My Late Night with Eddie Van Halen
He called my girlfriend to come over, and he got stuck with me in the process.
One night long ago, Eddie Van Halen called my girlfriend in the middle of the night and told her to come over to his house because he was playing music and he was her neighbor. My girl said to Eddie, “Can my boyfriend come?” I would’ve loved to have seen his face when she said that. He said, “um….sure, bring him.”
So we go up the private path at 3AM and we can hear the piano emanating out of his house like it was a scene from Phantom of the Opera hearing the organ from the top of the hill.
When we entered the house, we saw a grand piano in the middle of the living room and two massive PA speakers. Those were the only things that existed in the living room.
He played the piano and slammed the lid as to accentuate and experiment with the sound, exactly the way a mad scientist of music might. In between moments, Eddie would take a swig of red wine right out of the bottle, take a drag from his cigarette, and then rest it in one of the piano’s chambers that he used as an impromptu ash tray. Every time he played the progression, SLAM would go the lid. It was so bizarre and yet I marveled at Eddie’s genius to think totally outside anyone’s notion of the box. I mean, slam the lid to see if it would make a great music sound? Brilliant!
Eddie then led us into the dining room / den area and on a pool table taken over by a Frankenstein’s monster array of guitar parts scattered all over.
Out of the pile, Eddie pulled out one of his signature red guitars, you know, THE ONE. It wasn’t even on a mantle or some Mission Impossible style security room. It was buried in a pile of fret boards, necks, tuning keys, headstocks. He dusted off the guitar, said, “here you go,” and handed it to me to hold.
I shit my pants. I started to freeze up but found a way to get past that and started nervously strumming a very basic G, D, A minor strum just to feel the magic of this axe (like wielding Luke Skywalker’s light saber or Roger Federer’s tennis racket), to which, Eddie asked, “Do you play?”
I reacted, “uh, nah,” my fight or flight mode fully engaged. Looking back, I think Eddie wanted to jam but I was not of sound mind in that present moment to comprehend the question behind the question.
Dumbest thing I’ve ever said in my entire life. I still kick myself about it.
We went upstairs and he showed me a small recording area and on the floor, spilling into the hallway — hundreds of DAT tapes (Digital Audio Tapes) of Eddie’s original demos, riffs and any other creative ideas that would come from his head. I was so tempted to slip one in my pocket but I did not want to piss off the Record Manager in the Sky. I sort of wish that I would’ve taken one, if only to be able to listen to the greatness of his originality in its rawest form when I’d feel sad or when my own creativity was going to shit.
But I’ll just listen to 1984 instead and reminisce about my night with Edward Van Halen, rock guitar god. By the way, Eddie, if you have a Medium.com account, I wanted you to know that I would’ve let you make love to my girlfriend. She was a cutie and deserved to feel like Valerie Bertinelli.
