by Noel Monk
“How the fuck are you going to call spots?” he said, his voice already raspy from warming up. (This was not a bad thing—Dave was at his best when his voice became a low growl.) “You don’t even know the show.”
As was the case with Peter, David was stating the obvious, and there was no reasonable counterargument. I hadn’t seen the show, but I had seen, and worked, thousands of other shows, so I figured we could get through this.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “It’ll be fine.”
Dave laughed sarcastically. “It better be, man.”
“Look,” I said to Dave, “I’m going to put you in the wings, stage left. When Marshall says ‘VAN HALEN!’ you just take control and do the best show you can. Let me worry about calling spots.”
Marshall Berle had gotten into town that day and would be introducing the band to the audience. What I did not tell the band was that Carl Scott and more than a dozen Warner Bros. executives from promotion and artist development were also in attendance. They didn’t need any more pressure. I ran out to the spot ladder and got into position.
“Get ready to hit all four guys when they come out,” I said to the spotlight operators. “Just follow your man.”
How can I best describe that first show? It certainly won’t be remembered as one of the finest nights in the annals of Van Halen history. Technical issues, a congested stage, and a spectacularly bad footwear decision on the part of the boys made for a challenging night. During rehearsals I had noticed that all four band members had decided for some reason to wear platform boots with thick, three-inch heels. I had suggested more sensible shoes for opening night, but had been rebuffed, most notably by Alex.
“These are our KISS boots,” he said, smiling proudly. “We paid three hundred bucks for these. We love them!”
This seemed to me like a staggeringly poor use of funds, especially for the three-quarters of the band that did not come from family money. But I didn’t argue about it. There were too many issues taking up my time, and it wasn’t my place to dictate the band’s wardrobe. In retrospect, maybe I should have pressed the matter. From the opening notes of the opening song—“On Fire”—it was apparent that the platform shoes were a bad idea. Maybe they worked for KISS—especially when anchoring outrageous black costumes and makeup and traversing a vast performance space, as was usually the case with KISS in those days. But here, at the Aragon Ballroom, on a stage shrunk to half its normal size because of an overabundance of equipment, with electrical cords and audio cables lurking underfoot, KISS boots were an imprudent choice.
Still, the band soldiered on, as did those of us providing technical support, and together we got through it. Van Halen cranked out ten tunes, a bass solo, and a drum solo in an energetic set that lasted roughly thirty-five minutes. The sold-out crowd of 5,450 seemed astonished by Eddie’s virtuoso guitar work. If the boys were somewhat less animated than usual, well, that’s only because they wanted to avoid tripping or falling off the stage. Sometimes discretion really is the better part of valor.
As soon as the show ended, I thanked the lighting guys and then shared a celebratory handshake with Peter. Then I went to the dressing room, where I found Alex, Eddie, Michael, and David already deconstructing the show. They weren’t angry, but neither were they pleased. I took this as a good sign—this was a band with some serious ambition. They knew they were capable of doing better, and the improvement would start with a change in wardrobe.
“Guys, you have to lose the high heels,” I said. At first there was no response. A few moments later, though, Peter came into the dressing room.
“David,” he said calmly. “For God’s sake, try wearing Capezios or something.”
David twisted his face into a look of disgust.
“Shit, man, I’ll be three inches shorter.”
David was not a little guy. He stood about six foot one and had a lean but muscular build, with a thick carpet of frequently exposed chest hair. By any reasonable definition, he cut an impressive figure onstage. But it wasn’t enough for Dave; he wanted to tower over everyone else—his bandmates, the audience . . . everyone.
For now, though, David was a reasonable and ambitious artist willing to check even his oversize ego in the pursuit of a better performance.
“David, you looked awkward out there,” I said. “You don’t want that. It detracts from the show. You guys are an athletic band; people need to see that.”
Begrudgingly, David agreed, and the others followed suit. That night at the Aragon Ballroom was a turning point for Van Halen and heels. David did indeed switch to Capezios, while the other guys donned sneakers. Van Halen was never a glam-rock band; they were a guitar rock band, and one of the most dynamic live acts of the late 1970s and early 1980s. From that moment on, they dressed the part.
As we were leaving the venue, I spotted the road crew, who were still standing around the truck.
“How come you guys haven’t left yet?” I asked.
A couple of them laughed in that road-weary way I had heard among crews many times before. It’s a knowing laugh that comes with having seen almost everything, and understanding that when it comes to the road life, Murphy’s Law is no joke. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
The first person to speak up was Red. According to him, one of the guys had left the light on, and the battery was dead. Red assured me not to worry—Ryder was on its way to fix the battery, and they’d catch up with us at the hotel.
By the time we got back to the Holiday Inn City Center, we were all in need of a bit of lubrication following a long and exhausting day. I went straight to the bar with Pete and Tommy. The guys in the band were already there.
“You guys like Jack Daniel’s?” Michael Anthony asked.
“Sure,” I said. “Who doesn’t?”
“Well, all right then,” Michael said, smiling. “I got first round.”
By the time we got to the second round, the rest of the crew had arrived. Apparently Ryder had come to the rescue, and, seasoned pros that they were, the crew had loaded up the truck quickly and gotten back in time to celebrate the end of a hard day of work. As the evening wore on I had time to chat individually with each member of the band and found them all congenial. They wanted to be a great band and were willing to work hard and take advice in order to make that happen. Despite all the problems we had faced on opening night, and the fact that it was demonstrably not a great show, I could not have been more optimistic. Van Halen had a terrific debut album and, with a few minor adjustments and a lucky break or two, they would be an equally terrific live act.
I look back on this night now as an almost impossibly innocent and happy time. Imagine walking into a hotel bar even one year later and seeing the guys from Van Halen throwing back shots of Jack Daniel’s, rubbing elbows with assorted businessmen and tourists, none of whom had any idea who these kids were. The anonymity would not last, of course, and neither would the innocence. But then, it never does.
By midnight we were all tired and the bar was getting ready to shut down. We finished our drinks and headed to a bank of elevators. By rock ’n’ roll standards—or any standards, for that matter—it certainly had not been a long night of partying. But it had been a long night. As the elevator began to climb, Edward nudged David in the ribs.
“Hey, man. You got any krell?”
Dave nodded.
“Yeah, I’ll meet you in your room.”
The elevator stopped on the eighth floor, they politely said good night and exited. Pete and I were on the eleventh floor. As the elevator rose, I had to admit my ignorance, and curiosity. I’d been around a bit in my thirty-one years. I’d traveled all over the world and ingested my share of illicit substances (although rarely to excess), but I had never heard of “krell.”
“What the hell are they talking about?” I asked Pete.
He chuckled.
“Krell is our slang for cocaine,” he said. Then, perhaps in an attempt to intercept the next question, he added, �
�Want to know what we call weed?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Snade,” he said.
“Snade?” I repeated. It sounded like such a ridiculous word. It also sounded a lot like “weed,” so I wondered . . . why bother changing it?
“Interesting,” I said. “Where did that come from?”
Pete looked at me. His eyes were glassy from whiskey and too many hours without sleep. A perplexed look came across his face, as if this were the first time he’d ever been asked this particular question.
“You know what?” he said. “I have no fucking clue.”
We both laughed as the elevator lurched its way to the eleventh floor.
That night I slept only a few hours before being awoken by a phone call from Carl Scott. To this day Carl will deny making this phone call, but I was on the receiving end, and I know it wasn’t a dream. In his voice there was concern, if not outright panic. He had seen the show at the Aragon and was not happy.
“Noel, what are we going to do?”
I tried to shake the cobwebs from my head. “What are you talking about?”
“The show,” he said. “It was terrible. We have a lot invested in this act and that’s the way they start out?”
I took a deep breath. On one hand, Carl had a point. It was not a stellar debut for Van Halen, and yeah, Warner Bros. (Carl in particular) had a great deal riding on the band’s success. On the other hand, Carl did not understand what a colossal clusterfuck the day had been. Circumstances wildly beyond the band’s control—beyond anyone’s control—had conspired to make it a challenging debut. Under the circumstances, I thought, it had been a respectable performance. You couldn’t have come away from that show without being impressed by Edward’s guitar work; and moon boots withstanding, it was apparent also that David was a potentially great front man. They were limited by time and space, and we all were hampered by technical difficulties.
Truthfully, we were lucky it went as well as it did. But I didn’t say any of this. I was too tired. Instead, I just tried to calm him down and get off the phone as quickly as possible.
“Don’t worry, Carl. Give us a couple weeks and we’ll be ready for prime time.”
“Okay,” he said. “I hope so.”
3
THE ROAD LIFE
We were monsters. All of us.
Not just Alex, Edward, David, and Michael but also the roadies and the support staff and anyone else who joined us on the road. I include myself in this group. And when I say “monsters,” I don’t mean that in a malevolent way. I mean that when you’re on the road with a young and hungry rock band on the cusp of stardom, the usual rules of decorum that one adheres to in polite society simply do not exist. Spend six months on the road, sleep in buses and hotels, perform a hundred shows before drunken, adoring crowds, and see what happens to your moral compass. Things just get . . . twisted.
Look, no one gets into the music business because they want a sensible, safe, and boring nine-to-five routine. (Quite the contrary, in fact.) This is true of the artists themselves, as well as the people who support their careers. You get into the music business because you enjoy the excitement of working with the stars, or trying to make the unknown but promising musician become a star. Sure, the perks of the job are enticing, as well—the drugs, the women, the opportunity to rub elbows with the rich and famous. But don’t think for a moment that it’s a walk in the park. The work is hard and sometimes tedious, the hours interminable; there is no division between professional life and personal life, not if you’re doing the job right. For better or worse, the job is your life. Whether you are an artist, record company executive, promoter, or manager, the perks and money can be amazing. But unless everyone does their job correctly, and fate smiles upon you as well, the artists will never develop into stars and no one will make any money. And the perks dry up quickly. The goal is to make the musician into a rock ’n’ roll deity—someone bigger than life. Then everyone rides the train for as long as possible.
I knew from experience that the ride was often short and unglamorous. But Van Halen was different, and they were different from the very beginning.
Despite the issues with the Aragon Ballroom show, there was certainly cause for optimism, and by the time we had a week under our belts, optimism had metamorphosed into something much more concrete. You had to be deaf, dumb, and blind—and stupid—not to see that this band was going to be something extraordinary. Sure, the set was brutally short, leaving David little time for his signature raps, but he was obviously a gifted and confident front man who moved with the grace and agility of an athlete. Whatever range his voice might have lacked was offset by his stage presence (and covered neatly by Michael’s backing vocals). Edward was a nightly force of nature. I was too busy to see much of that first show, but after seeing Van Halen perform its next two shows, in Springfield, Illinois, and Indianapolis, I was convinced I had landed the job of a lifetime. And the primary reason was the guitar playing of Edward Van Halen.
“Holy shit!” I’d hear people yelling. “This guy is like Hendrix.”
Now, I was never out on the road with Jimi Hendrix, but I’d heard and seen him play enough to know that this was a comparison one did not make lightly. Hendrix was the acknowledged greatest of all rock ’n’ roll guitarists, and to invoke his name in the same sentence with almost any other guitar player—especially one barely out of high school—was to risk being accused of blasphemy, but such was the burden foisted on Edward from the moment Van Halen was released on an unsuspecting public.
Still, I knew from experience. In the summer of ’69, when I was stage managing at the Fillmore East, I’d worked with everyone from Jefferson Airplane to B. B. King to the Who. That year I saw Jimi Hendrix twice, the first time from a sound booth at the Fillmore East, and then a second time on the last day of Woodstock from the light booth I was perched in, where I watched him play his legendary version of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” I came to believe it was a legitimate comparison, just as I came to believe that Van Halen compared favorably with any band I had ever gotten to know up close and personal.
Since then I’d been doused in LSD by the Grateful Dead, I’d shared shots of Southern Comfort with Janice Joplin, and I even fixed Chuck Berry’s amp for him (he was so damn grateful he offered to sing at my wedding—he didn’t, but that’s beside the point). I’d been out on the road with David Sanborn, James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, Tom Waits, the Sex Pistols, and countless others you might not know. The only band with which I traveled that compared to Van Halen in the late 1970s and early 1980s was the Rolling Stones. And I don’t think even they were as dynamic. I’m not saying Van Halen was a “better” band than the Stones. I’m talking about the power of a live performance, the ability to captivate an audience. Van Halen was the best I’ve ever seen. And I’ll say this: as great as Keith Richards was in his own genre, he couldn’t touch Edward for sheer musical brilliance and innovation.
So, was I excited about the prospects for Van Halen breaking out?
You bet your ass I was.
This was not like going out on the road with a half-formed band that had been playing mostly covers in small clubs. Van Halen was a band that seemed almost instantly to be at the peak of its powers—in part, because they’d been writing and playing for years, accumulating the catalog and charisma of a seasoned band, one just dying for its big break. And here it was. I still get goose bumps even thinking about it. Standing just offstage with Van Halen in those first few weeks was one of the most exciting experiences of my professional life. They were playing brand-new material off probably the best debut record I have ever heard, and playing it with attitude and energy like nothing I had ever seen.
Incidentally, about that first record? I was introduced to most of it live, as performed by the band, three times in that first week. It wasn’t until we finally got a day off that I listened to the actual recording. And that’s when I knew: These guys are going to be unstoppable.
Aft
er Indianapolis—our third show in as many days—we had a day off. But the respite was short, as we were scheduled to do a show in Madison, Wisconsin, on March 7. That morning I continued my wake-up calls to the band. I’d been doing it for many years and had grown accustomed to the abusive reaction my voice seemed to provoke at that hour of the day. For some reason musicians just don’t like getting up early.
“Good morning,” I’d usually say, in as cheery a voice as I could manage. “Bags in thirty, we leave in an hour.”
This was a routine that lasted until the end of every tour and almost always resulted in some version of the following response: “Fuck you, Noel. We just went to bed.”
Like that was my problem or my fault, or I had any control over the schedule. Well, actually, I did, but once it was set in stone, there was no changing it. A tour manager’s life is dictated entirely by the clock—if he falls behind, everyone falls behind. So he has to be not just a stickler for details and organization but thick-skinned, as well. It was during the first North American tour that the guys started calling me Li’l Caesar, a nod to my supposed dictatorial ways (despite the fact that I really had very little power).
By the fourth gig, in Madison, Van Halen had already made a small but not insignificant change in support staff. It happened during a short afternoon rehearsal, when David suddenly stopped and turned to Marshall Berle.
“Hey, Marshall, I have to say this. The way you introduce the band? It’s kind of lame.”
This was somewhat cruel (and an early indication of David’s bluntness) but also entirely accurate. Marshall, who apparently was prone to microphone-induced anxiety, had stammered and coughed his way through three awful versions of “Ladies and gentlemen . . . I give you . . . the mighty V-V-V-Van Halen!”
He had already made it clear that he would be leaving the road shortly and returning to LA, so the announcer’s job was going to be open anyway, but I guess David felt compelled to take care of the matter right then and there.
