The time Allan Holdsworth rejected Eddie Van Halen: “I’m not going to wait”
Anyone with functional eardrums would probably want Eddie Van Halen in their corner any time they went into the studio.
Beyond being a fantastic guitarist, Eddie understood the subtle nuances of what made people love rock and roll, but that didn’t mean that his style was equipped for every single musician in the world.
Because as much as Eddie loved playing guitar, that kind of musical showmanship wasn’t winning him any favours with David Lee Roth. He had been creating his own rockstar status simply by being one of the greatest guitarists to come out of Los Angeles, but for someone who was a natural ham like Roth was, it was easy to find them stepping on each other’s toes whenever they played a landmark show.
Then again, the band is called VAN HALEN for a reason, and while Roth did have a firm grip on how the songs sounded, the real mastermind behind their first albums was Ted Templeman. Having come off working with bands like Montrose, Templeman knew that he had magic on his hands, and while he wasn’t the George Martin of the group or anything, he had an impressive knack for hearing what made the band work and when they were screwing around.
But the fact is that Eddie was never comfortable with the idea of being some lavish pop star. The MTV effect that afflicted so many other bands was something that Eddie could have done without most of the time, and even if he contributed to songs by Michael Jackson in between working on records, that didn’t stop the label and Templeman from hounding him about what the next hit was supposed to be.
If there was one person who had the ability to turn Eddie’s head, though, it was Allan Holdsworth. The jazz fusion player had been twisting the guitar the same way that he had been doing from the days of the first Van Halen record, but despite Eddie wanting to return the favour, Holdsworth figured that he had better things to do than wait around for the guitar genius to be available.
In the lead-up to the album Road Games, Holdsworth remembered getting pissed off about Eddie not showing up, and rather than sit on his hands, he figured he’d call the label’s bluff, saying, “Eddie’s always working, and Ted is a real pain to pin down. I would have been 100 years old before I’d have done the album. I said, ‘I’m not going to wait,’ and they (Warner Bros) said, ‘Okay, go ahead.’ But they didn’t really want me to do that, and they harassed me the whole time.”
Then again, Holdsworth had to realise how much he was walking away from at the time as well. Eddie’s project with Brian May had already stood out as one of the greatest collaborations of the past few years, but rather than spend time at someone’s beck and call, Holdsworth knew that he had the makings of a great record, and if Eddie didn’t want to join the party at the time, that was too damn bad.
It is a bit of a shame to think that we were robbed of them collaborating simply because they needed one more song out of Eddie, but that was always the way that Holdsworth viewed music. This could have been the collaboration that sent the fusion guitarist into the stratosphere, but as the label would find out, some people simply don’t care about the money that they hang over their head.
