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Van Halen from the Inside
If you are looking for insight into the band Van Halen, there is no need to look any further! Let me start off by saying that you will read things on this site that cannot be found anywhere else in the country. How is that possible? Easy- any mainstream rock magazine can’t tell you things the way they are because if they did, the individual members would punish them by no longer doing interviews with them. As such, every time you read something about VH, you know that it is being filtered through rose colored glasses, containing just enough information to let you know what’s going on but at the same time not enough information to know the why behind it. Not on MadMikeLive! Here, you can get information, and more importantly analysis to understand the recent history of the band. While many people are not interested in this, there are literally millions of VH fans worldwide who are. If you are one of those people, this site is for you! Let me start by saying that most of what I am writing is in fact, my opinions. You may agree and disagree with many or all of them. Write me and let me know what you like and don’t like! What I am basing my opinions off of is 25 years of being a hard core fan, in addition to everything I have read and saw about the band. There are so many great sources out there it is staggering. If you are interested, I strongly suggest starting by reading the Van Halen Saga by Ian Christie. This is an amazing book because he does such a great job of covering the band from the early days until the modern era. He goes behind the scenes and does a great job explaining why things happened the way they did. Most VH fans know what has happened, the why of it all is the real story and Christie does a great job of covering the band’s sorted past. While it is obvious that he is a Roth guy (I am a Hagar guy, more on that later), he does a fair job of being balanced and holds his opinions until the end after the reader has his own opportunity to draw his own conclusions. Crazy from the Heat by DLR does tell some good stories, but unfortunately the book is more about DLR then it is Van Halen. It does have some great stuff included, but for as long as the book is there is precious little about the band in there. It rambles a lot, which is the way Dave is. Much of the book is about nothing, almost like an episode of Seinfeld. It is a good read for those who love DLR, but for those like me who are interested more in the band as a whole; this isn’t the best place to start. A fascinating book on the subject of Van Halen is Losing It by Valerie Bertinelli. There is so much insight in it about Ed and the band that it is unreal. In some ways, this is the best book to understanding Eddie there is out there. About half of the book is about Ed and Van Halen. She talks about his chemical addictions and his everyday patterns. This truly gives the reader great insight about the man. Also, there is a lot in the book that has never been reported before. Let’s face it; Eddie was the guy who started it all when it came to Van Halen and 80’s rock in particular. It is fascinating, everything that he did with a guitar and the band. Nobody will ever be able to recreate what they did in music history, period. Another great source of information about Van Halen is The Inside Magazine. They are collector’s items and are getting harder to come by. You can still find them occasionally on E-bay and there are still some issues available at VanHalenstore.com . Keep in mind, this was the official publication of the band and as such, everything that goes in there had to be approved by the band. While it is obviously biased and basically the mouthpiece of the band, it is none the less a great source of information from the bands point of view. Also interesting, the first few years that the magazine was published, it was based out of my hometown of Omaha, Nebraska! There’s some VH trivia not too many people know about! VHND, aka Van Halen News Desk is another good source of information. You can check it out at www.vhnd.com. It also is probably the easiest way to get breaking news on not only Van Halen, but also on former members of the band. Surprisingly, they did a lengthy interview with Michael Anthony in late 2008 that has a lot of great stuff in it. He talks a lot about the situation and tells about how things got to where they are now. Also on the News Desk are links galore to Van Halen fan sites from all across the country. All in all, a great website. Finally, Van Halen 101 by Brian May is a great read. He puts a lot more of his own opinion and commentary on things then Christie does, and on a lot of it he is right on the money. There are lots of interesting stories about the band in this book, and they are told by the people who were there and witnessed it all. It’s a great read and gives even further insight on the band. As I stated earlier, I am a Van Hagar guy. I realize that this does put me in the minority of Van Halen fans, but listen to my reasoning here and you can at least see where I am coming from. I must confess, that for years when Sammy was in the band, I too thought of myself as a Roth guy. I think that is human nature, that when we think of things in the past, we have a tendency to remember the good times and forget the bad. It wasn’t until 2003 when I was contemplating doing a Van Halen Tribute band and I sat down and went over the entire Van Halen catalogue that I realized that I was Pro-Hagar. When I went through all the songs VH has ever recorded, I realized there were about 30 or songs I wanted to cover by Van Hagar, and only about 10 or songs or so with Roth on the Mic. Keep in mind, this is nothing personal against Roth. Again, I thought of myself as a Roth guy until I took the time to sit and look at everything. Then it dawned on me, Van Halen could do so much more with Hagar. It was quite a shock I must admit. To me, with Hagar in the band, the chains were broken and Eddie was finally allowed to write music for the band that had no limitations. They finally reached their full musical potential. Van Halen purists will disagree with me on this point, but what we can all agree on was the VH was a different band with Hagar singing. Some said they were worse, I happen to think that they were much better.
With Roth, the guitars had to be tuned down from standard to help with his lack of vocal range. With Hagar, they kept things in standard tuning the sky was the limit. This is not a dig on Roth. DLR is a fantastic front man and a great singer, but he simply doesn’t have the vocal ability of Hagar. Any musician who knows about such things will tell you the same thing if they are being honest with themselves. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on Gary Cherone on the site. I wasn’t a big Extreme fan to be honest, but I do have to say this: The failure of Van Halen III was in no way Gary’s fault. He didn’t write the songs on the album, he just sang them. It’s not his fault the material Ed wrote was so weak. If Ed had been thinking clearly and gone into the studio with the mentality that this was the time to go back basics and write a hard-driven rock album like the fans wanted him to do, the sky could have been the limit. As it was, Gary will always be remembered as the guy who bombed with Van Halen. Certainly, this is an unfair to Gary. He has an exceptional, if Hagar like, vocal range and a strong stage presence. It’s a shame things didn’t work out better. Now that I have exposed my pro-Hagar sentiment, let me also say this: It was a good thing that Van Halen took DLR on the 2007-2008 Tour. Yeah, I said it. To Sammy’s credit, he had been suggesting that Van Halen should do a tour with Roth publicly for years. He knew the fans wanted to see that, and was supportive of it when they finally did. It just goes to show what a team player Hagar was. He always wanted what was best for the fans, even if that put him on the sidelines temporarily. It was about time those guys got back together and did something with Roth again. There are a ton of people that wanted to see that happen, and it finally did. There was a reason why it was the highest grossing tour in dollars that the band ever did. However, in Classic Van Halen fashion they had to do the unthinkable: Get rid of Michael Anthony. Van Halen, just like Sammy said following the “reunion” tour, is a band that just can’t seem to do the right thing. Everybody knows that the right thing to do for a reunion tour would have to been bring Mike out for one last time. But, they just couldn’t do it. This for me was the final straw. By all accounts, Michael Anthony is one of the nicest, down to earth guys you will ever meet. He also is known as a person of integrity. In a day where over half of all marriages end in divorce, Michael married and stayed with his high school sweetheart. Think of that, being a millionaire rock star on the road. Think of all the temptation for a 24 year old kid, and he stayed true to the love of his life. It is a shame that more people aren’t as faithful and as loyal as Michael Anthony. To Mike’s credit, he did as he always had done: handled the situation gracefully and with class. He even put a note on his site telling fans that Wolfgang is a great kid and not to be hard on him. Mike knows that the whole thing was not Wolfie’s fault, it was Ed’s. Ed was the one behind it. What 16 year old kid is going to tell his Father “no” when given the opportunity to play bass in his band? It was pretty pathetic how Ed forced the issue, even claiming in Guitar World magazine that Wolf is a “World-Class player”. To be certain, for a 16 year old Wolfie did a great job on the tour, but let’s not exaggerate to the point of being ridiculous here. Ed, there is nothing wrong with being proud of your son. It is an entirely different matter to bestow that kind of endorsement to a child. Also, it put Wolf in a bad position of putting all kinds of pressure to live up to. He pulled it off, but honestly he’s not Geddy Lee, Steve Harris, Billy Sheehan or even a Michael Anthony. At least, not yet. Maybe someday. Keep in mind that I haven’t touched upon the issue of click tracks and pre-recorded vocals yet. A part of Mike could be heard on the tour. Take that for what it’s worth. There are many sources, including Roth himself in Crazy from the Heat, that claim that the Van Halen’s had been trying to get rid of Mike for years. Roth claimed that in an attempt to reunite in 2000, Van Halen was trying out new bass players to replace Anthony. Imagine what that must have been like for Mike, playing all those years with those guys. Even if at the time he was unaware for sure that they wanted him out, he must have at least sensed something was amiss. In fact, it wasn’t until years after the 2004 tour ended that the World found out from Mike that Ed and Al tried to force him out and the only reason why he was able to do the tour was because Sammy wouldn’t do it without him. It was later learned that he had to take a pay cut from the rest of the band to do the tour. It really shows how petty Ed and Al really are. Yeah, I said it. Imagine reading something like that in a rock magazine! It will never happen. To be fair, I did know something was up in 2004. A friend of mine was working Security at the Omaha Qwest Center, and my buddy was backstage all day long. He told me that the roadies told him that Ed and Al hated Sammy and Mike, and that there was all sorts of tension between the two camps. He said both sides wouldn’t speak before the show, then ran around the stage doing high fives pretending like everything was all right. After the show, both camps kept to themselves. They even travelled separately from town to town. I found this out years before it was common knowledge! Why? Because rock magazines refuse to tell the truth because in the long run they will lose their ability to interview and get close to bands. It is shocking what is really going on out there that we as fans never get to see. There is no such thing as a free press when it comes to rock. Everything that put out is biased so the artist doesn’t lose face with the fans. Really, it is an outrage. It makes me wonder how accurate information of any kind is. When people found out that Barrack Obama smoked, they were shocked! I don’t know why. Everything you see and hear about public officials is inaccurate. They allow you to see and hear things about them that reflects them in the best possible light. Basically, it would seem that Eddie’s point of view on things is that if your last name isn’t Van Halen, then you are not really a part of Van Halen. For proof of this, one need look no further then to when Sammy and Dave did their summer tour together in 2004. Sammy had Mike playing bass on Van Halen songs for the tour. While playing as the “Other Half”, meaning the other half of Van Halen, Eddie was later quoted as saying something to the effect that they were just a cover band. You can take from that quote that Ed doesn’t view anybody but him and his brother (and now possibly his son) as members of Van Halen. That is ridiculous. Prior to the Other Half Tour of 2002, Van Halen had no real activity for the better part of five years. For some unknown reason, Ed wasn’t happy that Mike and Sammy would do something like play VH tunes for the Fans, forgetting for the moment that Sammy wasn’t even in the band at that time! He had been gone for somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 years at that point. Coupled with Roth’s statement in his book that VH was trying to replace Mike as early as 2000 and you can come to the conclusion that Ed and Al wanted Mike out and were just looking for any excuse to do it. Mike and Sam were simply playing music the fans wanted to hear. Certainly, there isn’t anything inappropriate with that. Part of the problem seems to be that Ed is mad that the members of Van Halen split the royalties for all Van Halen albums evenly. That is, each member gets a ¼ cut. No one has ever argued that Ed does all the writing for the band, and perhaps he does have somewhat of an issue here. But guess what? Eddie is rich! He recently said that he didn’t do the Wolfgang guitar because he needs the money, so taking him at his word- money is not anything he is in short supply of. There is just a lot of resentment there on Ed’s part towards Mike like there had been previously against Dave and Sam. Does anyone notice a pattern here? When you think about it, Ed has resented pretty much everybody who has ever been in that band other than his Brother Al. Why? OK, I have to leave that one alone because other then the money, I have no clue. I can speculate though. I will say that I do agree with Sammy, Ed has changed. He is not the same guy he used to be. Sammy even said that Ed used to be a sweet guy! Wow! Looking at him today, who would have ever thought that? Just looking at Ed, one can tell something is wrong. He seems so different and so unhappy now. Look at him in video’s playing live back in the day, and compare that to any pictures or interviews taken of him today and you can only conclude one of two things. One- he is a completely different person or two, something happened to him to change him. Obviously, the answer is number two. In Losing It, Valerie discusses in great detail the chemical addictions Eddie has struggled with throughout his career. I must admit, I was sort of shocked by this. I’m not sure why. I guess like the people who were surprised by Obama being a smoker, I just didn’t want to think that the greatest Rock Guitarist of all time (according to me anyway) was a junkie. It didn’t seem possible. But, with all of the obvious and well documented problems Eddie has had with alcohol and other addictions through the years, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. During the 2004 Tour with Hagar, Eddie was out of control. He looked horrible and sounded bad as well. I saw 2 shows during that tour, Kansas City and Omaha. He was drunker in Kansas City then he was in Omaha, but it was probably a toss up. It is something when you see your childhood hero, but when you seem then drunk and staggering around it really is sad. At the end of the Kansas City Show, Ed put the mic next to his ass and attempted to fart into the mic. This was disappointing and shocking at the same time. My Buddy Dave AKA Sheepdog and I looked at each other in disbelief. The ride back to Omaha was mainly centered about how far Ed had fallen from grace. I think the bottom line with Ed anymore is that he doesn’t have any respect for himself. Granted, that is just my opinion. Chemical addiction is a horrible thing. Ed has been sober for over a year now, and I must take my hat off to him for that. However, he did postpone the 2007-2008 Tour for undisclosed reason. The internet buzz was that he had fallen off the wagon. Also on the internet chat rooms, Wolf told his Dad before the Tour that the only way he would do it is if he stayed clean and sober. Right before the postponement, Ed was seen knocking down one of his Fender EVH Stacks on the side of the stage, apparently in a fit of rage. The Internet buzz was that because Wolf wouldn’t even look at him during the show because he was drinking again, and that after the show Wolf announced to his Dad that he was leaving the tour because of the broken promise. OK, I have no real way to confirm any of that at this point, but all I can say is that it makes sense. If it is true, I really admire Wolfgang because of it. That takes some serious balls for a 16 year old kid to tell the greatest guitar player the world has ever known that you are quitting a tour because he’s drinking again. If it is true, good for you Wolf, good for you! Again, you can’t really blame Wolf for being in the band. If I had the chance, I would have played bass for Van Halen on that tour! My only point is that it wasn’t right. That pretty much is my take on things at this point. This is a Michael Anthony fan site. As you can see from the rest of the site, I myself am a bass player. I like Mike’s style of playing more than any other bass player and find that my style of playing is very similar, although he is 100 times the player I will ever be. Mike plays bass the way bass should be played. There are so many virtuosos’ out there, but to me the bass is an instrument not made for that type of player. I hate watching guys that play lead bass. To me, bass is supposed to work with the drums on the low end to keep the rhythm, that’s why drums and bass are considered the rhythm section! I have played in bands with one and two guitars, and I can say hands down that for me playing in a band with one guitar is more fun. You get to do more that way. In my situation playing in D’Vine with one guitar, I sometimes find myself covering the keys and the rhythm guitar with my bass, which makes playing a lot more fun. Michael Anthony blazed a trail for players like me and for that, I am eternally grateful. Hopefully I’ll have some Van Halen new to report and add commentary on before too long. Until then, long live Michael Anthony!
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