The day the music died. Again.
I never understood why the song American Pie hit home for so many people. It was before my time. Now I get it.
Every guy has a story of the first time they heard their favorite band or player.
Mine happened on a chilly Friday morning in 1986 riding in a brand new IROC Z convertible, that was fresh from its owner’s father's dealership, with a new engine and a stereo system installed by Doc Brown Enterprises.
“Jim, you got to hear this,” Glenn said as he stomped the gas pedal, sending that birthday car to 100 MPH in 4 seconds down a back road in Daytona Beach. Yes, Daytona has back roads, it's not all sandy beach and homeless people. As I held on for dear life, thanking god for seat belts, something under my butt rumbled. It started faint and slowly intensified. Then the pounding sounds of “Why can’t it be love”, started smacking my entire body as I shut my eyes to the blur of trees racing by. The sound was deafening, but so damn good, all I could do was hold on and breath. Loss of control, transported.
I had been sheltered. Spent most of my life in church, my favorite album was Chicago 17. I knew nothing. And the sad part was my mother was a musician, so for now, we will blame her.
The G-forces made my eyes pop open as Glenn took the car sideways at a desolate intersection on Taylor Road, flooring it, sending me as far into the seat as physics would allow. Then I heard a beautiful sound as “Best of both worlds” thumped in my chest. As I listened, my eyes wide, Glenn was beaming, knowing what this ride to school was doing to me. He knew, that bastard. When Ed’s solo blasted into my head, all I could do was clutch the seatbelt, feeling my soul shudder, the hairs on my arm standing electrified. I had played guitar and keys all my life. But not like this. No one could do this. My brain scrambled to follow what he was doing, to figure it out right then and there. I thought I was good. I played the damn guitar too, man. It’s just scales. Right?
“Can you believe that shit? Man, that's, Eddie Van Halen!”
I had heard bits of Van Halen’s new 5150 album previously this summer, selling ice cream to Yankees on Daytona Beach. I drove a tiny dilapidated Nissan truck with a top-loading freezer from the 60’s in the back and a broken radio. You plugged the boat-anchor freezer in at night, then hauled it around all day in the sun, selling not so frozen diabetes. Cars would pass with bikini-clad tourists smelling of Hawaiian Tropic and bubble gum, with their radios blaring, and my ears would perk up, listening, trying to find this new sound I kept hearing.
As I clutched the seatbelt tighter, we pulled into the parking lot just outside of our small baptist church school. It was then I really realized how sheltered I had been all my life.
Glenn revved the engine which I now heard for the first time. The car, the stereo, the fact that Glenn had a father really didn’t bother me, because as the beast idled, Glenn’s eyes schemed. He cranked that damn radio knob and the intro to “Love Walks In”, erupted into my body, I still feel it today. It really was like an alien had taken over my brain, and Eddie Van Halen became, right then and there, what he is to so many guys. A guitar god.
I read somewhere, in a conversation between Les Paul and Eddie Van Halen, Les Paul has this to say: “that there were only three people on the planet who really knew how to make an electric guitar:
“You, me and Leo Fender.”
When you think you’re good, as I did, and someone like Eddie enters your space, and you must come to terms with this knowledge. You have to do it. You will try anyway. In the end, you put down your guitar and just listen. Because you realise that an Eddie Van Halen solo you have been working on for weeks, is just a cool riff Eddie played between cigarettes, something he would play on a quiet Thursday evening for fun. To him, it was a teardrop, but for you, it's the damn ocean. He was the one we all wanted to be, rock star, married to the beautiful Valerie Bertinelli, his face plastered on a poster on your sister's bedroom wishing wall, and boy could that dude play.
Why did he have to die? There a gap now, and it's felt by thousands. On every social media platform, groups of us talk and share, we build his guitars or buy them for bragging rights, hoping for just a little of his magic to stay with us. Please, let his magic stay for a little while longer. Because we needed Eddie and we still do. I’m not ready to say goodbye, not just yet. I don’t know what stage of grief we are collectively in, but it pisses me off not knowing what to do when the music dies. Maybe a few old timers will know. I’m sure Don Mclean would.
For me, I still feel Glenn’s car beneath me, my ears deafened with that music, that colossal judgment that made me aware of what was possible musically, and to me, Eddie is still out there, on top of the mountain, playing his heart out, being the best.
In a dark, dusty room, down in 5150 studios where Eddie lived and obsessed over his tone, where he wrote some of the best music ever recorded, sit high shelves loaded with scores of multi-track tape recordings, categorized by Eddie himself, of unheard music. His Music. It's not ours yet. I hope Wolfgang, Eddies son, and Alex, Eddies drummer brother, will let some out. They are the caretakers, and the music is in excellent hands.
Until then, I invite you to watch Van Halen Performing 5150 Live 1986 in New Haven, Connecticut, on YouTube. This song is officially registered as a cure for depression.
Thanks, Eddie
-JK
