The fight that introduced Van Halen to David Lee Roth: “Causing nothing but trouble!”
The explosion of glam metal pop that dominated the MTV landscape across the early 1980s owes a massive debt to Van Halen.
While Los Angeles’ sunny soft rock and later punk wrecking-ball were scoring the Californian charts, the Van Halen brothers were honing their glossy shred attack and shimmering arena pop, ready for a budding crowd turned off by the Eagles’ yacht harmonies and left cold by the new wave’s iconoclastic attack.
In came Eddie. Backed up by his brother Alex on drums, the pair inadvertently pioneered the showboating metal theatre set to conquer US rock charts in a few short years. Acrobatic frontman David Lee Roth would leave Eddie to handle his signature fret-tapping, dropping 1978’s eponymous debut neatly in a giant Van Halen-shaped hole that budding metal fans didn’t realise they were hungry for.
Before long, record-breaking headliners at San Bernardino’s US Festival and the monster success of 1984’s ‘Jump’ would briefly see Van Halen as the biggest band in the country.
The brothers had cycled through various monikers since their teens, from The Broken Combs, Trojan Rubber Co, then Genesis, before realising a certain English prog behemoth had already claimed the name. Settling on Mammoth by the early 1970s, a chaotically booked outdoor park show resulted in the Van Halens and their Mammoth bassist mate Mark Stone turning up for soundcheck to a bemused gig organiser expecting the band to arrive with more than just their instruments.
“The park guy walks up, and I ask him, ‘So where’s all the gear?’” Alex recalled to journalist Ariel Levy in 2024. “And he says, ‘What do you mean, where’s all the gear? You’re supposed to bring it.’ And I said, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ ‘Because your manager said you’re bringing the sound.’ It gets into a semi-altercation – long story short, Ed and I left.”
Two hours later, a deflated Mammoth returned to see some cocksure group called The Red Ball Jets playing their slot and boasting their own sound system. Naturally, the Van Halens weren’t the best pleased. Checking out the band nonetheless, Mammoth recognised some of the performers from the Pasadena rock circuit, including brothers Miles and Mark Komora; their hyperactive frontman similarly wowed and rubbed Mammoth the wrong way as The Red Ball Jets strutted their R&B sound. We’ll give you one guess who the singer was.
“Hey, man, what the hell are you doing here?” Mammoth shout to Roth. In no time, pushes turn to harder shoves, and one of the crew members even pulled a knife. Thankfully, the altercation didn’t escalate beyond a stab threat, and the brandisher was arrested, but West Coast rock royalty was forged. “I thought it was appropriate and fitting in the context of what rock and roll was doing at the time,” Alex remarked. ”Which is causing nothing but trouble!”
Bygones became bygones. Roth would step up behind Mammoth’s mic, cement the classic line-up, and even suggest the final name change, pushing for the Van Halen moniker for its enduring marketing appeal. Roth would front the band for six albums and stadium-selling success before jumping ship in 1985 and opening the door for the Sammy Hagar era, affectionately dubbed the ‘Van Hagar’ chapter by longtime fans.
