11

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

She fell for him the way every other girl in America did: from a distance, while staring at the jacket of a record album.

That album was Van Halen’s Women and Children First. Released on March 26, 1980, it was the band’s third album, and while it didn’t exactly break new ground, there were subtle differences from Van Halen’s first two albums, indicating just enough growth to impress critics, while staying mostly true to a hard-rocking party formula that fans had come to know and love.

For one thing, this was the first Van Halen record to be comprised entirely of original material. No breezy covers of well-known songs to increase the likelihood of a hit single. This was, from start to finish, a Van Halen album, and while it was recorded in the usual Van Halen time frame (less than three weeks), the writing and preparation took considerably longer, as this time the band did not have a couple dozen demos sitting around just waiting to be put on vinyl.

It was also, as I recall, the first album on which you could feel the growing musical rift between David and Edward. This was a heavier album, and also one on which Edward’s experimentation with other musical styles and influences could be noted. A dash of electric piano here, a synthesizer there. Ted Templeman oversaw the production again, but this was the first album to feel like it belonged more to Edward than anyone else in the band, a shift that surely did not please David, and that would lead to greater friction between the two of them as time went on. Edward would sometimes come into the studio and work alone, noodling with every piece of equipment at his disposal. At heart he was still a guitar player who loved heavy and hard music, but he was branching out and pushing himself.

David, meanwhile, did what he always did. He would wait for Edward to write the music and then throw together some lyrics in a fit of creative energy—frequently great lyrics, too, or at least lyrics that perfectly fit the tone of the song Edward had composed. The formula still worked, but I could see and feel that they were starting to be pulled in different directions. While David could put words to any melody that Edward wrote (and sometimes create or modify the melody himself), and howl appropriately onstage, he began to express a fondness for lighter and more melodic compositions. Nothing wrong with that. David’s pop sensibilities were acute and helped Van Halen enormously. But, as his tastes continued to lighten, the less he had in common with everyone else in the band.

Unlike the first two albums, Women and Children First spawned only one single, the crowd-pleasing anthem “And the Cradle Will Rock.” But two other songs, “Everybody Wants Some” and “Romeo Delight,” became concert staples, with the latter usually opening the band’s set. Despite a lack of singles and Top 40 airplay, the album was an immediate commercial success, going gold in its first week, platinum within a couple months, and triple platinum by summertime, in the middle of what was known as the World Invasion tour.

It was around that same time that one of the more famous celebrity couplings of the decade—and one of the more unusual in the annals of rock—was born, for that was when Edward Van Halen was introduced to Valerie Bertinelli.

Well, actually, he was introduced to her from afar, when she picked up her brother’s copy of Women and Children First. While her brother might have been a fan of the band’s music, Valerie was drawn more to the angular cheekbones and long hair of one of the young men depicted on the album’s back cover (photographed by the great Norman Seeff). And it wasn’t David Lee Roth, a half-naked poster of whom (photographed by Helmut Newton, no slouch himself) accompanied the album. Nope, it was Eddie Van Halen who caught the young starlet’s attention.

Now, personally, I always thought it was a bit strange that this was the way she fell for Edward, but if it could happen to a million other pretty young women, then why not Valerie Bertinelli? But surely this was not a match anyone would have predicted. Valerie at the time was America’s Sweetheart, barely twenty years old and the star of One Day at a Time, a massively popular network television sitcom. On the show, Valerie had for five years played an innocent, straight-arrow teenager named Barbara Cooper; by most public accounts, there wasn’t a great divide between the actress and the character she portrayed. As it turned out, however, this wasn’t quite true. Valerie would later admit that she, like her more infamous costar, Mackenzie Phillips, had used drugs and experimented with a wilder lifestyle than her viewing public might have realized or appreciated. Big shock for the seventies, huh?

Valerie was very pretty and very sweet, and perhaps tired of being viewed that way. Hell, she wouldn’t be the first celebrity kid to rebel against the constraints of almost puritanical expectations. But her pursuit of, and eventual marriage to, Edward Van Halen, was a head slapper to millions of Americans—on both sides of the cultural aisle.

What does she see in him?

And why in the name of God is he willing to give up hot- and cold-running groupies for her—or any woman, for that matter?

For Valerie, I think the attraction was a combination of things: Edward was an attractive, gifted, superstar musician. He was also a genuinely nice guy, which obviously she could not know from an album cover. What she did know was that Van Halen had a reputation for wildness, and I don’t doubt that all those things factored into her infatuation.

The trickier question is . . . what did Edward see in Valerie? Oh, I don’t mean that to sound as disrespectful as it probably does. She was young and pretty and charming, and he certainly didn’t have to worry about her pursuing him for his money; at that point in time, Valerie was surely the wealthier half of the couple. I’ll float a theory that goes beyond the likelihood that they actually liked each other and fell quickly in love. You see, it was David who was supposed to marry the Hollywood starlet. He used to talk about it with some frequency, in fact, and I don’t think he was kidding.

“Just watch, boys,” he would say. “I’m going to find myself a fuckin’ movie star.”

It made sense that David would seek a partner who could help expand his own fame; someone who would attract paparazzi. A lot of rock stars have an uncomfortable relationship with celebrity: they want it only on their own terms. They love being onstage and they love the money and sex and power that come with being successful and famous. But they despise the machinery of fame—the reporters and the photo sessions and the chat show interviews. David was different. He loved all of it—anything that nudged him closer to the center of the universe was perfectly acceptable. It’s what made him simultaneously a marketing dream and a personal nightmare. In the end, though, David’s personality seemed to preclude any relationship lasting more than a few weeks, and I can’t imagine that he would have wanted to fight another celebrity for space on the red carpet.

Edward was a different story. He was genuinely happy just writing and playing music, and getting fucked up in his free time. I never would have had him pegged as someone who would be remotely attracted to the idea of a celebrity girlfriend (or wife). But maybe it was precisely the fact that David had bragged for so long about marrying a movie star that encouraged Eddie to choose this path instead. They were competitive, after all; and at times they legitimately disliked each other. So maybe Edward’s relationship to Valerie was on some level triggered by a desire to issue a public “fuck you” to David.

But here’s the real question: what would possess a stunningly talented, attractive, famous rock star, nearing the height of his popularity, to get involved in an ostensibly monogamous relationship at the age of twenty-five, while living a lifestyle that could not possibly have been less consistent with the values traditionally associated with such a relationship? Van Halen was a band whose sexual output was unsurpassed in rock ’n’ roll. Was I keeping score? No, but since I had seen some exploits in my time, I could honestly say that no band had more fun than Van Halen.

And they had the doctors’ visits to prove it. In the first few years they made frequent trips to local clinics for penicillin shots to clear up doses of the clap, both real and anticipated. Sometimes we would find a local doc who would come to the show to administer antibiotics or B12 supplements, or sleeping pills, if disrupted circadian rhythm was a problem (which it often was on the road). Eventually it became part of the road manager’s job to find a doc who would fill any of the myriad prescriptions the guys needed to get through the tour, from codeine to Percodan, all heaped on top of the various street drugs and alcohol they were using. It was, by then, a party that had turned spectacularly messy.

The sex never stopped, and the groupies never went away, although partners were chosen with more care, and the quality improved dramatically. Fewer women were allowed backstage, and many of them looked and dressed like they had just stepped off the pages of Playboy or Penthouse. At the same time, the number of women who were desperate to meet the band grew exponentially, and they were willing to do just about anything to fulfill this fantasy.

Here’s a scene from one of the later years . . .

It’s late afternoon on the day of a show. I’m traveling with my wife, Jan. We’ve been married a relatively short time, but she’s been on the road enough to have seen some unusual behavior. Nevertheless, what she sees on this day is somewhat startling. There is a long line stretching from the back of the road crew bus across the parking lot—maybe forty to fifty guys, all nearly finished with the business of setting up the stage for the evening.

“What’s going on?” Jan asks. “Are they waiting for their paychecks or something? Is there food in there? Are they eating? Can we get a sandwich? I’m starving.”

I stifle a laugh. “They’re not eating . . . not in the normal sense of the word.”

“Then what’s going on?”

I lead Jan into the venue and away from the bus. There we run into Denise, one of the band’s bus drivers.

“Would you mind explaining the line outside to Jan?” I ask Denise. An uncomfortable expression crosses her face.

“No, I don’t think so, Noel. Why don’t you do it?”

“Because I don’t want to. That’s what I pay you for.”

“No, you pay me to drive the bus.”

I smile. In a voice barely above a whisper, I say, “Please, Denise. Get me out of this.”

And so she does, pulling Jan aside and explaining to her exactly why so many men are waiting at the crew bus. Inside the bus are two girls so eager to gain backstage access that they are willing to fellate the entire crew in order to make it happen. That’s right, a couple dozen blow jobs apiece, distributed quickly and dispassionately, in exchange for a chance to meet the band.

Talk about taking one for the team.

I realize how this sounds, but you have to understand that there was no coercion here. These were young women (of legal age) who volunteered for this duty. And they were at virtually every stop on the tour. Not the same women, of course, but the same basic profile—devoted fans (that’s putting it mildly) who would do anything to make their Van Halen experience a memorable one. So they suck the entire crew and are compensated with preferred seating, backstage access, and just about anything else they want. It’s not prostitution, and it’s not sexual abuse. It’s just a deal.

More than once I had been invited to jump the train: “Noel, she’s done eight and you can be number nine, if you’d like.”

“Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

So this was the world in which we all lived; a world of “trickle-down sexonomics,” in which everyone occasionally benefited—from David Lee Roth and Edward Van Halen to the lowest-ranking member of the road crew. And while Van Halen might have been unique in its level of excess, it certainly was not unique in its overall pursuit of sex and drugs. Behavior that almost any normal person would consider depraved was part of the musical landscape and could be found on every tour of every notable rock ’n’ roll band of this era. Indeed, never was the term “Wham, bam, thank you ma’am” more appropriate than it was in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Before AIDS.

Before cocaine was considered addictive or dangerous.

For Van Halen, it was a time of both unchecked hedonism and enormous creativity and success. Into this vortex of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll walked Valerie Bertinelli. She could not possibly have known what she was getting into; then again, I suppose the same could be said of Edward.

THEY MET FOR THE FIRST TIME IN AUGUST 1980, after a Van Halen concert in Valerie’s hometown, Shreveport, Louisiana, where she was visiting her parents. Eventually I’d get to know the whole family. Valerie’s mother struck me as a typical stage mom—a little too invested in her daughter’s life and livelihood—while the father, an ex-boxer who managed an auto plant, was a nice enough guy who didn’t say too much but projected an air of toughness; he seemed comfortable in his own skin, which I admired. Prior to the show that night I was walking around with the promoter. He mentioned Valerie’s name, said she was at the show, and that he was going to meet her backstage shortly.

“I guess she’s got a little crush on Edward,” he explained. “I’d like to introduce them after the concert.”

I didn’t think much of this at the time—it wasn’t unusual, after all, for celebrities to stop backstage to meet the band. But the promoter hinted that Miss Bertinelli was not just a casual fan.

“She really likes him,” he said.

“Okay.”

Then he paused and smiled conspiratorially.

“You ever see this chick?”

“Uh, sure. Not in person, but yeah.”

He smacked his lips. “Man, I’d eat a mile of her shit just to get to her ass.”

Whoa . . .

“You are quite the romantic, aren’t you?”

Edward had no idea that a beautiful network television star was in the audience that night, or that she was waiting backstage for him after the show, until he walked offstage and headed to the dressing room. I caught him as he went by.

“Ed, you know Valerie Bertinelli is here, and she wants to meet you.”

Edward barely broke stride. A quizzical look crossed his face.

“Who?”

“Valerie Bertinelli. You know . . . One Day at a Time.”

A faint look of recognition, followed by a nod and a squinty-eyed smile. “Ohhhhh yeah, right. Cool. Let me clean up.”

I don’t know if Edward actually knew who she was. He was not much of a fan of pop culture in general, but I know that his father used to watch the show. Regardless, it looked as he walked away as though he was trying to dredge up an image to go with a name that he kinda, sorta recognized.

Meanwhile, just down the hall, in a private room, was Valerie, and the image she projected was at once adorable and glamorous. Valerie was a very pretty young woman, but almost in an adolescent way. She had wide, dark eyes and thick brown hair falling across a cherubic face. She was quite cute, if not exactly gorgeous or sexy in the traditional sense. She was dressed nicely—so nicely, in fact, that she resembled nothing so much as a teenager trying to show off. Which, obviously, was not the case. She was an adult with a thriving career and a ton of money. But, like millions of adolescent girls, she also carried an infatuation for the lead guitarist of Van Halen.

After Edward dried off and changed his clothes, I introduced him to Valerie. It was kind of cute to see them together—they were both clearly nervous and somewhat reticent. This struck me as a sign of genuine chemistry. After all, Valerie had spent most of her life in front of a camera or audience; she was completely comfortable with all manner of public interaction. And yet, here she was, stammering and blushing like a schoolgirl in the presence of the captain of the football team. And Edward? Here was a guy who went out onstage every night and performed, wizardlike, in front of thousands of adoring fans. In the presence of this young woman, however, the rock star façade melted away. He was clearly drawn to her, yet too shy and intimidated to take control of the situation.

If theirs was an odd match, it was nonetheless genuine. I could tell right away that they liked each other and that there existed the potential for some sort of ongoing relationship, whatever that might entail in the volatile world of celebrity romance. But not in my wildest imagination did I envision the whirlwind courtship and commitment that followed.

I WAS IN MY OFFICE in early November 1980 when I got a phone call from the band’s attorney informing me that Edward was being sued by the District Attorney of Riverside County for “the responsibility of establishing paternity.”

By this time Eddie and Valerie were a mere three months into their relationship, but what a torrid affair it had become. They were together all the time when the band was in California, and when we were on the road, Valerie would do her best to show up in various cities and spend some quality time with her new boyfriend. Things progressed so quickly that by the time I got this phone call, Edward and Valerie were already deep into planning their wedding, which would take place in the springtime—specifically, April 11, 1981.

Given those circumstances, the last thing I needed or expected was the threat of a paternity suit against the lead guitarist of my band. Let me put that another way: claims of paternity by jilted, crazed, or simply avaricious former sexual partners were in fact an ever-present danger in the world of big-time rock ’n’ roll. For the most part, those who hooked up with a rock star got precisely what they wanted, as did the musician: a fleeting night (or maybe just a fleeting few minutes) of carnal contact with zero expectations. Fun for everyone involved.

Unfortunately, there were myriad ways in which the arrangement could get complicated for one or both parties, in particular for the rock star. Sometimes a one-night stand became more than a one-night stand, which could lead to unrealistic expectations that the relationship might grow into something more permanent and meaningful, when in fact there was almost no chance of that happening. I’m not saying these hookups were exploitative or abusive; far from it. But certainly the balance of power and the likelihood of things ending badly made it an unwise decision to develop these sorts of relationships on the road. Then, too, there was always the possibility that a single night with a millionaire rock star could lead to claims of paternity, real or imagined, simply as a means to extort money from someone who could surely afford to part with a few dollars—especially if it meant keeping things out of the media.

Did this happen with great frequency? No . . . but it did happen.

Whatever the motivation, I found myself dealing with such an accusation that November morning. I neither believed nor disbelieved the claim—given the number of indiscriminate sexual encounters that occurred on the road, anything was possible. Sex was an almost daily occurrence, and unprotected sex was common. It wasn’t until Edward came to visit me that I was able to formulate an opinion on the matter.

Edward did not look well that day. He was generally an affable type whose demeanor soured only with excessive drinking or drug use, but on this day he was disheveled and nervous. Aside from music, Edward took few things seriously—and even in this area he managed to be deeply accomplished while presenting an air of indifference. In truth, when it came to playing the guitar, he was both gifted and ambitious; you just wouldn’t know it by looking at him. Now, though, he seemed filled with dread. As he pulled up a chair in my office, he fidgeted nervously. He had a guitar slung over his shoulder. In one hand he held a beer, in the other a cigarette, from which he took long and frequent drags. The paternity situation was a real-life event that had to be confronted, and Edward had no idea what to do. He was paralyzed by panic.

“Noel, why is she doing this to me? What does she want?”

“Well, Ed, I believe what she wants is to be recognized as the mother of your child, which would carry with it certain financial obligations on your part.”

There was no response. Edward just sat there with a pained expression on his face, rocking anxiously in his seat.

“Look, Edward, it’s actually pretty simple. Do you think this woman is telling the truth or not? Could this be your child?”

Edward shrugged. “I don’t know.”

To me, this was as good as saying, “Yes,” but there was something about the way Edward said it that made me probe deeper.

“Who is she, Ed? A one-night stand or something more?”

From there Edward launched into the story of his relationship with a woman who lived in San Diego. Theirs was strictly a sexual relationship, and usually limited to the front seat of Edward’s car—sometimes in the parking lot, and other times while they rolled along the Pacific Coast Highway.

“You know how I like a pretty face in my crotch,” Edward said, his voice expressing utter sincerity, despite the comical nature of the comment.

“Well, who doesn’t, Ed?”

He nodded earnestly.

“How often did this happen?” I asked.

Edward shrugged. “A bunch.”

“Okay, and how many times did you have sex with her?”

Edward offered a quizzical look. “What do you mean? I told you, a bunch.”

“No, Ed . . . I mean sex. You know, intercourse. How many times did you fuck this woman?”

Edward straightened up. He seemed surprised by the question.

“Never,” he said. “I told you . . . she gave me blow jobs in the car.”

“That’s it?”

He nodded. “Uh-huh.“ ‘

There was a long pause as this information hung in the air, thick as the cloud of cigarette smoke billowing above Edward’s head.

“Ed,” I began. “Think about this very carefully. I know you’ve been with a lot of women over the last few years and it would be easy to forget some of the minor details. But this is important. Are you telling me that you never had sexual intercourse with this woman?”

By this point Edward’s eyes were welling up. He felt as though his life was coming apart; he was supposed to be getting married in a few months, and now he was being sued by a woman who claimed that Edward was the father of her child. His lip quivered as he formed a response; to say the least, it was not what I expected to hear.

“I swear to God, Noel. I never fucked her.” Another long pause as his eyes went wide. “Is there any way she could have gotten pregnant from giving me a blow job?”

The question was one of the funniest and saddest things I had ever heard. By this time, Edward was well traveled and highly accomplished. He was widely acknowledged as one of the greatest musicians of his generation. He was rich and famous and admired by millions.

He was also hopelessly naive. His was not a rhetorical question, nor an attempt at humor. He was not sure whether it was possible for a woman to become pregnant simply by performing oral sex, and he wanted me, the person he trusted most in the world, to tell him the truth. I wanted to laugh out loud, but I simply couldn’t. Edward loved me and I loved him—in all candor, he was the only person in the band for whom I felt that strong an emotion—and as much as I found the conversation ludicrous, the situation begged for compassion.

“You know, Edward, I have never heard of that happening,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I would have to say no, although I suppose we could check with a doctor, just to be sure.”

Edward let out a huge sigh of relief. All that mattered to him was my opinion, based on nothing more than common sense, that there was no way he could be the father of this woman’s child.

“Oh, okay, okay,” he said, nodding approvingly. “That’s such a relief, man. I mean, I didn’t think so, but . . . you know.”

No, Edward, I don’t know. But I love you, anyway.

There were more meetings, discussions with attorneys and representatives on both sides of the issue. Edward had to come clean to both his fiancée and her family, which was not an easy thing to do. I don’t believe he ever admitted to having had any sort of relationship with the woman—or at least no relationship that continued after he met Valerie—but he did have to make his fiancée aware of the paternity suit hanging over his head.

Around that same time, I got a phone call from Valerie’s father, a man I liked very much based on the handful of interactions we had.

“Noel, what the hell are we going to do? These two kids are supposed to be getting married in a few months.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything.”

“Yeah, I know that’s your reputation—you fix things—but how exactly are you going to do that? This is not good.”

He was absolutely right: it wasn’t good. From a financial and public relations standpoint, it was a disaster. And from a personal standpoint, it had to be heartbreaking. I know that if I found out that the man my daughter was engaged to marry was embroiled in a paternity suit, I’d be mighty pissed. From that standpoint alone, I felt for the guy. But I also was reasonably confident that Edward had told me the truth—that he really hadn’t ever engaged in intercourse with this woman, and therefore could not possibly be the father of the child she was carrying. Therefore, all I had to tell Mr. Bertinelli was this simple fact: “It’s not true.”

I didn’t have to elaborate. No need to tell the poor guy that while Edward had not fathered a child, he certainly had engaged in plenty of traditional rock ’n’ roll behavior. And that behavior did not stop just because he fell in love with Valerie Bertinelli. I knew we’d get Eddie out of this jam, but it wasn’t going to be easy. This was about damage control—about making a frivolous paternity suit go away as quietly as possible without writing a massive and unwarranted check. There was only one way to do that.

“Ed, you’re going to have to take a paternity test.”

“What? Why? I mean . . . how?”

Three different questions, each easily answered.

“You’re getting married in a few months,” I said.

“You think I don’t know that?”

“It’s not that you don’t know, it’s just that you’re not dealing with it. These things are all happening simultaneously on the same set of tracks, and you’re about to experience one hell of a train wreck. So we need to stop this before the collision, and the only way to do that is for you take a blood test.”

“But . . . I only got a blow job.”

It became a mantra for Edward—I only got a blow job, I only got a blow job, I only got a blow job—as if saying it often enough would somehow make the problem go away. It didn’t. He was going to have to prove through DNA testing that he could not possibly be responsible for this child. Was that fair? Maybe not. But he had put himself in this position, and there was only one way out.

“Look, Ed, I believe you. But the fact is, you are a famous rock star with a lot of money, and sometimes people are going to try to take advantage of you. You have to deal with this paternity suit or you’re going to find yourself walking down the aisle on your wedding day, and someone is going to hand you a summons to appear in court. Trust me, that is not going to look good in the press. There will be a big picture of you being handed a summons and Valerie looking on stoically. And the headline will read: ‘But I only got a blow job!’ How does that sound?”

Edward sighed. “Not so good.”

It took two more meetings in my office to convince him, but eventually Edward conceded and took the test, which did, in fact, exonerate him. The paternity suit ultimately disappeared into the ether.

Meanwhile, in the wake of this nonsense, David Lee Roth got it into his head that some protection was required from the sea of greedy groupies who were out there just waiting for the chance to trick him into fathering their child, or at least entangling him in a lawsuit. And by protection I’m not talking about condoms—although that would have been the easiest course of action.

“Noel, I want you to see if you can get me paternity insurance,” he said not long after Edward’s troubles.

“Paternity insurance? David, I don’t think there is such a thing.”

“Well, there should be. Look into it. I need to protect my penis.”

I did as instructed and made a call to someone I knew at Lloyd’s of London and said I was interested in obtaining a million-dollar policy to protect one of the guys in my band against a paternity suit. He was polite enough not to laugh but declined to offer coverage. I tried other agencies and got the same response from all of them: Paternity insurance? For a rock star? Ummmm . . . no thanks.

I went back to David and broke the bad news; we both had a little laugh over it, and at some point I got a wicked idea: Let’s tell the media we actually did buy a paternity policy. I subsequently leaked to the press a tidbit about David purchasing a million dollars’ worth of paternity insurance, and to my great amusement they all took the bait. Even in the days before the internet, gossip could take on a life of its own. One outlet would report the story, and others would pick it up. Pretty soon it became established as fact that David Lee Roth had purchased a million-dollar paternity insurance policy.

It simply wasn’t true. But it helped that David played along, and as a result the story would not die. To this day people still believe that we purchased such a policy. Believe me—it was all a joke. I just wanted to throw shit against the wall and see what would stick.

WITH THIS BULLET SUCCESSFULLY DODGED, the wedding went on as scheduled—a large and traditional ceremony at St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Westwood, California, attended by several hundred guests. Admittedly, I did not see as much of the wedding as I had hoped to see. I was bored and restless, so I spent a good deal of the ceremony walking around outside, talking with security guards. In reality, this was just another workday for me. Sure, I was there to help celebrate the marriage of Edward and Valerie, but I was also there to keep an eye on all things Van Halen, just like I did at any other public performance by the band and its members. And make no mistake—a wedding is a performance.

I didn’t even bring a date to the festivities; the last thing I needed was someone else who required my attention and might distract me from the task at hand. I already felt somewhat out of place—these posh parties made me feel rather ill at ease and out of my depth, and they never seemed to get any easier. I had grown up on the West Side of Manhattan, and it wasn’t like I didn’t know what to expect when members of high society gathered. Still, when it came right down to it, I preferred the road, in all its gritty glory.

I managed to duck back into the church in time to see Ed and Valerie take their vows, and a short time later the ceremony ended and everyone departed for the Grayhall, a historic mansion in Beverly Hills. Ed and Val came out of the church first, and I grabbed two security guards to help them make their exit. I held one security guard with one hand and grabbed Ed with the other. The second guard took Valerie by the arm and whisked her down the church’s endless front staircase. We descended together into a sea of paparazzi, their cameras and video recorders all straining for the perfect wedding shot. To my ear, it sounded like the cameras were all going off at once, the shutters clicking and crackling, the flashbulbs lighting the evening sky as we raced toward our limousine.

By the time we reached the car, I was becoming dizzy and nauseous from sensory overload; I worried for a moment that I might faint or vomit on the newlyweds, but I took a deep breath as we fought through the crowd and guided the couple into the car. I still can’t put into words the relief I felt when I saw the two of them settling into the leather seats in the back, Valerie adjusting her wedding dress and Eddie, a little shaky but no worse for the wear, grinning mischievously as one of the security guards closed the limo door behind them. I let out a deep sigh before heading with the security guards to the next limo in line. For some reason, the cameras continued to click and crackle, even though Ed and Valerie were safely tucked away. I couldn’t imagine they wanted a picture of me or the guards, but paparazzi are nothing if not relentless.

As the limo pulled away, I prepared to kick back a bit before the reception. So far, so good, I thought.

Knock on wood.

I should have known better than to think the day would be a smooth one. I’d worked closely with Edward for more than three years by this time, and had spent hundreds of days on the road with him. As much as I loved Ed, nothing was ever truly easy with him or with the band. Fun, yes. Rewarding, certainly. But easy? No. Never. From the moment I had heard that Edward was marrying Valerie, I wasn’t sure how any of it would turn out. The paternity suit had been challenging enough, but that was far from the only concern. Valerie’s family was conservative, and I wondered how they would feel about the possibility of their daughter’s wedding day devolving into rock ’n’ roll chaos.

I had broached this subject with Edward a couple months in advance of the big day. “Are you going to try to stay straight for the wedding, at least?” I asked.

I was not being facetious. Ed was used to drinking and smoking weed virtually every day, and by now he’d started getting deeper into cocaine. It was one thing to live like that on the road, during a Van Halen tour; it was quite another to get totally fucked up on one of the most important days of your life. It wasn’t hard to imagine a catastrophic outcome if caution was not exercised. Edward promised restraint.

Sort of.

“I’ll try to stay as straight as I can,” he said, laughing at the absurdity of the question.

It shouldn’t have come as a complete surprise, therefore, that before the reception even shifted into high gear, Edward went missing. In fact, so did Valerie. As everyone funneled into the grand ballroom and began drinking cocktails and eating hors d’oeuvres, I began looking for the happy couple. Not that it was my responsibility to prevent Edward from getting lost. The guy was twenty-five years old. He’d been around the world a couple times and could take care of himself. That’s what I told myself (and anyone else who asked). In my heart, I figured something was wrong, but I didn’t want to delve too deeply into the possibilities. I knew he was somewhere in the mansion and that was good enough for me. If I hadn’t lost Edward in Japan, I wasn’t going to lose him in Beverly Hills. How much trouble could he possibly find?

Bad question . . . bad answer.

I made my way upstairs—easier said than done, since I was also trying to avoid any spontaneous krell parties. I couldn’t just barge into any room; I had no idea where the couple might be hidden, what they were doing, and frankly I didn’t care. This was supposed to be a celebration, and while it’s true that it was also a workday for me, it wasn’t like being at a concert. I trusted my guys (for the most part) and figured that on this day at least they would know where to draw the line when it came to respectable behavior. More important, I didn’t want to know the details. Plausible deniability and all that.

Upstairs, I found a member of our security team standing guard outside a bathroom door.

“Who’s in there?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.

“Edward and Valerie,” he said.

I knocked. No answer. I knocked again. Still no answer. I slowly opened the door, just enough to squeeze through, since I was reasonably sure I didn’t want anyone outside to get a view of what might be happening, and went into the bathroom. There I found Valerie in her beautiful white lace wedding gown, looking every inch the angel—except for the tears streaming down her cheeks. On what should have been the happiest day of her life, Valerie was holding her husband’s head over a toilet bowl, pulling his hair back to make sure it didn’t become encrusted with puke.

“I’m sorry,” Edward said between retches. “I’m so sorry.”

Valerie gave me the saddest look I had ever seen but said nothing. This was not a scene I had envisioned, not even in my worst nightmare of how this day might unfold. It occurred to me that after the wedding ceremony, they must have come directly from the parking lot to the upstairs bathroom. And now, here they were, immersed in a world of pain and embarrassment—on their wedding day. I tried to imagine what in the hell had happened, how Edward had managed to get so completely fucked up in some small window of opportunity. Of course, it didn’t really matter. When the will is weak, there is always time.

I stayed for a few minutes to make sure they were okay. I wondered if I was going to have to go downstairs and tell a few hundred guests that the reception had been canceled, and how I would explain it. But Valerie was surprisingly strong. She coaxed Edward to his feet, cleaned him up, straightened his tie, and helped him comb his hair. In her eyes I saw not disappointment but compassion and love. On what should have been such a festive occasion, these two had just gone through a truly horrific experience, and yet they came out looking at each other through adoring eyes.

Valerie, and to a lesser extent Edward, both probably thought they had left behind the worst of Edward’s drinking and drug abuse—as though a marriage license or even love could cure such a disease. He had promised with all his heart that he would beat back his addictions and demons, because she was worth it to him, and he wanted to be a better man for her. What he couldn’t leave behind were his naïveté and insecurity, and a genetic predisposition to addiction. And he knew it.

They emerged from the bathroom hand in hand, and made a glorious entrance into the grand ballroom, where a crowd of family and friends and an assortment of Hollywood stars burst into applause. For a guy who had spent the previous half hour heaving his guts into a toilet bowl, Edward looked pretty damn good in his white coat and tails, long hair flowing, eyes beaming with adoration for his lovely bride.

For a few fleeting moments, everything was right with the world. Or so it seemed. Appearances, after all, can be deceiving. David now stood in the corner, alone, a drink in his hand, smiling tightly at the good fortune of his friend and bandmate. Granted, the grip on his glass seemed rather tight, and it was David’s natural demeanor to be envious and territorial, so I can’t be sure what was going through his head. I do know that he hated sharing the spotlight, but on this day, he ceded it completely. So did Alex, who had already watched his little brother become the more accomplished musician in the family, and now watched with what I assume was envy as he married America’s Sweetheart. And there was Michael, with his beautiful, blond high school girlfriend; the love of his life. As always, he reflected an air of happiness and satisfaction, as if he still couldn’t believe his good fortune at simply being invited to the party.

At the center of it all were Edward Van Halen and Valerie Bertinelli, circling the room and accepting congratulations and good wishes from both friends and family and the Hollywood elite. It seemed almost too perfect, and I wondered what these people would think if they had seen Edward just a short time ago, praying to the porcelain god on his wedding day. Surely they would not have thought that this was a union destined to last. That it did, for roughly two decades, through an endless series of betrayals and addictions, is an upset I can barely comprehend.

I suppose that makes it a love story.