R.I.P. Eddie Van Halen

[Zip City]

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/06/83499522 ... dies-at-65

[chuckrh]

RIP. This is hitting real hard.

[Flea]

Running with the Devil?

[Flea]

DOA?

[Flea]

Jamie's Crying.

[Flea]

I'll see myself out now.

[chuckrh]

I have a good Eddie Van Halen story that I was too upset & ill to share yesterday. I had chemo yesterday morning & got home to hear the news of Eddie's passing. Not a good day. So let's hop in the time machine & head back to 1978. I was 17 & a junior in high school. At this point I am seriously getting into music which affected my life (good & bad) for decades to come. The first record came out in February of 1978. I was hanging out at my favorite record store & they said listen to this & put the record on as there was no radio play yet. Eruption comes on & it was like a bolt of lightning. My friends & I freaked out because there wasn't anything else out there that sounded like that. Bought the album immediately. A few months later they came to town as an opener for Black Sabbath on the Never Say Die tour. Van Halen absolutely destroyed them. Sabbath were not at their best & it turned out they fired Ozzy after the tour. They were so bad that we left the show early. Went to a party at a friend's place & I came up with the bright idea of heading down to the Edgewater to try & meet the band. The hotel was the stay of choice for bands. You could fish from the rooms & it was made famous by Frank Zappa song about mudsharks. So, we got there & bluffed our way into the cocktail lounge being underage & all. Turns out both bands were there & it was party time in the bar. We noticed Eddie was sitting at a table by himself in the corner so we wandered over to say hi. I think Eddie figured out we were there on the sly & told us to have seat saying he'd rather hang with fans than anyone else. We ended up getting quite a buzz on with him & he was very cool & nice to us. We met Ozzy, too. He was nice to us, too. On the other hand, David Lee already was really arrogant & aloof. 1 friend ended up spilling a really sloppy drink like a tequila sunrise on him by accident. He was not pleased! To cap it off, on the way back to the car I see a flash of green & dove on it. Turned out it was $40 which was a healthy amount of money in those days. What a night! I saw VH a bunch in the early days. I think they would've been an even bigger deal if Sammy Hagar was the singer from the beginning. DLR was entertaining but irritating & finally he was just insufferable. I saw them with Sammy a few times including a memorable show with Alice in Chains opening. Didn't catch any of the reunion shows. Now I kind of wish I had but I don't think it would've topped the early shows. RIP Eddie, you were 1 of a kind for sure!

[RolanK]

Great story Chuck. On a similar note, from Scott Baxendale's Instragam:

It’s a sad day today because Eddie Van Halen passed away. In 1979, while working at a Gruhn Guitars, in Nashville, my best friend Allen Woody (RIP) and I took some guitars back stage to meet Van Halen. It sure was a night to remember! Allen and I spent over two hours hanging with Eddie in his dressing room. He couldn’t have been nicer as he played guitar for us in private for the entire time, playing every kind of style that wasn’t Van Halen style, including jazz, classical and blues. We talked guitars and music and he could not have been any cooler. At the end of our meeting he strapped on his guitar and flipped the switch on his remote pack (they were one of the only bands using wireless at the time) and from the dressing room we could hear his guitar through the mains in the arena and the crowd go apeshit! Then he left the dressing room and ran to the stage, playing the whole way, ran on stage and started his show! It was the Rock Starriest thing I’d ever seen to that point! A couple of other memories from that night include: being offered sex for my back stage pass and I turned it down! And before the show I saw into David Lee Roth’s dressing room where he had 6 hot groupies all lined up with their bare breasts exposed and he was standing in front of them going “Ennie, Meany, Miney Moe, to pick out who he was going to be with that night.#eddievanhalen #eddievanhalenrip#cancersucks

[chuckrh]

Great story Chuck. On a similar note, from Scott Baxendale's Instragam:

It’s a sad day today because Eddie Van Halen passed away. In 1979, while working at a Gruhn Guitars, in Nashville, my best friend Allen Woody (RIP) and I took some guitars back stage to meet Van Halen. It sure was a night to remember! Allen and I spent over two hours hanging with Eddie in his dressing room. He couldn’t have been nicer as he played guitar for us in private for the entire time, playing every kind of style that wasn’t Van Halen style, including jazz, classical and blues. We talked guitars and music and he could not have been any cooler. At the end of our meeting he strapped on his guitar and flipped the switch on his remote pack (they were one of the only bands using wireless at the time) and from the dressing room we could hear his guitar through the mains in the arena and the crowd go apeshit! Then he left the dressing room and ran to the stage, playing the whole way, ran on stage and started his show! It was the Rock Starriest thing I’d ever seen to that point! A couple of other memories from that night include: being offered sex for my back stage pass and I turned it down! And before the show I saw into David Lee Roth’s dressing room where he had 6 hot groupies all lined up with their bare breasts exposed and he was standing in front of them going “Ennie, Meany, Miney Moe, to pick out who he was going to be with that night.#eddievanhalen #eddievanhalenrip#cancersucks

Nice!

[cortez the killer]

It took Eddie's passing for me to appreciate the cheesy brilliance of 5150. Played it in its entirety the last few nights. Room was a bit dusty.