Almost one year to the day before Edward Van Halen died, I texted a friend whom I was pretty sure would know the answer to a question that had been troubling me for some time.
Van Halen
Listen, I don’t mean to brag about how close I was to the stage at that Van Halen show the other night, but I’m pretty sure I’m in the band now
I knew going into last Thursday night’s Van Halen concert that, based solely on the size of the venue, I’d be fairly close to the stage … but I didn’t know I’d be THIS close:
No, seriously:
(I also didn’t know that the band was picking up everyone’s bar tab … which is a shame, because, had I found that out prior to the end of the show, I’m certain I could have done a hell of a lot more damage than a mere three bottles of Sam Adams. Just sayin’.)
Live Review: Van Halen at Cafe Wha? in New York City
Photo by Jon Zal
Originally published on Jan. 6, 2012 at SoundSpike.com
Halfway through Van Halen’s blistering Thursday night (1/5) set at New York City’s Cafe Wha?, reinstated frontman David Lee Roth posed a question to the crowd: “Have you noticed that Van Halen fans have decided they’ve had a great time [at the show], like, three weeks in advance?”
Battered Van Halen-fan syndrome
Look, I appreciate your concern, but, really, I’m OK. He’s not going to hurt me again.
Yes, I know it’s not the first time he’s said he’d change … not the first time he’s said it won’t happen again … that he’ll stop drinking … that I can trust him … that he really loves me. I know.
Gilford Cabo Wabo, NH
As anyone who has spent more than 60 seconds in my presence can tell you, I have several yarns I like to spin about exciting moments I have had with the members of Van Halen. The man standing between my wife and me in the photo above is Kevin Dugan, a good friend to whom I owe a great deal of credit for quite a few of those experiences—the latest of which took place last week, and buried the needle deep into the red on the “OMFG-That-Was-So-Cool!”-ometer.
Van Halen (or, The Band That Ate My Life)
On the first day of the first class of my freshman year in college, my College Writing 101 professor instructed us to go home that weekend and write a paper about the person whom we would most like to meet if given the chance.
And I could have bullshitted him. I could have written about wanting to meet JFK or Martin Luther King Jr. or some other revered, sociopolitical icon … but I wasn’t an 18-year-old freshman just out of high school; I was a 22-year-old freshman who had recently spent nearly four years in the Army, and my inclination to sling bullshit in order to impress a college professor was, by that point, quite nonexistent. And as I looked down at the blank notebook in front of me that weekend, I saw stretching out before me four long years of higher education … and I knew that the only way I was going to make it to the finish line was to figure out how to marry my own personal interests to my academic pursuits.
So I wrote the “I want to meet Eddie Van Halen” paper.
