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| ::. Eddie's Links |
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"18 With...Eddie Van Halen" (Page 2)
By: Ron Del Barrio with Andy Meisler
Maximum Golf (August 2001)
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and Michael Anthony (bass player)--who make up the band Van Halen--are also seriously discussing, with David Lee Roth (the band's original singer), putting out an album of new material and doing a tour. But there's a hitch. "The last time I spoke to or saw Dave was back in September of last year," Eddie says hesitantly. "I played him a few new tunes, we bulls----ed a bit, had some laughs, and everything seemed cool. He was even kind enough to turn me on to his uncle, Jack Roth, a cancer surgeon and research specialist at--coincidentally--M.D. Anderson, in Houston, where I had been going once a week for treatment."
"Everything looked pretty positive about gettin' together," Eddie continues. "But before you know it, attorneys are involved. These cats had me so beat down and confused, it made the cancer seem like a tiny zit on my ass. Everything seemed to fall apart after these guys got involved. I mean, we used to do it on a handshake. At this point, I don't have a clue what's going on."
"I write and play music for a living," Eddie continues to continue. "I'm not a businessman. It seems like all attorneys ever do is stir up trouble. They create problems that never existed and ream you for half your money, then they try to fix what they started and nail ya for whatever money you got left. I'll tell ya, man, I don't see how these guys sleep at night. But what the hell are we talking about? This is Maximum Golf, not Maximum Dirt, right? So let's get back to my suck-butt-swing..."
On top of the Roth business--which is just a tad distracting--Eddie's wife, actress Valerie Bertinelli, is in Utah doing the TV series Touched by an Angel. So Eddie is in charge of getting their 10-year-old son, Wolfgang, back and forth from school and tennis lessons and basketball games.
In the middle of this mayhem--and while Eddie and his record label Warner Brothers, are turning down hundreds of interview requests--he sets aside an entire day for me and Maximum Golf.
At 8:12 on a cloudless Wednesday morning, Eddie steers his Mercedes-Benz into the parking lot of the Studio City Golf & Tennis Club and sticks his head out the window. "Hey Reynaldo! Galaxy Quest!!!" he shouts, referring to his favorite video-rental comedy, which he had turned me onto a few days earlier. He zooms off, and I follow in another vehicle with the Ghost and the photgrapher. During the eight-minute drive to his house, which he does in four and change, Eddie and I talk via cell phone and exchange our favorite lines from the movie ("Are you enjoying your Kep-mok blood ticks, Dr. Lazarus?").
After we arrive at Eddie's place, I show the crew the house and grounds while he changes into his first fetching golf ensemble. On Eddie's pool table in the living room lie two beat-up red-white-and-black electric guitars. These are the guitars, cigarette burns on the neck and all, that Eddie built by hand in the early days and that appear on his posters and album covers and that Eddie has played on every concert tour up to a couple years ago. Located oh-so-conviently just outside the living room is the two-in-one racquetball/basketball court. We pass it on the way into the garage, which holds Eddie's other Mercedes as well as his 220 mph Lamborghini military vehicle, immaculate Austin Mini Cooper, and an assortment of blindingly fast electric scooters. Then I show off the backyard Astroturf mat where Eddie, Wolfie, and I--in between dips in the pool--hit a ball or two, head back into the pool (via the 40-foot monster water slide), and then call it a day--for golf, that is.
After that, we troop up the driveway to the 5150 recording studio (named like Van Halen's 1986 album, after the Los Angeles Police Department code for the mentally unstable and insane), where since 1984 all of the band's recordings have been made. On the wall is one of the few remaining original (1958) Gibson Flying V's, which is the guitar Eddie played on "Hot For Teacher." Our Better Homes and Gardens tour is interrupted when my cell phone rings. It's Eddie, asking me and the Ghost to meet him upstairs in the main house. He's listening to a phone message from Valerie in Salt Lake City. She says it's Eddie's turn at the PTA rotation to deliver a hot lunch today to Wolfie and his classmates. Eddie pauses for a moment to figure that one out, then takes us into the hallway. "Hey guys, you wanna see some tripped-out stuff?"
Against the baseboard leans a framed 1999 Master flag signed: "To Eddie--Keep On Rockin'! Your friend Mark O'Meara." Lying beneath it is a photo taken at the Bob Hope. It's a picture of your average smiling foursome, consisting of Gerald Ford, Fuzzy Zoeller, Bob Hope--and Eddie Van Halen. Says Eddie, "When people see this picture they always ask me, 'What the hell did you talk to the president and those other guys about?' I tell them: 'What do all guys talk about when they're away from their wives? P---y, what else?!'"
Eddie walks next door to the music
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Interview © 2001 Maximum Golf Magazine
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