DANA STRUM (bassist, bad axe, vinnie vincent invasion, slaughter) In the late ’70s I was playing with a band called Bad Axe. We were a Hollywood circuit band playing the same clubs as London, which was Nikki Sixx, and Suite 19, with Greg Leon and Tommy Lee. We were headlining the Starwood, headlining the Whisky, the normal thing.
STEPHEN QUADROS (drummer, Snow) The Whisky was the house that Hendrix played, Cream played, Zeppelin … the list goes on and on, the people that played that place. That’s the club you wanted to play, just because of the history. But the Starwood was the Wild West. It had no age limit. The behind-the-scenes stories, the dressing room, the wild partying, the drugs, the alcohol, it was a completely different vibe.
GREG LEON (guitarist, Suite 19, Dubrow, Dokken) There was the Hot 100 Club upstairs, which was the VIP area, and that led to the backstage area, which had these secret rooms. So if you met girls or you wanted to party or whatever, you could go back there and get away from everybody else. The policy was basically ask for it and you got it. Cocaine was rampant. Quaaludes were everywhere. The place was basically a front for drugs, as everybody knows.
MICHAEL ANTHONY (bassist, Van Halen) The upstairs area was more of like a local hangout scene. There’d probably be people up there doing some blow or something. It was more of just where the cool people would go.
NEIL ZLOZOWER (photographer) I went to see Van Halen at the Starwood, probably in 1977. But right around those years, those were the years of the Rorer/Lemmon 714’s. In other words, Quaaludes. And I used to love Quaaludes. I remember going to the Starwood, probably I was upstairs in the VIP section, probably took a Quaalude before the band came on, and all I remember is waking up at the end of the show going, “That wasn’t so fucking good…” I think I passed out during their whole set.
DANA STRUM Had it not been for the Starwood I wouldn’t have seen Randy.
KELLY GARNI (bassist, Quiet Riot) I met Randy Rhoads at John Muir Middle School in Burbank in seventh grade. He was an oddball kid like me and we gravitated toward each other. We started playing together, and as far as we were concerned, you had to somehow be involved in Hollywood to make it happen. That’s where all the cool clubs were. That’s where all the cool people were. That’s where all the rock stars hung out.
KELLE RHOADS (musician; Randy Rhoads’ brother) Randy and I played together in a band called Violet Fox when we were kids. But by late ’72 that had already broken up. Once Kelly and Randy met, it was always Randy and Kelly. They had like six or seven different bands before it turned into Quiet Riot.
KELLY GARNI Quiet Riot was formed in 1974, largely because of our meeting with Kevin [DuBrow, vocalist]. He really wasn’t what we were looking for. We were so into Alice Cooper and David Bowie and that really glam, shock rock kind of thing. Whereas Kevin was more of a Rod Stewart/Steve Marriott kind of a guy. We didn’t think his look went with us, either. But he was extremely persistent and knew how to create a band and drive it forward, and we really kind of lacked that. He recognized that Randy overshadowed everyone with his talent, and he said, “I need to be with this guy.” He saw the same thing I saw, to be honest with you.
KELLE RHOADS When Kevin met Kelly and Randy, they were playing backyard parties and just doing local, jamming, garage-type stuff. Kevin was the one who brought them into Hollywood. He told them, “No, we can play in the clubs, we can make money, there can be a career strategy here.” And Randy liked that. Randy listened to Kevin and took his advice.
BOB NALBANDIAN (journalist) Locally, everyone knew who Randy was. He was supposed to be the next Eddie Van Halen. That’s what everyone would say.
KIM FOWLEY (impresario, Producer, L.A. Scenester) There wasn’t any vibe around L.A. when Van Halen first started playing. They were these guys who played Gazzarri’s and now and then would sell out in Pasadena. They were a big deal at the Golden West Ballroom in Norwalk—the guitarist was hot and the singer was a James Brown version of Cal Worthington [a famous car dealer who advertised on television] and that was about it. A few nymphomaniacs, these four blondes with big tits, used to talk about the group quite a bit.
ALEX VAN HALEN (drummer, Van Halen) Gazzarri’s, we auditioned twice. The Starwood we auditioned a couple of times. Walter Mitty’s, The Rock Corporation, Barnacle Bill’s, you name it. You name any club that was around at that time and we were there.
BOBBY BLOTZER (drummer, Airborn, Dokken, Ratt) Edward was just fucking unbelievable. And David Lee Roth was, you know, front-man king.
STEPHEN PEARCY (singer, Mickey Ratt, Ratt) I met Roth in the late ’70s. And I eventually told my guys, “Hey, you gotta go and see this band. You’re gonna shit when you hear the guitar player. He’s nothing like you’ve ever seen or heard.” They’d go, “Yeah, sure, sure.” And when they did they went, “Holy fuck!”
MICK MARS (guitarist, White Horse, Vendetta, Mötley Crüe) They kicked ass. I had a band called White Horse who played with Van Halen a few times. At Gazzarri’s. Ed was always great … My mouth would fall open.
KELLY GARNI Randy did go and see Van Halen at Gazzarri’s, and he met Eddie Van Halen and Eddie kind of blew him off a little bit. But that was okay with Randy, because Eddie wasn’t anybody to him. He wasn’t in competition with him. He never saw one guitar player in his life as competition.
ROSS HALFIN (photographer) Randy Rhoads was more tasteful than Edward, who was just jerking off.
KELLY GARNI Van Halen were sort of an oddity in our world. We were familiar with them, but the best way to put it is, that we sort of ran in different circles. We were pretty much the house band at the Starwood, something we had worked our way up to from the first time we played there and got paid with a case of beer. And Van Halen was down the street at Gazzarri’s, which in the ’80s became a very popular heavy metal club but back in the ’70s was more of a college-kid hangout. It was a different type of person that came to see us at the Starwood.
RODNEY BINGENHEIMER (club owner, promoter, DJ) There wasn’t really very many local bands happening at that time, 1976. My friend and I went to Gazzarri’s to see Van Halen and the crowd was just incredible. A lot of girls; I always thought that bands who had a lot of girls going crazy were gonna make it big. I used to see them setting up and they had this big bomb onstage and I guess Eddie would play off that bomb. They did “You Really Got Me” and “Runnin’ with the Devil.” Their fans used to park right in front and that’s where they’d meet their girlfriends. And I’d say, “You should come over to the Starwood,” and Eddie would say, “No, we like it here. Bill [Gazzarri] treats us so well.” I said they should get more happening and then they finally said, “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”
“WILD” MICK BROWN (drummer, the Boyz, Xciter, Dokken) You know what? Gazzarri’s was the pussy-plucking-posse pocket of Hollywood. Every goddamn rich girl who had a mom or dad that hated her and was gonna be a stripper later got started at Gazzarri’s, man! When I went in there I thought I was in the movies. Gazzarri’s, they’d have like a Playboy night and it was, “Holy shit!” Girls were everywhere. And these girls were more than willing to just take you home. “My mom and dad are out of town…” You’d go to these gigantic Beverly Hills mansions with these pools and you’d eat everything in the house you could and try to hitchhike back to where you lived. It was amazing.
MICHAEL ANTHONY David Lee Roth was our real connection to Gazzarri’s. Bill Gazzarri, the owner, would say hi to us or whatever, but Dave was the guy that would hang out, you know, a lot.
DAVID LEE ROTH (singer, Van Halen) Bill Gazzarri called me “Van” for the first two years the band worked at his club. He was a video pioneer. These huge cameras mounted on tripods, with these huge tape decks the size of a suitcase. He would stop me as everybody was filing out to pack our equipment into our cars. “Hey Van, hey Van, wanna see some of my films?” I’d say, “Sure.” He’d show me these films, and they’d always be cut off from the tits down, and here’s this little dick surrounded by gray pubic hair with some hot little go-go mama just gorgin’ herself.
“WILD” MICK BROWN George Lynch and I were in a local Los Angeles band at the time called the Boyz, beating our heads against the wall. Actually, Van Halen and the Boyz had a real following.
DON DOKKEN (singer, Airborn, Dokken) I knew the Boyz and we played a couple shows together. I thought they were really a good band. Honestly, I thought they would be the next band to be signed after Van Halen. They were very Van Halen–esque, you know? They had the gregarious blond-haired singer, they just had the vibe. George was a shredding guitar player like Eddie.
MICHAEL WHITE (singer, the Boyz, London) To this day, I believe George was the best guitar player that I ever was in a band with. When we used to play with Van Halen, they had similar styles but different. George was way heavier. And, I mean, when you think of Eddie Van Halen you think of heavy guitar. But George had a more evil sound than Eddie, and his vibrato was more intense. Way ahead of his time.
GEORGE LYNCH (guitarist, the Boyz, Xciter, Dokken, Lynch Mob) We were very loud, we had a lot of angst, we were very bombastic. We were not refined. A little hit-and-miss on the compositions.
MICHAEL WHITE The Boyz had a run-in with Kim Fowley around that time. Kim wanted to manage us. He was getting us gigs and stuff, and the gigs he was getting us were opening for the Runaways.
“WILD” MICK BROWN Because we were the Boyz, and they were the girls. Which was good, because they had their first record out and they had a big audience.
MICHAEL WHITE He would come to our rehearsals in Hollywood. And Kim, if you knew about him, he was very eccentric and very crazy and very high, I think. But anyway, he would come in with a group of people and they would sit and watch us rehearse and he would give us suggestions of things to do. I just remember specifically him saying, “I want you guys to be space punks. From outer space. I want you to dress like space punks and I want you to write your lyrics about being from outer space and coming down to conquer Earth and all that. And I want you to have costumes. I’ll make you stars!” And we all kind of thought about it, like, Really?
GEORGE LYNCH When we were first in the band with Michael, he tried to be very theatrical, and he was kind of a combination of Robert Plant and Ian Anderson in that he would play flute. But he had this thing where he insisted on … His gimmick was he would blow fire out of his flute. So he would experiment with that a lot and practice and try to do it at shows. And it never went well because he ended up just spitting Bacardi 151 out of the end of his flute on the audience. And then he would insist on wearing these, I don’t know what you’d call them, they’re kind of like nylon material but they’re pants. Stretchy pants. Kind of like a leotard but you can see through it? He would wear these things to shows but he wouldn’t wear underwear. You gotta understand, we’ve got this guy, he’s like six-two, he kinda looks like Robert Plant, and he has platform shoes on and he’d have one leg up on the monitor with these stretchy see-through pants with no underwear, standing in front of the audience, playing flute, and trying to blow fire out of his flute.
MICHAEL WHITE We did a gig at the Whisky and I had on a leather jumpsuit that was made at a place called Granny Takes a Trip. But the guy made it really tight. I was onstage there and I spun, I did a spin-around, and my crotch ripped and my balls hung out.
“WILD” MICK BROWN Rodney Bingenheimer, the DJ, brought the guys in Kiss down to see a show where the Boyz played with Van Halen.
RODNEY BINGENHEIMER I spoke to this guy Ray who was at the Starwood at the time and he said, “Well, I don’t know. We’ve never heard of Van Halen and they’re a Gazzarri’s band.” Back then, if a band was labeled as a Gazzarri’s band, they never played outside of Gazzarri’s. But I said, “Yeah, but these guys attract a lot of beer drinkers,” and he said maybe they’d give it a shot. So we got them into the Starwood. After a few times, I brought Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley down to see them and the rest is history.
GENE SIMMONS (bassist, Kiss) I was invited in 1977 to go see a band called the Boyz play at the Starwood, by, I believe, Rodney Bingenheimer. My date that evening was Bebe Buell. They were the headlining act but I never got to them because the first act up was a group called Van Halen, which I thought was the dumbest name I ever heard; I thought it was like Van Heusen, a shirt company. I thought the name really blew, they won’t go anywhere. The first thing I thought was Dave looked like Jim Dandy [from Black Oak Arkansas] and they had kind of an old-fashioned look. But within two numbers I thought, My fucking god, listen to these guys!
MICHAEL WHITE Kiss came to see us, one thousand percent. They came into our dressing room and they were talking to us about going to New York. They said they were looking to take a band back and we were really excited.
“WILD” MICK BROWN And obviously Van Halen got picked to go to New York and record demos with Gene Simmons instead of us. As soon as that door was opened, Van Halen went in and that was slammed shut. There was a word called “new wave” that came out. Everyone had thin ties, was doing that poppy Joe Jackson thing. And punk rock came in, too.