Geddy vs Eddie, Las Vegas: the unresolved tension between Van Halen and Rush
We’re all only human, so while it would be great to be invested in music just because we like it, there is something so alluring about the bar fight, the backstage brawl and rock star tension that is undeniably attention-grabbing. You can preach peace and love all you want and keep talking about the communitive aspect of music, but the minute the wholesome stories can be traded for ones of egos and fighting, you know people will latch on.
These stories of backstage fights still happen today, but they ran riot back in the golden days of rock music. It seems impossible to read about a band from the 1960s, ‘70s or ‘80s without coming across a story about them fighting with another group from the same period. This is exactly what happened with Van Halen and Rush, who could not cross paths without it erupting into a fight.
It all started in 1980 in humble Leicester. Van Halen had just played a gig and was heading out to celebrate. It was their bassist’s birthday, so they went to the hotel bar to drink it dry. Well, that was the plan anyway. Things weren’t as simple as that, as David Lee Roth points out.
“We’d come back to the bar, and Rush was staying at the same hotel. And as it turns out later – they’d rented the bar with all the booze in it,” this didn’t mean that the bar was off limits, though. The hotel staff saw a band and their repertoire walk up and just assumed they were part of the group that had bought all the alcohol. “Our guys didn’t know that, so they came in and said, ‘What? Free booze?! Whoa!”
Van Halen and co started clearing the bar out. Rush, as fellow rock stars, were happy to share the booze, and the two bands began partying together. The actual issue came from Eddie Van Halen’s beer getting spilt into Geddy Lee’s tape recorder, breaking it. “That caused a little friction,” said Roth.
The next time the bands met, one year later, in Las Vegas, Lee wasn’t over the fact that the group had stolen beer from them and then damaged his tape recorder with that beer. “Rush is playing before Van Halen in Las Vegas, and word goes out that nobody from Van Halen is allowed into the show at all. Nobody. No road crew, nobody.”
Eventually, because the truckers from Rush’s and Van Halen’s tours knew each other, some staff were allowed to go to the show, but most of the band and their crew were shunned. “After the show, we’re sitting in this casino. There are tables filled with Van Halen people. There are 47 or 50 of us on the road now. And Geddy feels one way or another and comes up to say something to Ed, and he puts up his hand to shake hands.”
Sounds good, right? Water under the bridge (or beer under the tape recorder)… well, not exactly. Not everyone is into the same music, so some rockstars might not be as recognisable as others. While some will have seen Geddy Lee going to make amends with Eddie Van Halen, Eddie’s security guard saw some stranger raising his hands to precious cargo.
“Now, one of our security guards didn’t have the vaguest idea in hell who he was,” recalls Roth, “And he came up and body tackled him. Ha ha ha. Threw him out of the table, and that’s the last I saw of them.”
It’s unclear whether the band ever made up after that or just stayed out of each other’s way; no matter what happened, the two couldn’t meet up without trouble starting. Life on the road is hard enough, and while these stories are great to look back on and read about, it was probably best for the groups to leave one another alone.
