Eddie Van Halen let one rip last night on some TV sitcom. The show stars Charlie Sheen, and I think each week the plot involves a setup where Sheen ends up needing to go to the bathroom very badly. This week his relief is delayed because Eddie Van Halen is already in the john with his guitar, writing new material to play with Roth, Alex, and Wolfgang.
EVH: “That’s called ‘Two Burritos and a Root Beer Float’.”
Okay, boss!
Here’s a video of Michael Jackson with his brothers on the Jacksons Victory tour in 1984, joined onstage by Eddie Van Halen to play the guitar solo in “Beat It.” This is the best tribute this death metal demo blog can muster — and why not, it’s public shred and excess at its finest! Rest in peace, zombie king.
I have a hard time convincing skeptics of the fury of Van Halen in its prime, and the band in its current non-incarnation isn’t helping any. Like I just told main Everybody Wants Some photographer Kevin Estrada, the upcoming VH Guitar Hero game is far short of the kind of polishing these guys need to be giving their blazing legacy.
For his part, I believe that David Lee Roth understands this. He’s just unleashed a riptide of vintage Van Halen photographs that are charming, exciting, and casually posed to make everyone insanely envious. Davidleeroth.com is hosting about 100 pics all told, ranging from shots of Michael Anthony as a young raging bull, outtakes from the first album photo sessions, Eddie as a teenager, Alex in his first pair of expensive sunglasses, and many shots of the band collapsed on couches. There might even be a photo of Roth with former Radio 1990 host Lisa Robinson in there.
Now to the rest of the band—get up!
Thanks, VHND!
Here’s a rip from the Sirius live stream of my slickly-produced July 19, 2008 interview with singer Tomas Lindberg and guitarist Martin Larsson of AT THE GATES. This has been floating around the black market for a while, so I might as well give it a legit home. Plus it’s a good blast from the recent past while my Bloody Roots radio show graciously steps aside for the surprise “Mandatory Metallica” month on Sirius XM.
Needless to say, this was produced for a nation of 9 million subscribers driving around in cars, so there’s a big difference in tone compared to the highly personal demo posts around here, but I hope you get a kick out of it. Regardless, At the Gates set a super-tall standard for reunion tours — I’ve pretty much since sworn off oldies acts.
From the Blabbermouth description: Vocalist Tomas Lindberg and guitarist Martin Larsson of the reactivated Swedish metallers AT THE GATES will appear on this week’s “Bloody Roots” show on Sirius Satellite Hard Attack channel, discussing their 12-year hiatus, the decision to reunite for a number of summer 2008 shows, the rise of the fabled “Gothenburg” melodic death metal sound, and the upcoming U.S. release of Daniel Ekeroth’s Swedish Death Metal book.
Highlights from the interview:
* Lindberg on the band’s 1996 break-up: “We had a couple years of hard touring, and getting sick of each other on tour. Basically, if we would have been the age we are now, we could have just taken a break and chilled for a while. We were just so immature and totally at our own throats.”
* Lindberg on the “Gothenburg sound”: “There’s a huge difference between AT THE GATES and IN FLAMES, as I hope everybody notices. We have a focus on the brutality. We’re not only melody, we’re a death metal band. The Gothenburg sound is to me like a non-existent entity. AT THE GATES, IN FLAMES, and DARK TRANQUILLITY, it’s like three different worlds.”
The interview includes music by AT THE GATES as well as Lindberg’s DISFEAR and GROTESQUE and Larsson’s THIS QUIET EARTH. “Bloody Roots” is a “heavy metal history lesson” airing four times weekly on Sirius Satellite Radio’s Hard Attack, hosted by Ian Christe (Bazillion Points Books, Bazillion Points demoblog, author of “Sound Of The Beast”).
AT THE GATES: Bloody Roots Interview on Sirius XM 07/19/08 [60 mins., 81.6MB MP3]
Playlist:
AT THE GATES – “Slaughter of the Soul” from SLAUGHTER OF THE SOUL
AT THE GATES – “Terminal Spirit Disease” from TERMINAL SPIRIT DISEASE
AT THE GATES – “The Swarm” from TERMINAL SPIRIT DISEASE
GROTESQUE – “Blood Flows From the Altar” from IN THE EMBRACE OF EVIL
LIERS IN WAIT – “Liers in Wait” from SPIRITUALLY UNCONTROLLED ART
DISFEAR – “Get it Off” from LIVE THE STORM
THIS QUIET EARTH – “Wizball” from 2008 DEMO
THE HAUNTED – “DOA” from ONE KILL WONDER
AT THE GATES – “Blinded by Fear” from SLAUGHTER OF THE SOUL
TYRANT – “Hell Has Broken Loose” from RECLAIM THE FLAME
Here’s an outtake photo of Eddie Van Halen from Everybody Wants Some. Contact Redferns for your own licensing needs. For the uninitiated, this looks like Detroit, MI, or Rochester, NY, or Niagara Falls — a Buick-ridden hellhole circa November 1979 where shut-in guitar prodigies from Pasadena, CA, have to put on a parka and nurse a deep hangover in a dirty, wet and freezing parking lot. David Lee Roth likes to compare the appeal and reach of Van Halen to McDonald’s hamburgers. It turns out you are what you eat. (Roth himself is chomping the wormburger held lower right.)
Click to enlarge, this photo reduces the quaint black metal concept of “grimness” to shreds. Sorry, Fenriz.
I was lucky to meet Kevin Estrada while writing my Van Halen book, Everybody Wants Some. A lifelong devotee of the band, he had been photographing them since age 12. Weaned on Van Halen, Estrada came into his own as a professional rock photographer in Los Angeles during the glory days of 1980s metal. Now we are all lucky that he’s launched a blog to show off classic photos and tell charming stories about taking pictures at historical nights like Iron Maiden playing Long Beach Area in 1985, or the above shot of Rob Halford singing with Black Sabbath in 1992. Following is the unedited photographer’s note I wrote about his exploits, a shorter version of which appears in my book.
LINK TO THE KEVIN ESTRADA BLOG
PHOTOGRAPHER’S NOTE
[Unedited text from Everybody Wants Some: The Van Halen Saga]
Photographer Kevin Estrada, who took most of the rare photos included in Everybody Wants Some, deserves special thanks and attention. These shots capture his lifelong infatuation with Van Halen, which began when he and his brother pooled their pocket money to buy Van Halen from a department store record bin – based solely on the band’s looks. As a sixth grader, he was suspended for squirting a VH logo on the school walls with mustard packets – also as a 12-year old, he shot the photos of Van Halen’s 1978 tour that appear in this book.
Raised in Arcadia, CA, Estrada grew up in Van Halen country, and the band tweaked his life in unexpected ways. Estrada was constantly bumping into his favorite band, asking them to autograph his bag of Dorito’s or his ever-present Van Halen albums.A family dinner at the local Mexican restaurant Peppers once led to a chance encounter with Michael Anthony’s birthday party – and Estrada’s dad mistaking David Lee Roth for Peter Frampton. Later, Roth nearly ran over Estrada and his friends in his red Mercury lowrider while filming of the “Panama” video.
In high school, Estrada befriended Michael Anthony’s younger brother Dennis, who supplied him with first-generation live tapes. Their principal had a signed Van Halen poster hanging in his office, which Estrada was eventually encouraged to visit without cooking up a reason to get in trouble. Estrada later took guitar lessons at Dr. Music, where Eddie Van Halen bought and repaired his gear. Eddie gave him a guitar pick and a pat on the back, but Estrada had other ideas. “All my friends wanted to be Eddie Van Halen, and I wanted to be the guy down there shooting Van Halen.”
Estrada began sneaking his camera into concerts, capturing hard rock acts like Scorpions, and of course, Van Halen. “I would tape my camera to the back of my neck with duct tape, hoping the security guys wouldn’t go up that far. My friend had a huge afro like Dee Snider from Twisted Sister, and he would stick my telephoto lens under the neck of his leather jacket. I also had a friend who had a really large chest, and she’d stash the lens in her blouse.”
Incredibly, Estrada took most of the photos here from the audience, popping up and down quickly, keeping one eye on the band and one eye on security. When he was 15, a bouncer sent him flying across the room with a punch to the head. Other years, he got lucky – another school friend’s mom worked for David Lee Roth’s father in his medical office, and got tickets close to the stage. He only regrets that he could only afford one roll of film the final time he shot classic Van Halen, on the 1984 tour. “I had to be very careful that night.”
Estrada now lives in Burbank, CA, with his wife and two daughters. He has photographed professionally acts including Nirvana, The Cure, and Slayer and his work also appears in Johnny Cash: From the Editors of Rolling Stone and The Heroin Diaries by Nikki Sixx
[photo caption: Eddie Van Halen’s cigarette butts. “I was talking with Eddie and he was chain-smoking. When he left, I just picked them up and grabbed them. When you’re a kid, that’s like having the shirt off his back.”]
Thanks to Neil Daniels [author of the recent The Story of Judas Priest: Defenders of the Faith (Omnibus Press)] for posting a brief, to-the-point interview with me about my Van Halen book at GetReadyToRock.com. Somehow, he broke me down and got me to confess my burning desire to raise goats and bees. Man, I must have been in a weird mood.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0f2N5ae3wU]
“Jump,” Ft. Lauderdale train wreck–Roth and backing keyboard track are fine, but is Eddie playing Merzbow?, 2/20/08
Word on the streets of Los Angeles is that Van Halen are canceling hotel rooms and going back into hiding, and not planning to finish the remaining 20 dates of the thus-far seamlessly executed Roth reunion tour. This is sad news if the tour is actually canceled, as the dozens of shows since September have been a nightly slap in the face to naysayers who thought the band wouldn’t last a week. I was almost ready to thank Valerie Bertinelli for writing her book about sex and drugs and Eddie, filling in the gossip that I left out of Everybody Wants Some, but if her Oprah/Larry King/The View dishing has sent Eddie off the deep end and jeopardized this tour, she better not expect a bouquet from Wolfie come Mother’s Day.
There’s a show tomorrow night in Dallas, so we’ll know what’s happening soon enough. And now we know…a little. After a day of truly frenzied Internet rumormongering, Van Halen came forth in late afternoon and announced rescheduled dates for the four shows that were supposed to happen this week, including tonight’s. Everything should be back to normal next Monday, March 11, in Charlottesville, VA. By way of explanation: “According to Eddie Van Halen’s physician, he is undergoing a battery of comprehensive medical tests to determine a defined diagnosis and recommended medical procedures.”
[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMdKczP5zMo"]
Thanks to everybody who sent over the stripped DLR vocal from “Runnin’ With the Devil” this week. All of you. Thanks. And you and you and you. I appreciate it. I feel a little guilty for not already warping it on top of a dancehall riddim. But Eric Haugen has synced the naked Roth with this 1978 Van Halen promo video shot at the Whiskey. Great!
Thanks, Todd.
While I was out X-massing the shit out of some holidays, the best-prepared interviewer in the land Mark Strigl posted our all-Van Halen interview episode of his Podcast, Talking Metal.
Like the blurb says, “In this Van Halen special, author and Sirius satellite radio DJ Ian Christe joins Mark Strigl in the studio to discuss his book Everybody Wants Some: The Van Halen Saga. Topics include Indiana, the early days, Quiet Riot, Bill Gazzari, Gene Simmons, Top Jimmy, the Eat’ Em and Smile album, the best songs with Sammy Hagar, the current tour, and the future of Van Halen.”
Talking Metal Episode 188 – Van Halen Special Featuring Ian Christe [MP3 Link]
(And congratulations to Mark and co-grinder John Ostronomy for getting Talking Metal picked up by Fuse, cable’s last outpost for music.)
