Regarding Eddie Van Halen

Regarding Eddie Van Halen.

My wife grew up in L.A.. And she's enough older than I am so that she was the one who got to see Van Halen at places like the Whisky. When the band were the biggest of the L.A. bands, but still came around to do the little hometown gigs.

I'm jealous. But I do have my Van Halen story.

I saw them on the 5150 tour, at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, the old Texas Jam weekend. I was twelve, my uncle thirteen, I'd gone up to my grandfather's on one of my flying summer tours.

My grandfather was a professional musician. He was not fooled by the two of us, son and grandson, talking our way into going to the Jam. But my grandfather always appreciated a good story well told. And so he dropped us off when the gates opened, threatened us with tortures vile if we didn't make the closing gate on time.

Then sat there and waited for us. We weren't the last ones out through the gates, but it was close.

Anyway. 5150 and Sammy's first tour... I was absolutely stoked. They delivered; I watched him play it live. He was for real.

That said, there's another part to this one.

So the two of us sit down in the upper deck at the old Bowl, a couple of barely even teenagers, wandering about in the rock and roll stew.

A guy comes in with one of those styrofoam ice chests, the kind you used to buy at 7-11. He sits down in the row in front of us, lays the top of the ice chest across his lap.

And starts rolling joints. The ice chest is full of grass. He rolls, lays his soldiers out neat and lined up. And when he's got the row full, he lights one up, takes a hit, hands it on to his right. Lights up the next one, hands it left, and so on.

My uncle and I sat mesmerized by this. Oh, not the grass; my parents were hippies. By that point, I'd been to Willie Nelson's birthday party a couple of times. Our own parties, amongst Family at least, carried the ever present aroma. The smoke wasn't the surprise.

It was the complete joy of the dude's moment. This guy's world, his freedom, in that moment it all came down to sharing out his smoke with the world. How much had he spent? Not a clue. But he spent it, and he made our day in watching him.

Frankly I'm surprised I remember anything of it. But we didn't so much partake as float away on the contact high. Actually smoking one of the joints we passed on wasn't even necessary.

But this was a story about Van Halen; about Eddie. I tried once to get our band director to let me score 5150, 7 minutes or whatever of the album at least, for marching band.

I still think that show would have been epic. But we were already pushing the envelope by marching jazz. Going full out rock wouldn't have made any trophies appear, so that was out.

My age, and I'm a guitar player, yeah, Eddie, Van Halen as a whole, they stood in the firmament for me. Us, all of us in our little generation. Too big too good, and too much, yeah.

Much as the past couple of years had to be hard on Eddie and his family, it says something that, at the same time, we were able to look at him and say, hey, Eddie finally looks healthy. The worst of that world, the habits, kept him from that health for all those years of the life.

I'm glad he got to experience some of it. With Wolfie, too; the family affair, to get onstage with your son would have to have been a feeling of accomplishment. How it all happened to get there, hey yeah, but let's pass that now and enjoy at a distance the fact that they did get there.

Go forth, Eddie Van Halen, to where the stack reaches the ceiling, the air buzzes when you push the button, crackles across the strings, and blows the gates off when you hit that first chord.