The singer Eddie Van Halen said never cared about music: “It was about the show”
There’s a good chance that most audiences would have been entertained at any Van Halen show, even if it was only Eddie onstage.
With no disrespect meant to every other member of the band, Eddie was clearly gifted beyond compare, and when he had that guitar in his hands, there was no way that anyone was going to make him part with his new obsession. But while he was more than happy to let his music do the talking half the time, that’s not often how it works when making a classic album.
Even when looking at the band’s first record, there was a degree of ferocity that came with the record that was much bigger than Eddie’s guitar. Most people were hungry to get out of the traditional prog bands coming out at the time, and while Van Halen weren’t punk in any way, their sense of flash is what separated them from the millions of other new wave acts that were slowly taking over the airwaves.
They didn’t necessarily have to be in the best internal situation to make classic albums, either. 1984 was when they were at each other’s throats the most, and Diver Down wasn’t even supposed to exist if all the members had their way, and yet both of them are fun listens that capture the best of what everyone was able to do when they were able to jam for the hell of it. But if there was one albatross around Eddie’s neck from day one, it had to do with who was at the front of the stage.
Which is strange, considering how much Van Halen’s legacy is tied to David Lee Roth. ‘Diamond Dave’ was the kind of electric showman that anyone would have loved to be friends with, but when he first started working the Los Angeles scene with his own band, Red Ball Jet, Eddie knew it would be a cold day in hell before he even got anywhere close to what Roth was doing.
But you know what speaks louder than Eddie’s pettiness? PA systems, and since Roth had one that they were being loaned every time they played, it was cheaper to get him in the band than to pay him whenever they played a gig. They now had a star frontman, but since he wasn’t the greatest singer in the world, Eddie had no problem throwing Roth under the bus more than a few times whenever they played together.
Despite years of time away from each other, Eddie felt that Roth’s need to be a star made him stop caring about music altogether half the time, saying, “It was never about the music for him. It was about the show. We kinda became rival bands. People who liked us at one party would go to the next party, and I guess they’d throw stuff at him. He did try to get us to do covers like ‘Cold Sweat’, and we’d do ‘Get Down Tonight’, by KC and the Sunshine Band – ridiculous stuff for us.”
While Roth was the one who forced them to make some changes they didn’t want, it’s not like their compromises couldn’t work out for the best from time to time. Getting them to become showmen was half the reason why the band became a staple of MTV, and when Roth acquiesced to having Eddie incorporate keyboards into the mix, they got their biggest hit out of the deal with ‘Jump’.
So even if Roth didn’t bother worrying about the simple matters of loving music, that didn’t mean that he didn’t have a good head on his shoulders. Because, as it turns out, knowing about the music business can sometimes be a lot more helpful than being the most competent musician in the world.
