Van Halen Pt. 2: Pulling a Gun on Fred Durst, Racing Ferraris and Lambos, and Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Most Faithful Servant

the Mount Rushmore of guitar playing. It's about a band who made great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron called let me get some of that Podcake MK one. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to these dreams by Heart, And why would I play you that specific slice of authentic sibling cheese? Could I afford it?

Because that was the number one song in America on March twenty fourth, nineteen eighty six, and that was the day the Van Halen released their seventh studio album, fifty one fifty, their first with new lead singer Sammy Hagar, an album that allowed the band to reach new commercial heights, while unresolved problems continued to bubble unseen beneath the surface. On this episode Anthemic Sibling Cheese a military assault vehicle, a baretta, a code and Van Halen, I'm Jake Brennan,

and this is dis Graceland. Eddie Van Halen jammed his combat boot down on the gas pedal. The assault vehicle he recently bought at auction roared to life, tearing ass down the quiet streets of upscale Beverly Hills. There was no weapon in the machine gun mouth, but that didn't make the vehicle anymore street legal. This decommissioned slab of government steel was very much illegal, but Eddie didn't care, just like he didn't care about the gun he was holding.

He was on a mission, and to carry out that mission he required a certain level of comfort. Beverly Hills made him uncomfortable, and that's not because he wasn't welcome. It was two thousand and one, after all, and Eddie Van Halen, the guitar player of his generation, the one in the same who just decades earlier, had reinvented the instrument and in many ways revitalized a genre, was very rich and very famous. It was the pretension that bugged him, though,

the vulgar display of one's wealth, status, and power. Eddie didn't play that game. He wasn't a star. He's just a regular guy, a kid stuck in a grown man's body who liked to play guitar. But if you went and did something dumb like keep one of his guitars locked up in your fancy mansion and then did something equally dumb like not answer his phone calls to arrange a time for him to come pick up that guitar like a normal person, that kind of Beverly Hills bullshit

lit a fire under Eddie van Halen's regular ass. So Eddie van Halen tore ass in his military assault vehicle through the nine two to one on a zip code with no shirt on. His tattered pants were being held up by a piece of rope while he drove, and the boots on his feet, the ones that were managing the gas pedal on the break at the moment, those were wrapped up in duct tape. And his long hair was up in a bun as a samurai in feudal

Japan centuries ago would have worn it. And just like the samurais of old, Eddie van Halen sought enlightenment, believed in salvation, and lived by a code. Enlightenment came through his music, Salvation came from within, and his code was governed by three points honor, discipline, and morality. This was how he lived his life, or how he tried to at least. And God rewards those who seek him and

all that. Eddie van Halen was a seeker, a searcher, just like that other iconic American, John Wayne, a man who made westerns about anti hero cowboys that often borrowed from Japanese samurai films, the same ones who wore their hair like Eddie was now wearing his samurais Cowboys, John Wayne, Eddie van Halen. It was all connected. And now, at forty six years old, with the days of routinely putting up hits on the billboard charts seemingly behind him, Eddie

van Halen's purpose was more elusive than ever. In a shifting landscape of grunge new metal in Britney, Spears Eddie sow more than just his signature tone. He was looking for yet another new singer for the band that bore his name van Halen, a band which had famously or infamously burned through three vocalists over the course of its

story career. Now gets all that in a minute. And he was looking for meeting too, after recently separating from his wife of two decades, Valerie Burton Nellie, and he was looking for a cure for the cancer that was

growing in his tongue. But at this very moment, what Eddie van Halen was really looking for was his guitar, and he knew just where it was held captive inside the Beverly Hills home of one Fred Durst, that backwards red hat enthusiast and lead vocalist of Limp Biscuit, the band which just two years earlier had incited a riot at Woodstock ninety nine with their macho fucko anthem break stuff. Today, however,

it was Eddie who was doing the inciting. He drove his self vehicle onto Fred's well manicured front lawn put it in Parker. However, you get those things to stop and let it idle nice and loud, He jumped from the driver's seat, pulled the gun from his waistband and made a bee line for the front door of the house. He knocked. Red Hat answered, Eddie wasted no time. He put his gun to that stupid fucking lid sitting on top of Fred Durst's stupid fucking face, and said, Hey,

where's my shit? Motherfucker. Twenty four hours earlier, the vibe was way different. Eddie was hanging out with Fred, the man he'd only just met, and he was hanging out with him inside of Fred's house, jamming with Limpiscus minus guitarist Wes Borland, who had recently left the group. Now, if you know anything about Eddie van Halen and about

limp Biscuit, you're probably thinking what the fuck? And yeah, even Fred Durst himself, when a mutual friend suggested he audition Eddie for lymp Biscuit's new lead guitarist, said, and I quote that would be hilarious. The greatest guitar player ever jams with the worst band ever. Again, that's a Fred Durst quote, But also consider this, Eddie van Halen hadn't actually bought a new record since Peter Gabriel's album

so which came out in nineteen eighty six. That's fifteen years before this scene that I'm describing to you took place. So it's entirely plausible that eddievan Halen had no idea what he was getting into when he agreed to jam

with lymp Biscuit. Maybe in this vulnerable moment of searching for something new, maybe Eddie was just open to an opportunity, any opportunity, just like he and Van Halen were once upon a time open to crazy opportunities as well, like jamming with Joe Caer or Ozzy Osbourne and even Daryl Hall to fill their lead singer's empty shoes. No shit, look it up, but the insane pipe dream of Limp Biscuit with Eddie Van Halen on lead guitar was not

meant to be. Eddie knew it as soon as he walked inside was hit by a cloud of marijuana smoke. Eddie didn't do weed, but when it came to Eddie's stimulant and depressant of choice, that'd be cocaine and alcohol, and there were tools to help him work, he thought, not something he used to unwind and party with the guys, Eddie told Fred thanks, but no thanks. He bounced fast, said he'd be back for his guitar and gear the

next day. That next morning, he called Fred to schedule a time to go pick up his stuff, but Fred

never answered, and Fred never called him back. Fred Durst gave Eddie van Halen the brush off, And now Fred Durst was regretting that decision, that in action, that lack of respect, or so Eddie van Halen would like to think, the greatest guitar player ever was standing on the lawn of the front man the worst band ever, still aiming his gun at that stupid fucking hat while some clowns on Fred's payroll load a gear into Eddie's assault vehicle.

And this was such a bad idea that Eddie thought to himself there was only one musician he was compatible with, and I mean compatible in the eternal mind mild kind of way, and that was his big brother, Alex van

Halen's drummer. No other musical relationship ever lasted, not with David Lee Roth, van Halden's original lead singer, who, depending on who you ask, either quit or was fired from the band back in nineteen eighty five, and definitely not with Gary Charon, the guy from Extreme whose tenure as Van Halen's front man at the end of the nineties was as short as one of the cigarettes that burned down to the filter in the headstock of Eddie's guitar. Then there was the one they called the red Rocker,

Sammy Hagar. He eventually went the way of Diamond Dave out on the skids after his initial winning dynamic with the Van Halen Brothers turned sour, but not before he helped take the band higher and higher. Straight up, they climbed higher than they had ever gone before or since. Eddie wanted to go there again, not for the money or the fame he had all that. He wanted relevance. He wanted to matter again. What had it been six

years since Sammy left? Eddie wondered, if it was all just water out of the bridge, if you could go home again. And as he watched Fred Durrist's muscle load his gear into his illegal assault vehicle, Eddie van Halen decided to do two things pronto. Number one, get the fuck out of Beverly Hills before he was handcuffed and tossed into the back of a police cruiser. And number two, wring up his old friend Sammy Hagar. Sixteen years earlier, in nineteen eighty five, Eddie van Halen was once again

behind the driver's seat. This time it wasn't an old military vehicle, but instead his equally attention grabbing Lamborghini. He pumped the clutch with his left foot down, shifted, and then let the Lambeau hug the steep curve of ahead. Then the road straightened out. This was the part Eddie loved, clutch stick gas. The Lambo swooned like one of those busty co eds riding a rail at the show, leaving Malibu in the dust and setting its sights in the valley.

Over the hill and the next lane over, a jet black Ferrari suddenly appeared. Keeping pace. Eddie looked over at Sammy Hagar, sitting behind the wheel of his five twelve BB. Eddie gave Sammy that world famous ear to ear granted, the one typically reserved when he had a guitar in his hands, and was blowing even his own mind. As fast behind the wheel as he was on a fretboard,

and almost as happy. The two cars shot up the open road together eighty ninety one hundred miles an hour, Eddie clearly with a new lease on life, and Sammy proving that the boast he'd made in his most recent hit single was one hundred percent authentic. He could not drive fifty five. Only now Sammy Hagar was no longer going the road alone as a solo artist, but as the new lead singer for one of the biggest bands in the world, Van Halen. Sammy could hardly believe it.

For Eddie and Alex van Halen, it wasn't just believable after all the circus cheeseball bullshit that they'd endured with their original singer, David Lee Roth. It was absolutely necessary to quote Alex. At the time, we had a toothache for about eleven years, went to the dentist and had it extracted. Now we have a crown with a gold cap on him, and a gold cap crown is as

a gold cap crown does so. Sammy Hagar bought a place near Eddie's second house in Malibu, and each afternoon the two would raise their fancy cars to Eddie's other house in studio in the San Fernando Valley, specifically Studio City. Work on the band's seventh studio album there first with Sammy on the mic, and then race each other home after dark and after Eddie was good and shift faced.

Sometimes Sammy would take his Ejag or his Cobra. Today it was a sleek midnight machine, as sleek as the music he was now making with Eddie Alex and Michael Anthony, van Halen's long suffering bass player. And holy shit was the music sleek and huge sounding. Van Halen two point zero sounded just like that metallic sphere looked on the cover of their album fifty one to fifty, which is

to say, polished, glossy, and yes heavy. Fifty one to fifty named after Eddie's home studio, which itself was named after a section of the California Penal Code that allowed for the detention of an adult suffering a mental health crisis. Fifty one to fifty was not by Van Halen's longtime collaborator Ted Templeton, but by foreigners Mick Jones, who you should know is also the stepfather of Mark Ronson, But

that's beside the point. But back to the point. Mick Jones gave that record that Van Halen was making a modern sheen. When it hit shelves on March twenty fourth, nineteen eighty six, supported by Monster singles like why Can't This Be Love and Dreams fifty one fifty went gangbusters in the mid eighties, Van Halen mattered. The og metal Heads,

on the other hand, begged to disagree. Van Halen could never be Van Halen without their beloved David le Ros call it a vocal minority because all that bitching and morning was taking place as fifty one to fifty race straight to the top and look, man, I don't care who you are, you have got to give it up for Sammy Hagar. Maybe you like the Day Years better. Hell I like the Day Years better. But maybe you

go even further. Maybe you think they were more pure, or they had less power ballads and fewer keyboards, or maybe you condescend. He referred to Sammy's tenure as Van Hagar or whatever. But it doesn't matter. Sooner or later you're gonna come around to the Sammy Hagar version of Van Halen. Okay, it also doesn't matter that Sammy Hagar came from a press shirt kind of world, and Eddie and Alex were the equivalent of a beer soaked stale beer smelling dorm room. You know best at both worlds.

But here are the facts. Van Halen with Sammy Hagar went to number one on the Billboard album chart, and not just in nineteen eighty six, but four times in a row over the next nine years, which is a feat that the band was never able to pull off with David Lee Ross. I love David Lee Ross, now this is no doubt. Dave was flashy as shit. He got your attention with those midair splits off the drum riser. He was goofy and schlocky showbiz to his core in the best kind of way, and he delighted in being

Van Halen's mouthpiece. But David Lee Roth ran that mouth like a cocky sixteen year old, just as Eddie here was running his lambeau. Not that Eddie wasn't still a sixteen year old himself, because in many ways he most serve was. But unlike Dave, Eddie was a musical genius, faithfully serving his master like a samurai old. The thing was for Eddie, his master was his music, and music,

to quote Eddie van Halen overpowers bullshit. That was the answer Eddie gave after he was asked if He felt vindicated when fifty one point fifty went to number one following the messy split with David Lee Roth, Eddie was in a great place. In Eddie's eyes. Sammy was not a peacock like Dave, but a true musician, and since Sammy played guitar, Eddie could stretch out in concert and play keyboards, which Dave always gave him shit about. But without Dave, the music continued to reward Eddie van Halen

it's most humble servant. He didn't even need a samurai bu in his hair at this point to be the noble warrior that he was. But the music wasn't the only thing holding Van Halen the band together. Despite outward appearances, this was still fragile unit of four men. Every day something threatened to destroy it. All the boozing, the drugging, the non stop fucking it was taking place in puff

tents beneath the stage. Yes, all four guys had their own tent in which they indulged in their wildest sexual fantasies, and those tents were set up beneath the stage at their concerts. Don't ask me how it just happened, so that they could act upon those sexual fantasies while the show went on.

publishing shrank down to a measly ten percent. These tensions were enough to break up any band, but add to it Eddie and Alyx's increasing belief that Sammy wasn't working as hard as they were, a suspicion that they'd previously experienced with Dave. And it's crazy that things didn't fall apart sooner than they did. And the reason things didn't all fall apart wasn't because of the music. It was because of Ed Leffler. Ed Leffler was more than just

a rock and roll manager. He was a father who wanted to make all of his children happy when he was brought on board along with Sammy. Leffler's first order of business was to make sure that relations between the van Halen brothers and Sammy didn't go the way they went with Dave. Ed Leffler ran interference. Ed Leffler maintained a proper balance of power. Ed Leffler would take a

bullet for his clients. In fact, he took a fist to the face over and over and over, trapped inside an elevator at a show in Dallas, where an unknown assailant beat the living piss out of him and put him in a hospital. The guys never had to worry about ed Leffler's loyalty, but they did worry about his health. First there was that assault in Dallas, and soon after

there was his cancer diagnosis, and it looked bad. As bad as the scene, Eddie was now witnessing outside the window of his studio City House every night, some crepe parking a van across the street, watching him, watching his wife, Valerie, and their newborn son, Wolfgang. No one ever got out of the van, It just sat there. And the cops could only do so much, and Eddie called them and they came and made the van move, and the van left,

and then the van came back. Eddie wasn't about to sit idly by like an idiot, only to find out the hard way that the person inside was a demented psycho.

Jimmy Page playing his guitar with a violinbo anymore? Old fucking news Man Jimmy's little trick couldn't hold a candle to Eddie's makita as it revved up the strings of his brand new Ernie Ball music Man guitar in the video for Poundcake, the lead single from Van Halen's ninth studio album, third with Sammy, titled for Unlawful Kernel Knowledge, which, yes, was named that way on purpose for the juvenile acronym, but calling the album for Unlawful Kernel Knowledge saved it

from being slapped with the dreaded parental advisory sticker that was cropping up on other notable albums released in nineteen ninety one, such as The Red Hot Chili, Pepper's Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic Weens, The Pod, and The Guns N' Roses. Double album Music Illusion one and two. And though Van Halen's new album was hailed by many as a return to form a capital R rock record, such praise by Van Halen's fan base couldn't save them from a two out

of five stars review in Rolling Stone magazine. Only months later. That same publication would give Nirvana's never Mind only one star higher than that. So what the fuck did Rolling Stone know? Anyways? When Pepsi came calling, they use Right Now, the album's socially conscious third single for a commercial marketing their brand new crystal Pepsi Eddie. The band and their manager Ed Leffler were making the kind of money Rolling

Stone could only dream of. Ed Lefler, for one, used his steady hand to guide Van Halen through their most commercially viable years. He was a fixer at heart. The only thing it seemed he couldn't fix was the cancer and his thyroid, and by nineteen ninety three, Ed Leffler needed more than crystal pepsi money. He needed a miracle, So Sammy Hagar went looking for one. Sammy knew that whether or not he ended up just another blip on the Van Halen radar, was in large park due to

Leffler's influence. Sammy went above and beyond, and then he went under the table that is below the border, all the way to Mexico, where samples of ed Leffler's urine were sent. Neurotransmitters were extracted from that urine and then sent back in tiny vials. The idea was that you'd shoot up those tiny miracle vials directly into your muscles and the healing would begin, which, according to Sammy, is what Leffler did. Sammy even did it along with him whackado.

I don't know, but desperate times, you know. Ultimately, however, neurotransmitter extracted urine was no match for the Big Sea. In the fall of ninety three, ed Leffler was dead. Suddenly, the layer of protection that Leffler once provided, both internally amongst band members and from the external forces beating down on them was gone. The wheels slowly began to come off, but not before Eddie van Halen's hair came off first. Eddie was sad about ed Leffler's death. He was pissed,

and he was frustrated too. He was overwhelmed by everyone who wanted a piece, and offended by the human behavior that his dead manager had so fiercely shielded him from. The wine bottle in his hand was just about empty, and he brought it to his lips and put the thing out of its misery. His own misery was just beginning. He walked into the bathroom, grabbed an electric razor, and shaved his head till every strand of his trademark long hair was on the floor. He stared at himself and

tried to understand. He didn't know why he'd just done that, but the more he looked at himself, the more he saw his bald head as a clean slate, a fresh start. He quit drinking, just like his brother Alex had done some years earlier, with the help of rehab. Eddie didn't do it that way. He just put his mind to it. Some zenboos, this type stuff, salvation coming from within, and

all that being sober as a total mind fuck. He had relied on alcohol for so long as part of his playing, as part of his work of how he served his Lord. The music booze lowered his inhibitions, which in his mind allowed him to attempt things he never would have attempted had he been straight. Now he no longer felt comfortable in his own skin. In fact, he

was noticing just how much he hurt. His hips were killing him and Van Halen called their nineteen ninety five tour behind their tenth album Balance the Ambulance Tour, because Eddie was getting around with a cane and Alex was wearing a neck brace so that he could play through three ruptured discs in his vertebrae. It was on this tour, in April of nineteen ninety five that Eddie van Halen found himself racing through the Burbank Airport to catch a flight down to a show in San Diego. The carry

on bag was gripped tight in his hand. He habbled his way to security, those bad hips screaming at him, just burning it. Wasn't accustomed to running from terminal to terminal on his own like this. He was used to a charmed life of private jets, even if he claimed to reject all that rockstar bullshit that came along with it, that he was no rock star. He was just a regular rold guitar player and this is just a regular

role commercial flight that he was about to board. So he handed that regular carry on bag to an airport's security officer, and the officer on zipped it and looked inside. His eyes went wide, like there's something very very wrong here wide. He turned his gaze from the open bag to Eddie and then back again, and this gave Eddie pause.

Eddie began to freak. His stomach was in his throat, and the officer stuck his hand inside the bag and then, very slowly, very carefully, he pulled out Eddie van Halen's loaded BURRETTA. One week later, Eddie stood before Judge, rocking that regular guy charm, explaining how the twenty five caliber gun was something he'd initially bought for protection. You get

it right, judge, You've got a family right. A judge has got to understand better than most that the world is full of freaks and weirdos, all of them moving in ways the rest of us can't comprehend. And when Eddie van Halen is moving, moving through space and time from one town to the next on tour, he regularly brings that same piece of protection with him. The beretta

is second nature, just like one of his guitars. The thing is, he normally travels on private flights where he gets to make the rules.

feel like an albatross around their necks. I'm talking about the Greatest Hits album Sammy was assembling in order to pay for his divorce, a collection of solo greatest hits, which whatever you do, you Sammy, But he was tacking on two brand new songs to squeeze Moss to narrow from the record company, and not just any two songs, but two songs he had workshopped with Van Halen. The fuck was up with that, Sammy, Hagar, Eddie and Alex were operating songs booze, But they were also operating without

the usual smoke screen of Ed Leffler. So instead of this whole thing being a simple means to an end, a project which frankly the less ed he knew about the better instead all that it looked to Eddie and Alex like Sammy was about to big time them the way they thought David Lee Roth once had Sammy prioritizing his solo career and not giving his all to the band. The band was the thing, The band was it, The

band was family. In the eyes of Eddie van Halen, Sammy Hagar was clearly going against that family, against that code, the code of honor, discipline, the morality. And if a man doesn't have a family, doesn't have a code, then what does he even have. In the eighteen seventies, the modern era had arrived in Japan, and the samurai suddenly found themselves obsolete. By eighteen seventy six, even carrying a sword was illegal. Some of the country's most respected warriors

became beggars. Others assimilated into modern society and found callings as merchants or farmers. Well over one hundred years later, across the Pacific, in California, the modern era found Van Halen trying to make sense of his place inside of it. His Samurai von hairstyle echoed into the distant past as he rode upon his faithful steed, an old military assault vehicle, leaving Beverly Hills in the house of Fred Durst for more regular guy pastures back in the valley, back to

where he belonged. Reunited with his gear, he then reunited the band with Sammy Hagar, which didn't last, just as the two reunions with David Lee Roth didn't last. The Van Halen timeline, perhaps more than that of any other rock band in history, is full of this kind of confounding musical chairs. Even Eddie's sun Wolfgame eventually replaced Michael Anthony on bass. Keeping it all straight is beside the point. Besides,

Eddie van Halen didn't do timelines. Maybe it was two thousand and one, but to Eddie he was still nineteen seventy eight in his heart, in nineteen eighty six in his mind. Who knows if the year twenty twenty actually felt like twenty twenty. To Eddie Van Halen, he was sixty five, no longer wearing his hair like the samurai, but his fate remained tied to those warriors of old. Eddie's kind was now the antiquated one, the innovator, who did what he had to because he had no other choice,

no means, only an unquenchable creative drive. Now in twenty twenty, there was nothing but choices, cheat guitars, kind of decent I guess available at the click of a button, free apps on which you could record your own songs, the world's music library from all of human existence on your phone. There was even a video game which you held a piece of plastic in your hands and you were the guitar hero. Eddie van Halen was a dying breed, and dying,

by the way, was part of the whole deal. You live by your code, you serve your lord, which for Eddie was the music, even if it kills you. And death was coming for him first to try to strike him in his tongue, part of which was removed to cut out the cancer. Eddie went into experimental mode. Just like years ago. He experimented on the edge of his bed with his Frankenstrat and a six pack of Schlitz Talls,

Only this time the experiments were medical. In a two thousand and six interview with Howard Stern, Eddie revealed that he'd secretly started a pathology lab in Long Island with a doctor, then that through that lab he'd beaten his tongue cancer, but that he couldn't reveal exactly how he'd beat it because by doing so, he'd piss off Big

Pharma and maybe go to jail. Which sounds crazy to some of you, I know, But a few years later, Sammy Hagar and his memoir wrote that what Eddie had done was to take a piece of his tongue, a healthy piece, liquefy it, and then inject it back into his body. If this sounds like the failed ed Leffler fix all over again, you're not wrong. But did Eddie

van Halen's fix actually work? Eddie thought so, at least for the moment, at least until the cancer came back later strong, in this time fatal, despite the chemo he received, and also despite the fact that he was using again

not just alcohol but drugs. He was also convinced that the cancer came not from the enormous amount of cigarettes he smoked throughout his life, but from the metal guitar picks he would hold in his mouth whenever he needed both hands free to exhibit his two handed tapping technique. I'm not saying that Eddie van Halen thought he was superhuman, though to many of us he certainly seemed so. But from a very young age he pursued alternative methods when

it came to overcoming obstacles. A guy who has to create his own guitar, create his own style is going to be the same guy who creates his own cure when he's staring down a fatal disease. But Eddie van Halen was no doctor. He was a guitar player who was incapable of any other profession, Just a regular guy trying to stay in music's good graces. Tom Jake Brennan in this is Disgraceland.

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