze maybe a little
too much. If you listen to Ain't talking about love,
it says, I've been to the edge, I've stood and
looked down. I've lost a lot of friends there, baby,
I ain't got no time to mess around. I think
he probably had a darker side that was related to
thinking deeply that he actively decided to avoid. You listen
to him talking. You know, he's an intelligent guy. He's
scattered and obviously manic.
Speaker 3: He's man he's way way manic.
Speaker 1: But there's definitely a high degree of intelligence that's going
on there. But he I think he has a fear
of the deep.
Speaker 2: Okay, so are we done? With you talking about love,
I'm done with How about the next song, Jamie's Crying?
Speaker 4: She saw was now.
Speaker 1: So this song is about a girl who she decides
that she's wanting more than just physical love. She wants real,
true love. And so you can tell from the timber.
Speaker 3: Of the band Dave lets her down easy. I'm sure.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's great, see you later. I'll go down
on the block.
Speaker 2: The interesting thing to me about this song, Okay, Jamie's
Crying nineteen seventy eight, we get a taste of this again,
very successful song in nineteen eighty nine. May have heard
of it. May surprise you. Tonloaks, wild Thing, Let's do it.
Speaker 1: On that debut album, they had a lot of success.
They didn't have any number ones, but it was a
platinum album for them. They came back from the tour
and they were exhausted. Eleven solid months on tour and
they came back.
Speaker 3: Story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when they come back from tour in eleven months
of killing it every night, hard work, eleven straight months
supporting the album, they get back. The manager of the
record company says, great job. You guys did awesome. You
lost three million dollars in a new record.
Speaker 3: What Squeezebeak.
Speaker 1: They've got another album to come out with, and before
we leave Van Halen One, we shouldn't forget that there
are many other good songs on there, and this is
one of those few albums that exists in history that
is good from beginning to end. There are no bad songs,
there are no throwaway tracks. Feel Your Love Tonight is
one that's on there that we didn't mention.
Speaker 2: That's right, and then right album front to back, top
to bottom, one of my favorites that we don't. It
kind of gets overlooked, but it gets some radio plays
called ice Cream Man.
Speaker 1: I love ice Cream Man. It was the cover of
an old blues song and it's the only song maybe
maybe on any of the albums. I haven't really researched
it out, but definitely on this album. It's the only
one that Dave is playing some guitar on. He's the
one for the I.
Speaker 2: Don't even know Dave could play the guitar well.
Speaker 1: The song part that he's playing is not terrible. Comm
you'd probably play it with only two fingers, you know.
Speaker 3: Have you ever seen Dave hold a guitar?
Speaker 1: No, I've never in my life seen it, but wisely.
You know, Dave said when he first saw them on stage,
when he before he had joined the band, he saw
Eddie play and he said, what he does with his hands,
I want to do with my feet and my voice.
He knew his place, he knew what he needed to do,
and he knew where his skill sets. No your limitations,
absolutely so you had ice Cream man, you had feel
your Love. We have several other great songs on the album,
but we obviously don't have time to go through all
of those. After that they come back, Warner Brothers said
we need a new album, and the album that comes
out is van Halen too. Several great songs on that album.
A couple of my favorites are Beautiful Girls. Their big
big hit was Dance the Night Away.
Speaker 3: It's the night great song, dance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was again you're seeing this this bringing
what people wanted from disco into rock and roll right.
Dance the Night Away is Dave obviously Dave's influence and
making something showy and glamorous with the hard rock and
rock behind it.
Speaker 2: Also, another notable song I think is the opening one,
You're No Good. It's Van Halen's version of the Linda ronstance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know that I've actually heard that version.
Let's I want to listen to. We'll play a example
of that real quest.
Speaker 4: But now.
Speaker 1: Fat Okay, Well, I gotta say honestly, that was one
of the rare circumstances where they took somebody's song and
I don't think they made it better.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't. I didn't like it that much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now I think Linda Ron said I mean number one,
she's hot back then.
Speaker 3: And she was hot.
Speaker 1: She got a great voice, beautiful voice. Usually had Eagles backing,
think too, ye was I wonderfully backed her on that song.
I can't remember. I don't know.
Speaker 2: This isn't crazy. I really don't understand it. But they
started recording December tenth, nineteen seventy eight. They were finished
recording this album December sixteenth, nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 3: That's six days.
Speaker 1: Holy crap.
Speaker 3: I guess they wanted to get it in before Christmas.
They had to do some.
Speaker 1: Shopping or something.
Speaker 3: I yeah.
Speaker 2: It was released March twenty third, nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: Okay, so they released Van Halen one in January of
seventy eight. They released Van Halen two in March of
seventy nine.
Speaker 2: So they tour and then the next album they go
in the studio is Women and Children first, that comes
out in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1: The big song that I remember from that album is
Everybody Wants Some, which is still getting record play today.
I love it's still a great song.
Speaker 2: It is a great song. And for those of you
who maybe I don't know if you're like me, but
the movie Better Off Dead with John Cusack, there's a
big sort of dancing Hamburger animation thing in the middle
that is set to Everybody Wants Some.
Speaker 3: And that's how I learned that song.
Speaker 1: That's a weird scene. It is a strange, strange scene.
Speaker 3: Again, a great movie. We need to talk about that movie.
Speaker 1: Sometimes, all right, So then anything else to say about
Women and Children.
Speaker 3: Only on one another? You know. Another big song was
and the credle Wile Rock.
Speaker 1: It's the credible rock breach, number fifty five on the
Hot one hundred. At this point, there's still really not
seeing very many rock songs. They are still one of
the few bands that you're that you're seeing on them.
Speaker 2: Nineteen eighty is the time when sort of Kenny Rogers
and sort of pop country was big on the charts.
Speaker 1: I'm Yourn and Shining Armor and I Love You. Sure
you had southern rock doing well as well, but it
just still wasn't the hard rock other than Van Halen.
Speaker 3: So after this album comes out, they go on a
tour yep. So it's like.
Speaker 1: Album tour, album tour, album tour, working hard like they
did when before they were famous.
Speaker 2: Okay, and this whole time Eddie's been working on material.
He wants to come up with a solo album, and
that's what Fair Warning was actually intended to be, was
an Eddie van Halen solo album. And that's why it's
a little more darker, a little more guitar heavy.
Speaker 1: It's creepy.
Speaker 3: Not a fan, it's not.
Speaker 1: I'm not a fan of Unchained is great, don't be wrong.
I love Unchained. It's a great song, but the majority
of the album is not. It's not to my taste.
And I'm not saying it's a bad album. It's and
there are tons of diehard fans that will love it,
but it's just not my It wasn't my favorite me either.
Speaker 3: Unchained is phenomenal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that song, that's the that's the bright Shining Star,
on that album for sure, without match.
Speaker 2: A lot of people don't realize, but at this time
in nineteen this is when we have the first major
tension between Eddie and Dave. Dave is wanting to be
more pop. Eddie wants to be more rock. That's crazy
because they flip sides later on absolutely flip sides. So
Dave wants to be more pop, Eddie wants to be
more rock, and everybody's getting tired of Dave's ego I think,
and Eddie can be a pain in the butt too,
and you couple him with Alex and.
Speaker 1: The thing about people who are able to achieve this
type of success in these type of fields is that
they have to be kind of full of themselves. They
have to be extremely confident, which is what led them
to each other. I mean, Dave saw Eddie's ability and
confidence on the stage. They saw Dave's swagger and thought
this will be something that fits for what we want.
And so obviously it works very very well. But those
tensions will eventually come to a head.
Speaker 2: Okay, So moving on past nineteen eighty one, Past Fair Warning,
which to me, the only thing worth talking about on
that album is unchained, Right, you go into nineteen eighty two,
they come up with this idea that, hey, we need
to take some time off, but we want to stay relevant,
we want to stay out front. Let's I got an idea.
Let's just do a cover song, put it out there,
we'll make a video for it, and we'll stay in
front of people.
Speaker 3: And so Dave.
Speaker 2: Comes up the idea and he says, let's do Dancing
in the street.
Speaker 1: Right, And Eddie says, no, I don't think that's a
good one. Let's do pretty Woman.
Speaker 3: And so they say, okay, let's do it.
Speaker 2: And they come up with it and it's great and
they put it out and it's this massive hit.
Speaker 1: Number twelve, reach number twelve, which, again, knowing that what
we know, what we've said so far, a hard rock
version of pretty Woman getting that high on the church
is amazing, but it locks them into another issue.
Speaker 2: That's right, and the record company says, you've got this
hit song, but we don't have an album. We've got
to have an album. You guys got to get back
in the studio and produce an album to go with
this hit song. Right, which, before we get into that,
have you ever watched the video for Pretty Women?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 2: It is the weird is okay, So we know music
videos at nineteen eighty two are weird and they're cheap,
and they're all these things.
Speaker 1: Right. Nineteen eighty one, by the way, just for a reminder,
is when MTV first came out. Late eighty one August
of eighty one is when MTV came out, right, And
so in eighty two the music video there, there's less
than three hundred.
Speaker 3: Music videos out there.
Speaker 2: So this music video Pretty Woman, if you watch it,
you have these midgets who are sexually assaulting this woman
who is tied up.
Speaker 3: They are groping her.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Okay, And so Michael Anthony gets a phone call, but
he's a samurai, and then he calls his friend jungle
boy Alex van Halen.
Speaker 3: He's got bone and he's like a caveman.
Speaker 2: So he calls his friend gunslinger Eddie van Halen, who
then calls his friend David.
Speaker 3: Lee Roth, who is dressed like George Washington.
Speaker 1: Okay, now, actually I can I can kind of remember
that part because he had a very adam and look
about him. I'm thinking that I just have blocked out
the midget problem. I don't think that's a PC anymore
little people. That he's being attacked by the little people.
Speaker 2: This woman is being assaulted by little people.
Speaker 3: So yeah, back to the album.
Speaker 2: Five of the twelve songs are covers.
Speaker 1: And the band they're not getting along, and they really
kind of consider this Dave's album because they would never
have done this many covers on an album.
Speaker 2: That's right, And this is the Van Halen Brothers very
public least favorite album.
Speaker 1: It's the least favorite album of the Roth albums for
most folks. But let's keep in mind they set a
world record at this point in their career, which kind
of indicates it doesn't really matter that they're not doing
what they feel is their best work. Just after their
tour for this, they decide they got to get away
from each other. Dave goes with their head of security
and they travel down to the Amazon. Now, you know,
the rest of the guys are married. They're going to
go be with their wives and family. But Dave and
a handful of security guys are down there on a
boat in the Amazon in the jungle. Interestingly, this guy,
the security guard, who is their head of security and
looked like a total kick butt guy, said that he
you know, when they put him in charge of security.
The first thing that Dave said to him when he
came in is do you have a problem with drugging
and drinking? No, he goes, do you have a problem
with underage girls running around and have a fun And
he goes no, And he goes can you roller skate?
And the guy says no, what I can learn? And
so he was their head of security, and he developed
a system where if there was going to be a
problem in the crowd, they had sectors and zones of
the crowd. They were like a problem in sector five,
row seven, man in the black t shirt. Well, Dave
very quickly caught onto this mapping concept, and so even
in the middle of the show, he would be bop
himself over to one of the security guards and go okay,
Sector fifteen, Row three, red shirt, blonde giver backstage pass
YEP one ring and so all of this there was
a system like all of the security guards would hand
out the backstage passes for Dave and maybe for the
other guys, but really for Dave, and they would sign
their name to the back of the pass. And if
Dave had a deep and meaningful conversation with one of
these ladies that had the badge, the guy who had
the name on the back of the backstage pass, he
got a little.
Speaker 2: Extra money, got the nice tips, that's right.
Speaker 1: And if it was really deep and really long, he.
Speaker 2: Got a lot of extra money, that's right. Centivizing the help,
I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. You gotta know where your priorities are.
Use the system that's in place.
Speaker 3: So Dave in the jungle.
Speaker 1: So Dave's in the jungle with the security guard. They
they end up in one port. They call back to
that to the US to talk to people, and they're like, hey,
you guys got to get back. We have been asked
to do the US Festival. And so the US Festival
was something that had been put together the year before
by Steve Wozniak.
Speaker 3: Thea was of Apple computer fame.
Speaker 1: Yeah, co founder of Apple with Steve jobs. He was
disenfranchised with the seventies, which had been the ME generation,
and so he put together this thing called the US
Festival because he wanted the eighties to be the US generation.
And the headlining band for that festival was and do
you know what the record is that they said.
Speaker 3: So Guinness Book World Record.
Speaker 2: They got one point five million dollars for a ninety
minute set.
Speaker 1: They do an hour and a half set. They make
more money than anybody has for that, but tensions are
still high.
Speaker 2: Tensions are high. Even a million dollars an hour can't
cure some of the tensions that are going on. 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. For me,
this is the best of the Dave albums. This is
my introduction to van Halen. Sure, this is where I
jumped in, but this is a new van Halen. So
my introduction to van Halen is the new van Halen, absolutely,
which is partly why I think I'm partial to Sammy
later on. But the new sound begins here.
Speaker 1: So, as I said before, this was my introduction to
the band as well. And you couldn't help but be
inundated with Jump at that time in history. It was
that it was the first single off the album. It
is their only number one hit, and if you got
the opportunity to watch MTV, it was on all the
time and it was fascinating.
Speaker 3: It was fantastic it was.
Speaker 1: It was four guys on stage with no crowd. I
mean it's just them jumping.
Speaker 3: It's like a black room with the black drum cloth.
I mean there's nothing happening.
Speaker 1: There is literally nothing going on. They're in weird clothes
that you know, there's leopard skin, tatters of clothes on
stuck on to Dave's body and he's making love with
the camera as much as anybody could and then doing
these amazing acrobatics.
Speaker 3: It's a pretty limber guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he can do these jumping high split kicks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, doing the full splits up in the air off
of the drum stand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, flip in the video.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I remember Jump being the intro to all the cub
games on WGN, right that whole summer, right.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. Jump is everywhere. 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 gone
on with these guys. Now, if you listen to the
rest of nineteen eighty four, there's plenty of pure hard
Van Halen hits on that one, and a couple of
them are are popular. Now, you know, 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 guys, because you love the
popular song.
Speaker 3: I love radio friendly hits.
Speaker 2: That's what resonates with me, right, I like that?
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 2: I'm not one of these guys like a radio on
top forty sucks. Before we move on from Jump, Jump
was listed by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
as one of five hundred songs that Shape.
Speaker 1: Run nineteen eighty four. Is the first single and biggest
hit that they ever had is Jump, as we've said,
and then there are three more singles that come off
of that album, Panama, Hot for Teacher, and I'll Wait.
Drop Dead Legs is another great song of the album,
but I don't have a lot to say about that one.
Speaker 2: Drop Dead Legs is a fantastic stripper song.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't strip, so I don't know, now you know,
So let's talk briefly about those three songs. I'll Wait
was thirteen hit for the second release, it went to
number thirteen the Hot one hundred. Yeah, no video, no
video for that one, which is interesting as big of
a hit as it was and as obvious video heads
that they had become, especially Dave, but.
Speaker 2: More synthesizer on this song as well.
Speaker 1: But the use of the synthesizer, I'm gonna have to say, yes,
it was a crossover. But that is why this was
the number one hit. That is why, that is why
I'll wait it was such a big hit, is because
that synthesizer allowed them to cross over to a broader
audience than they had ever had been flow down and
so they've got these other singles. I love Panama maybe
my favorite song off of the album. Here's something interesting
and I didn't bring it up when we talked about
Van Halen's debut album, but they covered a band when
they were in their early stages called Cactus which I
had never heard before. But there is no question. I mean,
the boys have as much admitted so several of the
songs that they have they totally have borrowed some part
of a song. So the intro to Hot for Teacher
with the drums and the guitar coming in is almost
identical for a song called Parchment Farm by Cactus Sun.
And then Eruption was a song that, again the intro
was very similar to song let me swim by Cactus
and we can play those side by side as well. Yeah,
there's no question he's borrowed these. You listen to him,
it's undeniable, but he's improved them. Oh yeah, he's Mozart.
There's somebody that nobody's ever heard of.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: So Panama reaches number thirteen on the Hot one hundred. Yes,
Hot fr Teager comes out. This video is one of
my favorite videos.
Speaker 3: Of all time.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, with.
Speaker 2: The young Van Halen boys running around the school terrorizing. Right,
you've got miss his ed and uh you know, misspelled
and miss science or whatever, and those spelled teachers running around.
Speaker 3: It's it's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. You got the beginning part with Waldo. You've got
his kind of awkwardly sighing mother, and then when Waldo speaks,
he's got this unusually deep voice.
Speaker 3: Oh mom, yeah, no, I'm not like other guys. I'm nervous.
Then my socks there too.
Speaker 2: You know who that voice is right now? That voice
is Phil Hartman of Saturday Night Life fame.
Speaker 1: Oh Phil Hartman, God rest his soul, of course, that's him.
Oh that's perfect. Gets on the.
Speaker 3: Bus, sat down, Waldo.
Speaker 1: So Dave is the one that's responsible for the videos
on both Panama and Panama. You know they I think
they they did a thing that seemed to be happening
a lot back then, which was videos of the concert
where they're flying on cables like bon Jovi is doing
the same thing.
Speaker 2: I could sell that and living on a prayer bon
Jovi was.
Speaker 1: Like bouncing all over the place. They look awful. These
guys look fun, right, They're they're flying and drinking beer
and playing the guitar. It's it's amazing stuff. And so
their success is beyond what it has ever been in history.
They are literally at the top of their game, and
they hate each other.
Speaker 2: This is where it falls apart. Dave's ego is out
of control. At this point, Eddie and Dave are lockinghorns,
and Alex sides with Eddie of course, of course, and
Michael's in the crossfire. But Dave comes up with a
new album, a solo album called Crazy from.
Speaker 1: The Heat Right, so he had criticized Eddie in the
past for playing with Michael Jackson. This is something we
talked about on our first episode, that the guys were
doing other things. Michael calls Eddie. We played guitar in
the song shirt and then that one ends up being
a number one hit and the album keeps nineteen eighty
four from reaching number one status as an album. So
Dave and the guys are pretty pissed about that. And
you see it in one of his videos that comes
out from that solo album, is he kind of is
mocking Michael Jackson in the just a Jigglo videos. As
all of this is going on, is that they would
call these band meetings to get together and write songs
and talk about what was going to happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they would have these band meetings at eight
o'clock in the morning, which is crazy for a rock
band to try to do anything at eight o'clock.
Speaker 3: In the morning.
Speaker 2: But the group consensus at any time you heard the
words band meeting, everybody was like, oh gosh, So eight
o'clock in the morning, they were supposed to be there
to write and play music. Dave would show about eleven,
start a fight.
Speaker 1: And then leave, Yeah, probably with a couple girls.
Speaker 3: Right, And I can tillly see Dave doing this.
Speaker 1: And so then just like he was upset about, 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 were only really
two good songs on the album, so it's still worked
out to be about the same. But as a surprise
to the remainder of the band, he releases Crazy from
the Heat from.
Speaker 4: The hit.
Speaker 1: Now 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 4: 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 3: I well, I have beautiful.
Speaker 4: I have chosen to remain a little weener for one
more season.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be a Weeni for another year?
Speaker 4: Yeah? You bet.
Speaker 1: Well, you're doing solo work? Is the is the Does
this mean that the band will soon be breaking up?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: No, that happens. You know that does happen.
Speaker 4: That's that's the spinal tap story. Now, 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 just you can't do that. 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 the band.
Speaker 2: He also had a movie deal on the table that
was annoying the band as well.
Speaker 1: Well. As I said earlier, he was the directing force
behind their videos, which are fantastic. I mean, they're great,
well put together videos. He's obviously playing a part in this.
He's developed this kind of Dave TV idea.
Speaker 3: It was the big thing for about five minutes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he really really was coming up strong. But there's
only so much wind power that can take you when
you don't have your name band behind you.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: So we've heard rumors that he was fired, we've heard
rumors that he quit.
Speaker 1: Either way, I don't think there's any question that he
made a decision that led to his exit from the band,
but that decision was probably not his to leave. But
there's to say you don't belong here anymore. You've pushed
it too far.
Speaker 3: So Dave's out.
Speaker 1: Dave is out.
Speaker 2: Dave's out in nineteen eighty five at the pinnacle of
their professional crew.
Speaker 1: Right, and so everyone is wondering what's going to go on,
including Eddie and Alex. They don't know what. They don't
know what to do. They don't know whether to get
another bass player. They don't know whether to do a
kind of compilation album where they've got multiple singers performing
different songs with them, or to try to find one
singer that they can go with.
Speaker 2: That's right, and the smart money at this time was
probably on Dave.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you were if you're like, who am I
going to back? Is it going to be Dave or
van Halen? I mean, van Halen is not van Halen
without David Lee Roth. It's just not.
Speaker 2: And that's why Ted Templeman went with Dave to produce
Eatman Smile.
Speaker 1: Right, And he called Eddie and said, I'm sorry, I
got to go with Dave on this and the crew too,
and Eddie said, that's okay, I don't really want you
to produce our albums anymore. Anyway. Well, he didn't take everybody.
Don Landy stayed with them. Don Landy then became instead
of the sound engineer, he became the producer. He became
the new Ted Templeman, a fob in a big barn.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 2: So there's some discussion in nineteen eighty five about whether
or not to hire a full time lead singer or
to just do an album with guest lead singers. But
one of the So here are the names that are
kicked around as Dave's replacement, and some of these blew
me away by all accounts, including hers and Eddie's. The
lead option to replace Dave is Patty smythe Great Voice.
Not sure she's a fit for van Halen.
Speaker 1: No freaking way, no.
Speaker 3: All right, So she was the lead option.
Speaker 1: I think Patty Benatar. That would have been a great one.
Speaker 3: Patty Benaitar could have been an option.
Speaker 1: That Benatar had some kickbuck songs and was walking back.
Speaker 3: Away man, all right.
Speaker 2: Option number two Jimmy Barnes, which if you've ever seen
The Lost Boys, you're familiar with the song good Times.
Speaker 1: Who Oh yeah, that was the one that he did
with in excess. That's right, that's a great tune. And
he does he's got a strong voice. I don't know
if it's the right voice, but it's it's it's deeper,
more like Dave's.
Speaker 3: Yep, it's a it's a screamer, all right.
Speaker 2: And then option number three, guy named Eric Martin, who
you'll know if you have heard nineties music at all,
the song to Be with You by mister Big.
Speaker 4: So come on, David, come on over, let it be.
Speaker 1: You don't want to show you? So he was the
lead singer for mister Big. He was, Okay, that's an
entirely different.
Speaker 3: Semi voice, absolutely softer.
Speaker 2: He's got too, a raspy, good voice, melodic. But this
is the one that blew me away. This was an
actual offer on the table. Darryl Hall of Hollow Noise.
Speaker 1: I love Hallowose. I listened to uh Lion eyes with
Private Eyes thank you? Yeah? Sorry, yeah, I listened to
Private Eyes over and over. But I'm not a Van Halen.
Speaker 3: How about how about Eddie Plane your kisses on my lips.
Speaker 1: Kiss unchained melody or something? Yeah, no way.
Speaker 2: All right, So there's very few people that I can
actually step in for David. They have to be established
or the fan base of Chumba, right, and they have
to have balls of steel to get up there and
rock out to these old ones and then pursue a
new career with these guys. So who do they go to.
They go back to the Montrose guy. They call Sam
Hagar And.
Speaker 1: It makes absolute sense, and I thought so at the time.
He had done very well with Montrose, had been very successful.
Then he went out on his own solo career. Everybody
knows the song I Can't Drive fifty five. I love
the video Fast Cars. Frustration with this for you younger listeners.
In the nineteen eighties, no one was allowed to drive
over fifty five miles an hour anywhere in the United States.
Can you imagine how horrible that was, especially if you
own a Lambert That's right.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: I mean that's just like, you know, here's the candy,
but you can keep the wrapper on it? You can't, Yeah,
I don't. That'd be horrible. And so as it turns
out that the Lamborghini that you see, and well maybe
not that one, but a Sammy Hagar Lamborghini comes into
play with the joining of Eddie Van Hana's exactly right
and Sammy Hagar Sammy's cars in the shop right at
the same time Eddie's cars in this Yeah, Eddie also
had Lamborghini, which, by the way, that is the car
engine that you hear in Panama.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we'd run a little bit hot tonight.
Speaker 3: I can barely see the road from the heat coming.
Speaker 1: Up with That is Eddie's nineteen seventy two Lamborghini. But
he's having trouble with it. He takes it to his
mechanic and is down, and the mechanic says, what's wrong Eddie.
Speaker 2: And Eddie says, I, Man, I don't need a new
lead singer. And he says, man, what's you call Sammy?
Speaker 1: Sammy from Montrose?
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: So Eddie actually takes his advice, calls Sammy and says, hey, man,
we'd love you to come to jam with the ben.
Let's let's see what we got here and come down tomorrow.
Sam He's like, man, I do nothing tomorrow. I just
got off tour.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he just shaved his head. I mean it was
I mean he cut his hair.
Speaker 2: It was it was he had he was on vacation.
Speaker 1: Right, I'm taking a break, and honestly, he's one of
the few guys that could say I don't need you
guys right now, that's right. I'm I'm really successful on
my own. I'm not Van Halen successful, but I'm successful
enough for me. And he is a savvy businessman. If
you learn anything from his biography, it's that he knows
how to run a business, and he's a business guy,
and he's been around for a long time. He's older
than all the rest of the guys, and he knows
his stuff. So he's got no reason to have to
do this. But he just says, you know, what the heck,
it's what's the harm in meeting?
Speaker 2: I heard him say publicly in an interview that he
went initially to jam see what, see what they had,
what was going to go on and hopefully entice Eddie
to play on his next album.
Speaker 3: Oh nice for my friendship.
Speaker 2: Maybe Eddie will play on my next album. Right when
they get together, he shows up, they're out of their minds. There,
they are drunk, and the whole place is covered in
cigarette butts and it smells like a bar that hasn't
been clean in ten years. And they start playing. They
start playing and magic happens.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he says to himself, my gosh, if they
can sound this good, completely burned out of their minds.
These guys know how to party and they know how
to play. This is my type of.
Speaker 2: Show, he said. Literally that day they played and words
just sort of came out of his mouth, and Summer
Nights was born out of that jam session.
Speaker 3: Right, just flowed right.
Speaker 1: Out, scouting, scatting the melody.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So uh, he's he's known as the red rocker
at that point, and and he's got his own fame.
And so the first time that I saw him other
than in his video was during Farm Aid which, gosh,
if you go back, you can search. You can do
a YouTube search on this one and see the old
farm Maide video. Oh my, oh my, oh my.
Speaker 2: Okay, there's a song pro you track to pull him
on the out.
Speaker 3: There, Come on, I can't drive.
Speaker 1: You know that he was he was a unique guy.
He's he's very free with the language, very colorful, and
he's with his regular band. And then he says he
was looking at.
Speaker 4: The newspaper, right and it said that Eddie.
Speaker 3: Was gonna jam with me, And I thought.
Speaker 4: Well, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: But Eddie comes out and they play together and they
do an old led Zeppelin tune and they kill it.
They killed of course they kill it.
Speaker 2: This was for all the world to see, their first
chance to play live as a group, and he bombs
it with the big mfor I.
Speaker 1: Saw a lot of custoords whenever I watch I remember that.
Speaker 2: So anyway, Warner Brothers, so it's kind of like a supergroup.
You've got a very successful solo artist. You've got the
three parts left over after Dave left.
Speaker 3: Right, are we still going to be van Halen?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Warner Brothers actually came to him and said, would you
consider changing your name to van Hagar? Which I think
is interesting. I thought that was always just kind of
a slang term.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like a joke or the first time I
heard it was on the movie Joe Dirt.
Speaker 3: No, sir, man, I don't like that crap.
Speaker 1: I'm a rocker dude, through and through. Here's my favorite band,
ac DC van Halen, not Van Hagar.
Speaker 2: And Sammy's the one who says, no way, not doing
it right. So anyway, Sammy officially joins the band in
nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: And we will take that up on our next episode,
Part three of the Van Halen versus Van Hagar.
Speaker 2: Discussion right next week, Van Hagar.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
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