The one band Eddie Van Halen was pissed off working with
Whenever Eddie Van Halen got onstage, he was never exactly looking to put on a show in the traditional sense.
Every band is trying to entertain their audience whenever they step into the spotlight, but there’s a good chance that people would have been just as entertained if Eddie came out and played on a stool for the better part of an hour and tore through every single tapping lick that he could think of. The spectacle of his playing style was enough, but there were bound to be a few people on the road who didn’t understand that whenever they rose to headliner status.
Even when they were an opening act, though, Eddie was bound to give everyone a run for their money. Tony Iommi remembered thinking that these California kids were stealing from Black Sabbath every now and again, and even though Journey may look like the most easygoing guys in the world, Eddie said that he was more than a little bit pissed when they treated them like trash behind the scenes.
Then again, they might have been more than a little bit jealous. No one had heard a musician like Eddie before, but even if they weren’t used to having one of the greatest guitarists of a generation on their tour, Eddie wasn’t exactly happy with what he had done once the rest of the Sunset Strip started following after him. Plenty of wannabe guitarists were trying to tap their way into people’s hearts, but there were also people thinking that all they needed was a frontman like David Lee Roth to become legendary.
Which probably explains why Van Halen always existed outside of the hair metal sphere. They were more about being earnest musicians than living the sex, drugs, and rock and roll lifestyle, and especially when they got together with Sammy Hagar, they had completely shed that side of themselves. But that didn’t mean people like Motley Crue weren’t there to pick up where they left off.
If anything, the Crue managed to go even further into wild territory. The backstage stories of Van Halen were the stuff of legend, but watching Tommy Lee or Nikki Sixx behind the scenes was practically like watching a bunch of rabid dogs being let loose, whether that meant shoving everything they could up their nose or trying to do one more death-defying stunt than the person next to him.
But that feral attitude went a little too far when Vince Neil decided to bite Eddie’s hand in the middle of a tour, with Sixx saying, “I remember [manager] Doc [McGhee] came to us and he goes, ‘Good job, assholes, I think you’re getting thrown off the Van Halen tour.” While we shouldn’t really have to defend why biting someone’s hand is not a cool thing to be doing, those kinds of shenanigans would have been unthinkable when it comes to Eddie.
His hands were the entire reason why people loved him, and putting him out of commission because you decided to bite him would be like taking The Mona Lisa and drawing one big ‘X’ through the entire painting. But after there was no significant damage, the Crue were at least allowed to stay on the tour, so long as they didn’t come within a few feet of Eddie for the remainder of the tour.
Given their wild attitude, though, the Crue were probably counting their blessings that that was all they got. Any other band probably wouldn’t have wanted to even entertain the idea of taking them out on tour again, but as long as no one was trying to chomp down on his fingers, Eddie seemed to be willing to put the past behind him.
