The Van Halen song that made Manuel Noriega surrender
If you peruse through the pages of rock, you’re not going to need to look far to find some kind of praise for Van Halen.
When the band burst onto the scene, flaunting Eddie Van Halen’s exciting guitar playing technique and David Lee Roth’s unrelenting frontman style, it was hard for anyone to feel anything other than blown away. It was a new style of rock music, one that brought forward brand new playing techniques that a lot of classic musicians at the time couldn’t quite wrap their heads around.
Tony Iommi was always considered one of the best riff writers on the planet, but when he went on tour with Van Halen, he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He recalls witnessing a playing style in Eddie which was unlike anything he had seen before.
“I just don’t know how he could play like that […] Nobody can play like him,” said Iommi, “What I like about Eddie, he was always an inventor. He’d always want to come up with something new. He worked hard to develop his own amplifiers. And he’d work on his own guitars as best he could to make them feel comfortable to him. He was always very much an innovator with a bunch of things.”
That innovative style led to the development of some truly great rock songs, most of which fans of the genre were constantly listening to and obsessing over. However, while most people turned to Van Halen as a place of joy, the US government had different ideas, recognising the harsh guitar sounds and extravagant nature of their music could also be used to torment their political opponents.
Manuel Noriega was a dictator in Panama and the de facto ruler of the country for a while. He was never officially appointed as the president, but assumed as much of a position as an unelected military dictator. He was never too short of money, as throughout his political dealings, he managed to gain a small fortune through the sale of drugs.
Noriega had a relationship with the US where he would exchange information with them, but this crumbled towards the back end of the ‘80s, when his involvement in drug trafficking was further investigated and grand juries in Tampa and Miami found him guilty of drug smuggling, money laundering and racketeering.
When Noriega was found guilty of these charges, the US military invaded Panama in a bid to capture him. Doing so proved to be difficult, as Noriega went to the Holy See’s embassy and sought refuge there. The embassy was surrounded by US troops who knew that they couldn’t get in, and so instead, they opted to play the Van Halen song ‘Panama’ on repeat, as well as clips from The Howard Stern Show. The music and radio marathon continued for days, until Noriega finally surrendered on January 3rd, 1990, after which he was taken to America.
I don’t believe it was Van Halen’s intention, when writing the song ‘Panama’, to create something which could be used to settle overseas conflicts, but I’m sure they were happy to help. Tony Iommi called Eddie Van Halen an “inventor”, and it turns out, amongst the music, he also managed to invent a new form of surrender.
