Top Down and Bottom Up By Greg Renoff (@GregRenoff) When VH fans ask me about Van Halen Rising, the conversation quickly turns to who I interviewed and who I didn’t interview for the book. I tell them, “I spoke to [former VH bassist] Michael Anthony, [Producer] Ted Templeman, [Engineer] Donn Landee, [VH’s manager, 1977-78] Marshall Berle, [VH’s lighting, art, and video director] Pete Angelus, and [legendary photographer] Neil Zlozower.” Awesome! Did you interview Dave and Eddie? I tried, but they [well, their handlers, in any event] turned me down. That’s too bad. Then I almost always say, “Yeah, it is.” To be sure, I wish they’d said yes. The band members (for Roth’s take, check out his autobiography) have distinct perspectives on how they made it. It’s a crucial set of viewpoints, ones I worked to integrate into the book. In addition, there were certain questions that only Dave and Edward could have answered. From that standpoint, those questions remain unanswered. But I’m not sure it’s a tragedy that they turned me down. I can make this claim because my goal from the start was to tell the Van Halen early days story as much from the bottom up, as from the top down. To tell that bottom-up story, I methodically interviewed person after person, more than 230 in total. I patiently introduced myself to strangers, explained my motivations, and then hoped they’d talk to me. When things went well, they’d suggest I talk to an old friend, or a sibling, who had a Van Halen experience to share. (Only one person yelled at me — the late Kim Fowley — but I’ll share that story another time). Over the course of five years, I put all of these Van Halen stories together. The vast majority of those individuals, through accidents of geography or birth, ended up in the San Gabriel Valley in the early 1970s and saw their paths cross with the members of Van Halen. Some built close friendships with the band members. Others needed a band for their high school dance, or their backyard party, and called the Van Halen home. Some barely knew Edward, for example, but as aspiring guitarists, made it a point to camp out in front of him every time Van Halen played a gig or backyard party. Some watched Roth’s antics from afar at John Muir High School, particularly his doings with his first band, Red Ball Jet. Others, especially those who grew up near the Van Halen brothers, came to see the pair as akin to family. Perhaps the smallest category of all involved ladies who’d carried on meaningful romantic relationships with the band members. Each of these people had their own Van Halen story to tell, and the events they remembered all became pieces of a puzzle that I worked to assemble. As the years passed, the gaps in the story became smaller, and the outlines of the band’s path to success began to become clearer and clearer. But that clarity came only through the generosity of these individuals, who in looking back on their times in Pasadena in their early 1970s, shared their memories and made clear that Van Halen was part of the fabric of their youth. As one woman told me, “Genesis [a predecessor to Van Halen] was our party band.” Another guy said, “Van Halen was the soundtrack man, every party we went to it seemed like those guys were playing.” I listened to hours and hours and hours of these stories, later transcribing these interviews. What dawned on me as the months rolled by was that these experiences, these vivid memories of hanging out with the band members, listening to them jam, and cheering their successes, told the Van Halen story in a way that the band members could never have told it. I say this because these accounts offered up a multitude of perspectives that expanded upon and reinforced the perspectives of the band members and the other A-list interview subjects I spoke to over the years. By the time I was through researching, I had the Van Halen story from the bottom up and the top down. That’s what I aspired to create in writing Van Halen Rising. If you want to read about what it was like to be in Van Halen as the band climbed the ladder of success, Michael Anthony’s there in the pages to tell that story. If you want to learn what it was like to produce Van Halen, Ted Templeman’s there in print to share his memories. And if you want to know what it was like to have Van Halen play in your living room, good people like Jan are there to tell that tale. I owe all of them my sincere thanks. When you read the book, you’ll want to thank them too.
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 23:05:58 +0000
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