Eddie

Editor’s Note: This entry is presented as it was written in real time on October 6th, 2020.

No.

No, no, no, no, no.

…

…

Eddie Van Halen is dead.

Taking every ounce of being I have just to push pen to paper.

This fucking year.

I was at max density.

I’ve mentioned Van Halen more than once already, have I not?

Sure I have.

They are…I guess I am now forced to say they were…the quintessential Southern Californian rock band.

People can argue for The Doors or The Beach Boys or Guns n’ Roses, and those would be fair choices, but for Generation X SoCal whiteboys, Van Halen was a consummate element of our existence.

Van Halen is among the defining essences of your author.

Given Ed’s relatively unexpected demise, I’m scrambling to find resolve, digging into my reserves where I thought all had been exhausted.

I am running on fumes as it is.

I don’t have many heroes.

In fact, outside of my father and mother, I have none.

Except Eddie Van Halen.

You’ve all been following this chronicle, you’ve seen what’s gone down both in America, and in my personal life, as the long months have dragged on, through the spring, the summer, and now autumn. 

Eddie Van Halen died today.

He’d been battling throat cancer for a number of years.

Apparently the last 72 hours went south fast for him, as cancers tend to do in the end. The Van Halen camp has always been one of secrecy, so it came straight out of the blue to the fan base, announced in a Twitter social media post by his heartbroken son.

It was an absolute shock. When I heard this morning, first through a text from an old friend, it was like a punch to the gut.

It is incomprehensible, the thought of more fuel splashing on this year’s smoldering trash fire. You gotta understand what it means to be a Southern Californian who grew up in the 1980’s, and how intertwined Van Halen is with dudes like me.

That band is a touchstone, prime-max because of the guitar player.

It's strange, how distant icons can impact a life from afar.

Van Halen fans often make a point of listening to the music during flashpoints of their lives, whether we walk down the aisle at our wedding to one of our favorite songs, or we wean our kids on Van Halen albums, or we learn guitar through Van Halen albums. Past all the much chronicled band horseshit and lead singer drama, there was Eddie, a humble guitar god, arguably the most famous guitarist in history in terms of public appeal and industry reverence, a man who could be magnanimous, arrogant, innocently naive, shy and cocky, masterful and hesitant, all those things at the same time.

He was a flawed guitar god, prone to addictions and difficulties in trusting others. It was his imperfections that made him so relatable. He seemed like a dude you'd hang out with outside the local liquor store, or in the back forty tippin' cows and smokin' American Spirits.

Truth is, he was a distant aspect of my life, always in the background with his tunes, other times in the foreground when Van Halen would tour and I would attend another show to immerse myself in the exquisite symbiosis between artist and patron, shepherded to a most visceral form by Eddie Van Halen.

I’ve been around the block when it comes to live hard rock performance.

I’ve attended many hundreds of gigs in virtually every venue in both southern and northern California.

I have yet to see anyone match the stagecraft of Edward.

What it was like to witness the king of six strings in concert is hard to explain to non-Van Halen fans.

For guys like me, Van Halen show attendance was more about bearing witness to an American majesty, an honorarium, a trek to a middle class mecca only properly taken by pilgrims who knew Eddie Van Halen’s music through and through, who knew the title of every Van Halen song, every album, who’d read all the unauthorized biographies, who knew the timeline and history of Van Halen, who’d tracked down the club demos, collected the bootlegs, which songs in their discography had been played live and which ones hadn't, and most of all, knew why Eddie exemplified the absolute zenith of guitar rock.

He was an American rags to riches success, he represented the very top tier of guitar expertise all while under the guise of a legendary persona masking just another California dude who'd be happy to down a pint with you, had he never made it to the world stage.

Every time I walked into an arena to see Van Halen, it was like I was visiting a relative, one that I saw every few years. I was as comfortable in a concert venue at a Van Halen gig as I was at family gatherings. Van Halen concerts were indeed a familial congress of sorts for me, though they trended twenty thousand strong, lorded over by a quartet of SoCal dudes at the head of the table, the sheepish, cock-walking guitarist always carving the turkey.

Sadly, I never met Eddie in person.

Yet I've had brief, mutual acknowledgments with Eddie. At times I wanted to believe it was because he recognized my face over the years. Obviously, that's more a wish and likely not reality. It was luck, random happenstance, and the fact that after ten years of nosebleed seating in my adolescence, I started sitting closer to the stage as I grew up, and was able to afford better seats.

I remember the first time Eddie and I recognized each other existed. It was in 1991, on the For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge tour at the Pacific Amphitheater in Costa Mesa. I was sitting seventh row center, and I caught his eye during the encore. I pointed at him, he pointed back at me, winking, in that goofy, charming, classic Eddie fashion. My friends saw the exchange, lost their shit, and so too did I, of course.

The next time was in 1998 in Devore at the Glen Helen Amphitheater, sitting second row pit, right in front of Eddie. That was the first time he tried to toss me a guitar pick, which I fumbled in shock and awe, as surrounding fans mosh-pitted a mass frenzy to find it on the ground, and I lost my chance, and boy, I grumbled about that for many years afterward.

In 2004, I was in a general admission pit built right into the stage at Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles, offering proximity to the band theretofore unseen. That night, Eddie high-fived me several times, played a couple solos right in front of me, staring at me. At one point, Sammy Hagar stuck his microphone in my face and I sang a bridge of Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love. It was a great night.

In 2007, at San Diego State University’s sports arena, we landed front row seating in front of Eddie. Once again, he walked over during the encore, under a rain of pyrotechnics and confetti streamers, me having got his attention several times during the show with my cheering and general fan boy enthusiasm. He leaned over the rail and tossed me another pick, which in the ensuing chaos of the swirling confetti storm, I missed again! After the band left the stage and lights came up, it became clear finding the damned thing under mounds of paper stream confetti, before security ushered us out, was a fool's errand.

Yet finally, at what is now definitively The Last Van Halen Show, on October 4th, 2015 at the Hollywood Bowl, I was seated fourth row pit on Eddie’s side, and yes, one more time at show’s end, he walked over, peered around the pit, flicked a red pick in my general direction, and it fumbled among a mad dash of pit folk, everyone scrambling to get it, including me, and at long last, on all fours on my knees, risking getting trampled by a stampede of rabid Van Halen fans, I felt the little piece of plastic under my palm on the concrete flooring.

I'd been waiting thirty-some years to somehow procure a stage guitar pick from Eddie Van Halen during a live performance.

I am so sad to lose him.

I don't do celebrity homage. I've only had one or two ‘idols’ my entire life. I’ve mentioned them both here in these pages. Neil Peart and Eddie Van Halen, both pinnacle Gen X musicians, both universally recognized as the masters of their respective instruments.

Five years ago, I saw what would become The Last Rush Show at the Forum on August 1, 2015. Five years later, Neil Peart died of cancer in January of 2020. Five years ago, I saw Van Halen play their last show at the Hollywood Bowl. Five years later, Eddie Van Halen has died of cancer in October of 2020.

It seems like synchronous jimmy jam, but I’m going to ignore my monkey brain dictates and not run those dates and numbers to try and draw illusory pattern connections of my heroes’ subsequent ends.

It’s crazy, watching our Gen X era gradually come to an end, piece by piece, person by person, before our own exit, isn’t it?

With news coverage and 24 hour access to all corners of the world, we now know when any aspects of our generation and culture reach a final conclusion, and so our lives connect to those vicarious events far more immediately and thus, perhaps, more personally than in bygone eras.

Eddie is gone.

In enduring this loss, I am lesser for it, and the world is a poorer place, and the world isn't doing so good anyway.

This year is fuckery of the highest order.

Eddie Van Halen was an essential part of Southern California. His death may seem like a global micro-loss, but it’s a macro thing to us SoCal dudes.

I sit here tonight, in the late hours, decompressing after my pilgrimage.

After weeping for a while this morning, I bounced down to Los Angeles, to the nearest memorial spots where most fans would leave tidings and well wishes. In SoCal, that’s the Sunset Strip, in one of two places.

The first is Guitar Center, where Eddie’s hand prints are immortalized, along with hundreds of other famous axe men, sort of the music world’s version of the famous Hollywood Walk of Stars. The second is the Whisky-a-Go-Go, famed nightclub where Van Halen used to play before they hit the big time, also where a commemorative brass plaque marking the legacy of Van Halen lies outside the club’s front door.

At Guitar Center, I was one of the first few fans to show up outside today. An elaborate flower bouquet array was set out by the establishment. Several news teams had arrived already. I stumbled out of my truck and shakily approached Ed’s marker, all the while masked up with my N95, staying six to ten feet apart from the smattering of assembled folks there. I kept my presence of mind we were still in the throes of a pandemic. I laid down a guitar pick on the fingerprints he had set into cement years ago, and I whispered the words I needed to say.

A local KTLA news reporter took this photo of me as I placed a guitar pick homage to Eddie, and was kind enough to airdrop it to my iPhone.

After I was done, a couple of reporters asked if they could interview me. I declined. I was too out of sorts to speak on camera (also still perfectly cognizant of the potential viral loads floating around the Hollywood air).

Then I drove up to the Whisky and found the sidewalk Van Halen plaque. It was evening then. I lit a small candle I’d brought and set it among the assembly of tokens already there…bouquets, guitar picks, and empty mini-bottles of Jack Daniels. People were pouring one out for Ed.

If you’re an astute reader of this column, you’ll have noted by now I’ve broken quarantine a few times, though I’ve been masked up to the gills and maintained six to ten feet of distance between others at all times when doing so. The first was our need to deal with our elder dog’s surgery back in April. The second was my attendance of my local Black Lives Matter march after the murder of George Floyd. The third was our trip to the high desert to memorialize the passing of our dogs. The fourth was this sojourn to Los Angeles today, upon hearing of the death of Eddie Van Halen and my need to pay my respects.

I’m pointing this out because I’m not breaking social distancing recommendations for just anything. All these incidences involved quantifiably intense circumstances. None could be easily categorized as peripheral types of events like family BBQs or holidays or standard social outings. I realize qualifiers in terms of what’s apropos to break quarantine and what ain’t, tend to run subjective among the masses, myself included. I’ve missed birthdays, weddings, funerals, holidays, graduations, all while trying to flatten the curve.

But I had to do this.

I stayed distanced and masked the entire time.

There’s only one person on earth, outside of my immediate family, I’d have risked a fringe honorarium for in this year of all years.

Eddie Van Fucking Halen.

Of course it's Eddie that went first of all the band’s members, given his history of party hearty ways, of course it is, how could it be otherwise?

Lead singers and bassists and drummers aside, without Eddie there is no more Van Halen. Ever. That era of my life is done, for me, for Southern California, for the world, and there’s so much to lament in California this year, with 16,500 Californian deaths from Covid to date and over four million acres of Californian wilderness burned from mega-fires.

California didn’t need any more hits.

I didn’t need any more hits.

I’ve been stretched as far as I can bend, since my dogs’ exits in July.

It’s a wonder I haven’t broke beyond repair.

I didn’t think I could take anymore this year.

I’m writing. I’m breathing. I haven’t keeled over. I’m barely sleeping and I’ve gained too much weight from quarantine. And somehow, I haven’t caught the bug yet. But I’m still pressing on. Is there another choice, short of waving the white flag to the abyss?

Actually, even tonight in my grief, sitting here at my laptop drinking hot black tea with lemon and honey, I’ve remembered another reason why the passing of Eddie Van Halen relates to a common context herein The Bear and the Star. 

Ed’s father Jan was Dutch. His mother Eugenia was Eurasian/Indonesian. As such, he and his brother Alex had mixed race identities.

Yup, you guessed it.

Arguably the greatest guitarist in rock history suffered racism in his youth.

Before they came to the States, Eddie’s family resided in the Netherlands. Because of their mixed heritage, they soon found out on their grade school playgrounds being something other than a Caucasian was less than acceptable, frequently being termed ‘half-breeds’ and ‘second-class citizens.’ Eddie said on more than one occasion the primary reason his father moved the family from Holland to America was because of the racism exhibited toward his wife and children’s Indonesian heritage. Eddie didn’t speak English as a first language when he arrived in Pasadena in the early sixties. Naturally, the racism here was little different than in Holland. Some of his first friends were Black kids, since he too was considered a minority.

In a 2017 interview, on being an immigrant in the United States, Eddie said: “It was actually the white people that were the bullies…they would tear up my homework and papers, make me eat playground sand, and the Black kids stuck up for me.”

The thought of the iconic gunslinger being marginalized by SoCal whiteboy kids because of his skin color makes my hair stand on end, I must admit, though any person, famous or not, having to endure such indignities as a child boils my blood no less.

What must it be like, to grow up and realize you’re the kid who forced Eddie Van Halen to eat dirt because your parents taught you how to be racist?

I’d be negligent not to note here: all you whiteboys who idolize Van Halen while continuing to support the caste system are actively perpetuating the racist culture that resulted in Eddie having to endure such lowbrow horseshit.

And by the by, of course I’m aware of Eddie’s own proclivities in perpetuating class warfare, in his sporadic, private condemnations of other races. It’s a common phenomenology, when peoples of color embrace their oppressors’ successful stratagems. Especially when those peoples of color ascend to fame, fortune, or power in the same system which initially marginalized them.

My heroes are flawed.

All heroes are flawed.

None of us are gods.

None of us are devils.

Anyway.

A significant essence within me, once again, has departed this world unto another, and I am, once again, hollowed out further, blunted by further exigent matters of this damnable year.

Those strings tied to transcended loved ones both near and far, who helped shape the course of my life, continue to exist regardless of how far they extend into the nether.

Sometimes I feel like a shell, less of a meat and potatoes biped with a still (barely) functioning skull-full of gray matter.

But I’m still kicking, it seems.

I’ve been a fortunate man when it comes to Van Halen, in living in the same regions as the band did, in being a whiteboy of privilege. I own that. Fully and completely. I’m in no denial about how much access I've had to Van Halen, how much Eddie scored the hills and valleys of my life, how much a bedrock Eddie Van Halen has been to me and to Southern California.

His flaws made him all the more mythic.

He was a SoCal dude, same as me and my Californian brethren.

He was a hero because he was an antihero.

He was one of us.

I guess that's it.

You crafted the soundtrack to my life, Eddie.

If the passing of Robin Williams in 2014 didn’t herald the onset of the end of my personal Gen X era, the passing of Eddie Van Halen in 2020 surely has done so.

*Compiled from October 6, 2020

*Editor’s Note: A few days later, the author returned to Los Angeles to fulfill a vow he’d made at the tender age of seventeen, wherein he promised, should the vaunted icon pass before him, he’d light a candle and leave it at the steps of the Fabulous Forum, the first place he ever saw Eddie Van Halen play live. The author had to sneak past several security guards to do it, but it was a dark night for the venue and was otherwise deserted.