In May 1981, a month after the wedding, Van Halen went back out on the road for a comparatively modest tour: eighty-one dates as opposed to the hundred-plus we had grown accustomed to playing. Sometimes, though, less is more, as the Fair Warning tour produced sellouts in all but two venues.
I sat out most of the first week, preferring instead to remain back in Los Angeles to catch up on business, knowing full well that something would happen soon enough and that I would be compelled to join the boys on the road for an extended period of time. When the shit hit the fan on tour, it usually happened in the beginning; it took a few weeks or even months to iron out all the wrinkles and for everyone to readjust to the inherent weirdness and claustrophobia of road life. The transition was rarely smooth. I went to my office each day knowing that a crisis was probably brewing, and that a panic-stricken phone call from the road was imminent.
And that is precisely what happened.
The band was in the Northeast, maybe three or four dates into the tour, when I got a call one night from Steve, the road manager. He was agitated, if not downright angry.
“Noel, we’re having a problem with David.”
This was not surprising; David was always a problem to some degree. But problem is a wildly vague term.
“What kind of problem, Steve? I mean, David is a pain in the ass, we all know that.”
“Well, he kind of went nuts.”
Again, this was too vague to be of any use, so I pressed Steve for more information, which at first he seemed reluctant to share. Eventually, though, he spilled the entire story.
David had gotten quite drunk—more so than usual—and had torn up the hotel room in his uniquely aggressive fashion. Furniture went out the window, walls and fixtures were damaged or destroyed. And not in a joyful way, as was typically the case in our first couple years.
“He was out of control,” Steve assured me. “Being a real asshole, too.”
Steve was not the most laid-back guy in the world; he generally abhorred violence and recklessness, which would normally be a useful character trait in a managerial position; however, when it came to serving as road manager for Van Halen, a certain patience and detachment were required. Sure, you had to be incredibly organized and efficient, but you couldn’t lose your shit over every little bump in the road. This was rock ’n’ roll—things got messy sometimes. You had to deal with it.
Steve had done exactly that, to the enormous consternation of one David Lee Roth.
“He wouldn’t settle down,” Steve explained. “So we put him in a straitjacket.”
Rarely in my life have I been struck speechless by news delivered across a telephone line, but this was one such occasion. I let the word roll around in my head for a moment, to make sure I had heard it correctly.
Straitjacket . . .
The first thought that crossed my mind was, Why in the hell do you even have a straitjacket? Talk about planning for a worst-case scenario. I tried to picture David encased in a suit of heavy white cloth, his arms wrapped behind his back, his long hair flowing down over his face. This was not, to me, an amusing image. For one thing, I suffered from claustrophobia myself, so the very thought of being restrained in such a punitive manner caused the anxiety to rise in my throat. David frequently got on my nerves; I had seen him act in a multitude of unappealing ways, but never had I witnessed behavior that justified being placed in a straitjacket.
“Jesus Christ, Steve. How many people did it take to do this?”
“I don’t know, three or four.”
“Well, couldn’t you have just sat on him until he calmed down or passed out?”
This was a fair and reasonable question. David was not the toughest guy in the world; any one of the legitimately tough guys on our security team could have overpowered him without assistance.
“I don’t know,” Steve said, annoyance again rising in his voice. “He was just going fucking nuts, and I had this straitjacket, so . . . we put him in it.”
“Did it work? I mean, where is he now?”
“In his room, going batshit crazy. Keeps saying he’s gonna rip my head off and shit down my neck. Stuff like that.”
Again, to me, this did not seem an unreasonable response. I’d have reacted the same way. I tried to imagine if word of this incident got out: the lead singer of one of the biggest bands in the world, confined to a straitjacket by his own security team less than one week into a new tour. This was one story that would test the old axiom that any publicity is good publicity. I figured that as angry as David was at that moment, he’d be even angrier the next day. I envisioned the entire tour blowing up and Van Halen fracturing almost overnight. So I hung up the phone, packed my bags, and drove to the airport. Within a couple hours I was on a red-eye bound for the East Coast.
The next morning I went to the band’s hotel. I didn’t even bother checking in before going straight to David’s room. I found him sitting on his bed, no longer restrained, but looking very much like a man suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Or maybe he was just severely hungover.
Aside from the bed, the room was practically devoid of furniture. There were stains on the carpet and holes in the walls. As I entered the room, David was rocking slowly back and forth, holding his arms across his chest. Although no longer confined, he seemed almost unable to move. I’m not sure I ever felt more compassion toward David than I did in that moment. He was a challenging and selfish personality, but it was hard to imagine that he had deserved being so completely dehumanized. And by his own road manager and security team? I almost wanted to give him a hug.
Almost.
“David, tell me what happened,” I said.
His eyes widened as he leaned forward. His lips trembled. I thought he might start crying, but instead he merely unleashed a torrent of anger.
“Those motherfuckers!” he said. “They put me in a fucking straitjacket. Like I’m crazy or something.” He paused. “I should have killed them. I should have killed every one of them. I could have, you know. They deserved it!”
What David lacked in vocal finesse he more than made up for in lung power, but I figured he had earned the right to rant hysterically for as long as necessary. An hour passed, maybe two hours, before exhaustion set in and the volume diminished. Most of his anger understandably was directed at the road manager, since, as far as we understood it, he had given the order for David to be treated like a patient in the midst of a psychotic break; the rest of the team had been merely following orders.
“He’s gotta fucking go,” David said. “I can’t work with him anymore.”
“Let’s get through the tour,” I said. “Then we can make some decisions.”
David nodded. He was nothing if not a businessman. At this point in time he was unwilling to do anything that might jeopardize his own career or the continued upward trajectory of Van Halen. If that meant coexisting with a road manager and security team that had placed him in restraints, so be it. David could swallow that particular indignity for the sake of the greater good.
I STAYED WITH THE BAND for the duration of the tour, which soon took us into Canada. Incidents of true humiliation and degradation—I guess you could call it abuse—such as the straitjacket incident were incredibly rare. But certainly the lifestyle encouraged perpetual adolescence, and not merely in matters of sex and drugs and alcohol. On a night off in Calgary, for example, Alex and I went out to dinner and then took a stroll through a huge indoor market. We lived for these types of places on the road—massive one-stop shopping where you could have dinner, drinks, and then pick up anything you might need. On the road, after all, you didn’t necessarily wash your clothes every three or four days. Sometimes you would just toss out your dirty socks and underwear and buy new ones. It was easier, and money was of no concern. So we looked for places where we could accomplish these mundane tasks while also soaking up the local culture and ambiance.
This being Canada, we eventually came to a large section of the market devoted to outdoor activities, notably hunting and fishing—row upon row of rifles and fishing rods and other paraphernalia. We came upon a massive commercial chest freezer, open on top and filled with packages of frozen fish: not the kind you take home and eat, but rather the type you hack into pieces and use for bait. I surveyed the contents and then looked at Al. He was already looking at me. Simultaneously, as if stricken with the same wicked idea, we both smiled.
We picked out a packet containing maybe a half dozen pieces of frozen fish, each roughly six to eight inches in length. After we’d paid for the fish and begun walking back to the hotel, I asked, “So what exactly are we going to do with this?” although I already knew the answer. It was just a matter of who our target was.
“Pete!” Al shouted. “We’re going to fuck up Pete.”
Why we chose Peter Angelus to perpetrate our stunt on, I don’t really know. I suppose it was just because he was sure to respond with the appropriate degree of shock and revulsion. Anyway, we went back to the hotel and walked up to the front desk.
“Hi, my name is Pete Angelus,” I said, rather convincingly. “I need a new room key, if you don’t mind. I seem to have misplaced mine.”
“No problem, sir. Here you go.”
We went up to Peter’s room. There were two beds, and since we didn’t know which one was his, we had no choice but to sabotage both. Like mad housekeepers, we stripped the sheets and put a couple of fish in the bottom corner of each bed. Then we remade the beds as neatly as possible and walked out, leaving the faintest odor of thawing smelt in our wake.
“Good night, Al,” I said, shaking his hand conspiratorially.
“Sleep tight, Noel.”
By the time we left it was probably around eleven o’clock. Pete was still downstairs in the hotel bar, so I went back to my room, just down the hall, and waited for the festivities to begin. A couple hours later I woke to the sound of a bloodcurdling scream, like something out of a slasher movie. And then a second shriek, this one even louder and more shrill. I smiled to myself.
Poor Pete . . .
I got out of bed and opened my door just a crack. In the hallway was Pete, wearing only his tighty whities.
“Pete,” I said. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Noel, you’re not going to believe this,” he said.
“Oh, try me.”
“Well, I was in bed, reading a book—you know, one of my murder mysteries, and all of a sudden I felt something under the sheets. Something sticky and cold. It was on my foot and started climbing up my leg!” He paused, scrunched up his face in disgust. “Fucking stinks in there, too.”
“Pete, you’re just bullshitting . . . or dreaming. How much did you have to drink tonight?”
“What? Not much. And I’m not dreaming. Come in here and look.”
“I’m tired, Pete, and I want to go to sleep. We’ll deal with this in the morning, okay? I’m sure the slimy bed creatures will be gone by then.”
I started to walk away, but by now Peter was growing frantic and would not be dissuaded. So I walked to his room, feigning a combination of irritation and disbelief, and tried not to laugh when he threw back the sheets on his bed to reveal a couple of dead fish in his bed.
“You see!” he shouted. “I told you there was something there!”
“My goodness, Pete. How the hell did that get in there?”
Peter stiffened. The fear drained from his face, replaced quickly by anger.
“You son of a bitch, Monk. You did this, didn’t you? You and Al.”
I shook my head dismissively. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Let’s check the other bed.” I pulled back the sheets to reveal another foul and slimy mess. “Holy shit,” I said, trying to sound surprised. “Someone really had it in for you, Pete.”
By now the whole room was beginning to reek, so I invited Peter down to my room, gave him a couple extra sheets, and invited him to sleep on the sofa, an offer he grudgingly accepted.
“Thanks for nothing, Noel. I know you did this. You guys are fucking crazy.”
Not crazy. Just bored. The road will do that to you sometimes.
FAIR WARNING WAS AN UNUSUAL ALBUM, but certainly not a great album; I don’t mind admitting that, and I don’t think any of the guys in the band would dispute my opinion. It was a somewhat experimental effort, written and recorded on the same brisk schedule as the previous three albums, but with less emphasis on melody or memorable hooks. This stemmed in large part from Edward’s increasing unease with the influence of Ted Templeman and David Lee Roth, both of whom had strong pop sensibilities and wanted Van Halen to continue along the well-worn path that had proven highly successful thus far. Edward had always bristled under these constraints, but during the making of Fair Warning, he began to assert himself to a much greater extent, often hanging out in the studio until the wee hours, tinkering and writing alone with the help of engineer Donn Landee. Songs that were worked out during daylight hours often became twisted into something entirely different when Edward was left to his own devices. He was an artist whose particular vision was beginning to veer sharply from the vision of those around him.
In retrospect, Fair Warning stands as Van Halen’s hardest and most muscular album (the closest to being true metal), and for that reason it remains a favorite among the band’s hard-core fans. But it lacked a single hummable track, or one that would easily translate to radio airplay, which made it a harder sell to a mass audience. Simply put, it was the band’s least accessible album—a collection of songs that shared a common theme: Life is fucking hard. This was a far cry from the party songs that had marked Van Halen’s arrival a few years earlier, as well as from subsequent albums that would catapult the band into the stratosphere of mainstream popularity.
While critical reviews for Fair Warning were relatively kind, the album initially sold at a pace far below that of its predecessors. Released in late April, shortly before we went out on tour, Fair Warning was hampered by a lack of radio airplay. It was the strangest thing: here we were, out on the road, playing one sold-out arena after another, and yet fans apparently were not terribly enthusiastic about buying the new album. We were not accustomed to this, and frankly we weren’t sure what to do about it.
I had an idea that things weren’t going well, but it wasn’t until Carl Scott called me into his office in the summer that I realized the extent to which Fair Warning had underperformed. The album had struggled to reach gold status, and looked very much like it might become the first Van Halen album to fail to go platinum.
“Carl,” I said, “we can’t not go platinum. That’s unacceptable for this band.”
He shrugged. “Unacceptable or not, it might just happen.”
“Isn’t there something we can do?”
Carl sighed deeply and nodded. “Yeah, there is. But it’s not cheap. Go down and talk to the guys in promotion; they’ll give you the details.”
And with that, Carl wiped his hands of the whole sordid affair, which was precisely the right thing for him to do.
That same day I wound up having an enlightening conversation with the head of publicity at Warner, during which I learned the finer points of an age-old illicit system of promotion known as payola. Basically, it works like this: through intermediaries (payola brokers, for want of a better term), we could buy airplay for the album and various singles at any radio station in the country, which in turn was likely to result in increased sales for the album. That’s just the way it worked; without massive radio exposure, it was very hard for an album to reach platinum status. I had heard of payola, of course, but had presumed that the practice had long faded away by the early 1980s. In fact, it was alive and well. With Van Halen, we had been fortunate in not needing such a boost with our first few albums. The band was a true organic success, its audience expanding through word of mouth, fantastic live performances, and songwriting that resulted in numerous hit singles.
Now, though, we had a bit of a roadblock. It was time to play by the game’s dirtiest unwritten rules. I had no idea what was involved or what it might cost, but as the plan was laid out for me, it became apparent that the fee would be substantial. A large station in a major market, such as Los Angeles or New York, was referred to as a P1. To guarantee airplay at a P1 would cost five thousand dollars.
For a single station!
A P2 was a secondary station, usually located in a smaller but still significant market: think Columbus, Ohio, and Grand Rapids, Michigan. The cost for airplay at a P2 was three thousand dollars.
Finally, at the bottom of the ladder, were the P3 stations, often located in the hinterlands, but sometimes with significant reach. Buying a P3 cost a thousand bucks. If this doesn’t sound like a lot of money, well, it added up very quickly. As the meeting wore on, I did the math in my head and came up with a conservative estimate: it would cost us at least a couple hundred thousand dollars to guarantee coverage across the country. And the money would come directly out of our pockets. Warner Bros. would not be picking up the tab.
Armed with this disturbing information, I called a meeting with the band. I held nothing back.
“Here’s the deal, boys. We made a mediocre album and we’re not getting away with it this time.”
Al was the first to speak up, which kind of surprised me, as David often dominated meetings that revolved around business matters. “What are you talking about, Noel? The album is doing great, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s not. In fact, right now it looks like we won’t even go platinum.”
Dead silence. It had been a long time since I had seen the band so utterly dumbstruck. Finally, Al spoke again.
“What are you talking about? We have to go platinum; we’re a platinum band, for Christ’s sake.”
“Were,” I corrected. “We were a platinum band. Right now we are a band whose latest album is being met with indifference.”
This got David’s attention. The last thing he wanted was to be . . . average.
“Fuck this, Noel,” he said. “There has to be something we can do. We’re out there every night on the road, working our asses off. There must be a way to turn this into big numbers for the album.”
“Oh, there’s a way, all right, but it has nothing to do with your live shows. Fact is, radio stations aren’t crazy about the album. It’s too . . . well . . . weird. So they aren’t playing it. And until they start playing it, we’re not going to get the numbers we want.”
“Okay, so how do we get them to play it?” David asked.
“That’s a great question,” I responded. “But you’re not going to like the answer.”
I proceeded to explain the process of buying airtime at stations across the country. I told them how much it would cost per station; like me, they did the math in their heads and very quickly came to the conclusion that this was going to be an expensive endeavor. (They were no longer the clueless boys they had been when we first got together.)
“Five thousand fucking dollars? Per station?” Al shouted incredulously.
Even Michael, ordinarily quiet during band meetings, seemed flummoxed. “Oh, man, this is going to hurt.”
“Yeah, it is,” I said. “And we don’t have to do it. I’ll leave it up to you. But here’s the truth: if we don’t buy some airtime, this album is not going platinum anytime soon.”
As was customary in these sorts of discussions, the band deferred to David. After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, he gave the plan his blessing.
“Bottom line is, we can’t afford to be just a gold band anymore. So do what you have to do. We trust you, Noel. Make it happen.”
And so I did. For the next few weeks I took countless meetings and phone calls, setting up deals with radio stations large and small throughout the country. I wrote a check for more than two hundred grand and gave it to our promotion guy, who in turn handed it over to the payola brokers, who in turn wrote smaller checks—or handed over wads of cash—to scores of individual radio stations. What happened to those smaller payments is anyone’s guess, but you can use your imagination: in many cases, I believe, the cash was used to buy drugs (primarily cocaine), which became a tool in the effort to convince programming directors and disc jockeys of the merits of a particular song or album. And lo and behold, Fair Warning began to get significant airplay. Tracks that were not even intended as singles started showing up in the regular rotation.
Go figure.
For me, it was an interesting position to be in. I had always represented either bands that got no airplay at all, and thus weren’t worth any sort of payola investment, or bands that received all the airplay they wanted, without coercion of any type. But here was a band whose popularity and success had reached a level that created certain expectations, and those expectations had to be met. At any cost. In order to be deemed a platinum album for 1981, Fair Warning had to sell a million units within the calendar year. It never occurred to me that this would be a problem, but it was. In the end, though, our nearly quarter-million-dollar investment proved worthwhile, when the album reached platinum status on November 18, and we all breathed a sigh of relief. Eventually, Fair Warning would sell more than 2 million copies, but it was the slowest-selling album of the David Lee Roth era for Van Halen. Maybe that’s because it was the album that least reflected the influence and interest of Roth himself. For better or worse, the guy was dialed in to his audience. And he wanted to make that audience happy. I’m not sure Edward cared about any of that. First and foremost, he made music for himself.
But this was a significant come-to-Jesus moment for all of us. We realized that Van Halen couldn’t continue to crank out one album per year, usually cobbled together in a few weeks of frantic recording after endless months on the road. Although still a remarkable live act, Van Halen as a studio band had begun to slip ever so slightly. And they knew it.
“We can’t do this anymore,” David said.
“Yeah, no more fourteen-day records,” Edward added. “We’ve been coming off the road and cranking out these albums. We need more time, Noel.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “I’ll make sure you get it.”
THE FAIR WARNING TOUR ended in spectacular fashion, with a pair of sold-out shows at the Tangerine Bowl in Orlando, Florida, as the opening act for the Rolling Stones. This was the first time Van Halen had played with the Stones since opening for the band at the New Orleans Superdome in 1978. Since that time, Van Halen had ascended to superstardom; as for the Stones, well, they remained ageless. In ’78 the band was touring to promote the critically acclaimed album Some Girls, a career highlight released at a time when the Stones were supposedly getting a little too long in the tooth to do this sort of thing. Now, three years later, they were at it again, with the album Tattoo You, a massive commercial and critical success anchored by “Start Me Up,” which became not merely a hit single but one of the Stones’ most enduring titles.
So, even with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards approaching forty years of age, the Rolling Stones were not merely still relevant but arguably the biggest band in the world. Van Halen wouldn’t have played second fiddle to many bands in those days, but the Stones were icons, and when the call came to open two shows at the Tangerine Bowl in late October, we didn’t hesitate to accept. It seemed a perfect way to end the year—or at least the touring part of it.
Both shows were fantastic; sure, the crowd of 65,000 was there primarily to see the Stones, but Van Halen had its share of fans, as well, and did a stellar job of winning over those who might have been neutral on the subject. With only an hour of allotted stage time, the band jettisoned a half dozen songs from its normal playlist during the Fair Warning tour but added an ass-kicking version of “Summertime Blues”—a surefire crowd-pleaser.
One of my favorite memories from the first day occurred before the concert even began. It was after sound check and we were up on the deck, looking out over the Tangerine Bowl, somewhat awestruck by the scope of it, and the fact that we had come so far in a relatively short period of time. There is something at once exhilarating and humbling about playing in a sold-out football stadium, alongside one of the greatest bands in rock ’n’ roll history. As we were standing there, out walked Mick Jagger; it was like God himself had entered our midst. Now, I had worked with the Stones before, back in ’71, so I knew Mick a little bit. Though small and slightly built, not physically impressive in a traditional sense, there is something about the way he carries himself, even when offstage, that commands attention. He has that strut and swagger thing going all the time, and obviously his face is among the most unique in pop culture history. When Mick enters a room, you can’t help but stop and stare. He has this effect not just on the average Joe but on other celebrities, as well, musicians in particular. The guys in Van Halen were no different. As Mick stopped to chat, they all fell silent, even David. But the cutest moment was when Mick turned his attention to Edward.
“You know, Edward,” he began, in that unmistakably guttural, marble-mouthed way, “you are a fucking brilliant guitar player.”
Coming from someone who shared the stage each night with Keith Richards, an acknowledged master of the art form, this was high praise indeed, and so we all turned to look at Ed. How would he respond? The short answer is, he didn’t. Instead, he just sort of scuffed the ground with the toe of his boot and avoided making eye contact while smiling like a nervous schoolboy (similar to the way he acted upon first meeting Valerie Bertinelli, who, it should be noted, was present for both of the Tangerine Bowl shows, and clearly starstruck in such close proximity to the Stones’ singer). After several awkward moments, Edward half-whispered, “Thank you.” And that was it.
But Mick did not just walk away. He hung out for a while, making small talk and surveying the scene. At one point he gestured toward Al’s drum kit, attached to which were two large fire extinguishers.
“What’s all that, then?” Mick said. “Fire extinguishers? You guys are known for pulling off some stunts, right?”
Nods all around.
“You wouldn’t be doing some stunt with those fire extinguishers, now, would you?”
Heads shaking vigorously. “Oh no, no, no! We’d never do that. It’s going to be a regular, you know, show . . . and . . . you know, we’re not going to pull any stunts. We’re just really glad to be here.”
Mick smiled. “That’s good.”
I wouldn’t say that Mick enjoyed the adoration being heaped upon him by his opening act, but I wouldn’t say he hated it, either. I think it was utterly normal for him, and he accepted it. As for “stunts,” well, those were actually left to the Stones, whose set concluded with a fireworks display in which tiny American and British flags rained on the audience. A nice touch, I thought.
Roughly twelve hours later we were back at the Tangerine Bowl for the second concert, and the last show of the year. Not surprising, the boys began partying well before they took the stage—not to the extent that it impaired their performance but enough that they were pretty riled up by the time we left the catering area and hopped into a private limo for a ride halfway around the stadium, where the dressing room was located. Almost immediately upon entering the limo, they began behaving badly. This was not uncommon on the road, and it wasn’t uncommon when traveling by limo. What made it unusual was that we hadn’t played yet, and the limo was not simply a shitty cookie-cutter model that was part of a fifty-car fleet owned by a large company. This was a private car, owned and operated by the driver. It was a beautiful French limo, meticulously maintained. Unfortunately, with Van Halen, drinking often was accompanied by wanton disregard for the property and dignity of those in proximity. So I wasn’t terribly surprised when Al, sitting in the front seat, asked the driver, leaning forward and tapping the glove compartment door mischievously, “What’s in here, man?”
The driver smiled nervously. “Just some papers. Registration, manual—you know, the usual stuff.”
“Really?” Al said. “Let’s take a look.”
He popped open the glove compartment, pulled everything out, and began tossing it around the limo, provoking howls of adolescent approval from the rest of the guys. The driver, meanwhile, tried to keep his eye on the road while casting a wary glance at Al.
And that was merely the beginning.
There is no way for me to put a positive or even a benign spin on what happened next. All of a sudden, as if he didn’t want to be outdone, David began tearing apart the back of the limo. Armrests were ripped from their sockets. A door was opened and closed so hard and so fast, and so many times, that it came loose from its hinges. Most of this happened while we were still moving, as the car was traveling at less than twenty miles per hour around a parking lot. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and tried to calm the guys down, but they were in a frenzy by now. The driver offered only the meekest resistance, protesting, “Please . . . my car.” At one point the car came to a stop and Edward jumped out and began dancing on the hood and then the roof, pummeling the sheet metal with his boots, until the car looked like it had been attacked with a baseball bat.
When we finally arrived at our destination, the guys jumped out, laughing hysterically. They offered neither an apology nor an explanation. They were rock gods, and in this state of inebriation exhibited complete and utter disregard for the personal property of others. Though Van Halen had a long history of trashing hotel rooms and dressing rooms, this was different. This was not a Holiday Inn. This was a car owned by their driver; it was his only source of income, and he clearly took great pride in caring for the vehicle. As the band walked away, I could see on the man’s face not anger or even sadness but something closer to defeat. I waited until the guys were completely out of earshot, and then I approached the driver.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I said. “Don’t worry, I will pay for all the damage, and I will pay for all the work time that you’ll miss if you can’t use your limo. Whatever it costs, the band will take care of it.”
“Really?” he said. “You can make that happen?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s only fair. If you need five or six days to get the car fixed and painted and detailed, and you can’t accept customers during that time, then we should compensate you, because it’s our fault.”
I paused. “And I apologize for our behavior.”
As we shook hands, the driver said, “That’s very nice of you, Mr. Monk.”
“Not really. It’s just the right thing to do.”
I don’t recall exactly how much it cost to repair the man’s limo, but I’m sure it was comfortably into five figures. This was just another example of why Van Halen had trouble making money on the road: our expenses always seemed to outstrip revenue, in part because of the size of our entourage and equipment, but also because of the destruction so often left in the band’s wake.
Although both shows at the Tangerine Bowl were terrific, the limousine incident left a bad taste in my mouth. Sometimes the guys could be very sweet, but other times, especially when they drank heavily, they could be not just inconsiderate but downright mean. And I had no control over any of it.
A few hours after the show I was sitting alone in the dressing room, just relaxing and sipping a beer, when Edward walked in. Limousine incident notwithstanding, I was in a pretty good mood—it’s hard not to feel a giant sense of relief and accomplishment when a tour comes to an end, especially one as successful as this one.
“How’s it going, Ed?” I asked. From the look on his face, I could tell that this was not the right question. For some reason, Edward was in a foul mood. He got that way sometimes, usually after drinking heavily. I found out later that he’d been hanging with some of his buddies out on the green, putting away copious amounts of vodka; no doubt smoking weed and doing coke as well. Whatever the cocktail, Edward was by now obviously wasted, and when he was drunk and mean, it was painful to be around him; the transformation was too sad and dramatic.
He took a seat next to me on the couch. I tried to make small talk but got only half-formed slurred responses. Having seen this routine before, I knew it wouldn’t end well, so I decided to leave.
“Edward, you know what?” I said, pulling myself up from the couch. “I’m going for a walk.”
Before I could take a step, Edward yelled at me. “Yeah, walk away, you fuckin’ drunk.”
With my back to Edward, I started to form a response, which was probably not a great idea. But before the words came out of my mouth, I felt a hand in the middle of my back. Edward gave me a big, drunken shove, causing me to instantly lose my balance. The floor of the dressing room (located in a trailer) was slick with a variety of liquids—water, beer, sweat, and soda, to name just a few—so I was basically put on skates by Edward’s shove. And let me tell you—Edward might have looked like a skinny guitar geek onstage, but he was not a weakling. He was a tough kid who was deceptively strong. Combine that fact with his orneriness and my overly trusting nature (I should not have turned my back on him), and the result was a nasty injury. I careened across the trailer and slammed headfirst into a doorknob. And by headfirst, I mean that most sensitive ridge along the eyebrow. The spot that always seems to burst open in boxing matches.
I hit the floor and just sat there for a moment in stunned silence. Then I felt a steady trickle of warmth as blood poured into my eye and down my cheek. Edward stood up from the couch and looked at me. He put a hand to his mouth.
“Oh, man. Noel . . . I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
I didn’t even respond. I was too dazed. My ears were ringing and my head throbbed. As Eddie ran out the door, a couple other people came in and helped clean me up and get me into a limo. I ran a hand along the cut. It was nearly wide and deep enough for me to insert a finger.
“Better take me to the hospital,” I said.
Several hours and nine stitches later I was back at my hotel room. I saw Ed briefly the next day, before we left, but neither of us mentioned the incident, despite the fact that I had a black eye and a bandage on my head. In fact, weird as it might sound, we never spoke of it again. When I got home, my girlfriend Jan, whom I lived with, was there to greet me.
“What the hell happened to you?” she asked.
“Ah, nothing. Just a little run-in with a doorknob.”
She ran a sympathetic hand along my cheek and smiled. “You’re in a tough fucking business, aren’t you?”
I laughed. “Honey, you have no idea.”