rocksandy.rocks

I am one of those people who has had my nose in a book since I was a toddler. As Grandma Hill liked to tell it, I came home from my first day of kindergarten crying because I didn’t get to learn everything in the big encyclopedias. Looking back, I can clearly see how the books I’ve read have shaped my life, from Judy Blume stuff as a kid to the Jim Morrison bio No One Here Gets Out Alive as a teenager. For years now my reading has tended toward generation-spanning historical fiction, á la James Michener novels, with a good blend of the never-ending stream of musician biographies. I love stories of people, whether lives imagined or lives lived, famous or ordinary, in whatever place and time they happen to be. (If only they taught history this way.) Having just been yanked out of an epic, multi-novel-world that had me intimately exploring the characters of ancient Rome, particularly Rome’s biggest rock star Julius Caesar, I turned to my bedside assemblage of rock star bios. Another book, another world.

One of the main things you learn is that it was quite the complicated flock of personalities that was signed to Warner Brothers Records in 1978: two close-knit brothers, both genius musicians; one intelligent and focused “diva of the first order”(I quote Monk, p. 20); and one wholesome nice guy. Learning where they came from and where they went was just as epic-ly fun as reading about the lives of Pompey and Julius Caesar.

Like many sons throughout history, the dreams of Edward and Alex Van Halen did not exactly align with their father’s. But as Renoff’s book tells us, one day Jan Van Halen, realizing his talented long-haired rocker sons were following the same but different path, took his boys to the local music store. He traded in the family instruments and financed the purchase of an excellent drum kit and a Gibson Les Paul guitar, everything they’d always wanted. It was what they didn’t have – a PA system – that was a fortuitous twist of fate, a cooperative incident, for the VH brothers. Something a rival band member, a confident showman with a fierce determination to be a star and an endless supply of perseverance, did have.

In looking back at 1970s rock music from my own perspective, I readily agree with Renoff’s premise that Van Halen saved heavy metal from the soft rock that had taken over in by the mid-70s. He makes a good case for the book’s subtitle and highlights the influence of the late 60s/early 70s darker (and often British) hard rock on some kids in oh-so-sunny Southern California:

They’d transformed the staid sound of metal into something that sounded fresh and vibrant…

Greg Renoff, p. xix

It’s cool that this meticulously cited historical account, Van Halen Rising, is such a smooth read. I would totally watch a movie of this book, á la Dazed and Confused (a nostalgic, small-town teenage movie set in the 1970s arena rock years), with some local backyard, garage, and community center bands thrown in. The story of these kids’ youths, set in that fortuitous place in space and time, is all there.

Monk’s way with words that had me busting out laughing a few times. It’s another easy throwback read that gives you a realistic look at life on the road – which was pretty much exactly what you would think, and at the band members’ personalities – which were not always what you would think. Monk’s interactions with the band were up close and personal on every level, and he makes both interesting and obvious personality commentary. For instance, Monk confirms that unlike David, for Edward it was the music, not the stardom that came first. But they knew they needed each other.

They were friends, partners, rivals; they both inspired and infuriated each other.

Noel Monk, p. 22

Like many singer/guitarist relationships of great bands before and after, it seems as if the lifelong contrast between every aspect of their personalities – the balance, the binary – was key to their success. It reminds us that contrast is what makes things work; there can be no creative expansion without it.

Monk, a take-charge-of-the-situation-and-make-things-happen sort of guy who was integral to Van Halen’s success, has tons of great stories: a bullying technique used to stop Ronnie Montrose from hogging all the warm-up time, how the level of partying changed after their tour opening for Black Sabbath, the Jimi Hendrix logo that looks suspiciously like the Van Halen logo…the list goes on. He shares a lot of his personal photos, which are thoroughly enjoyable and akin to pulling out the old photo album of yore. 

Between these two books there is an endless list of cool tidbits you will stop and read out loud to your spouse or whoever you feel the need to stop and text. From the VH brothers working with their dads’ polka band at bar mitzvahs, to their mom serving lumpas during band practice to their middle school set lists, to how Eddie’s guitar techniques evolved, to DLR’s life-changing radio moment and taste for soul music, to old band flyers to bootleggers to payola to Valerie. And to discovering new music by some of their early influences, like Cactus and Mountain.