FARGO ROCK CITY: Another music journalist KNOWS DAVE IS VAN HALEN!
FARGO ROCK CITY: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota
A friend lent me this book and I read it over the weekend. Very cool look at 80's METAL(The real deal AND Hair Metal!). Very well written and VERY funny!
CLASSIC VAN HALEN is put upon the same pedestal as LED ZEPPELIN & Black Sabbath.
While the book concentrates on the guys favorite band, Shout ERA Motley Crue, VH is mentioned several times. A few excerps:
"A lot of the credit(for the popularity of Van Halen) must go to DAVID LEE ROTH. Roth is not a "musician", but he always understood the bottom line: If Eddie had decided to become Pete Townshend, DAVID LEE ROTH would have never become DAVID LEE ROTH. And---as is so often the case--one man's selfishness ultimately worked to the benefit of EVERYBODY. Roth demanded that VAN HALEN had to be about a lifestyle, specifically HIS lifestyle (or even more specifically, a lifestyle where you tired to have sex with anything in heels). Philosophically, his sophomoric antics limited Eddie: Mr. Van Halen really couldn't develop his classical virtuosity when his frontman was trying to hump the mic stand and scream like Tarzan. But in tangible terms, it MADE Eddie BETTER. Instead of being an artist trying to make art, Eddie was forced to become an artist trying to make noise---and the end result was STUNNING. Within the stark simplicity of "Jamie's Cryin'," you can hear the shackled complexity of a genius. It has more artistic power than anything he could have done consciously. And that was obvious to just about everyone, including drug-addled teenagers. It's no coincidence that the CIRCUS magazine reader's poll cited Van Halen as "Disappointment of the Year" in 1985, '86, '87', and '88 (the four years following Roth's departure)."
On comparing Clapton and his pupil:
"Listening to Clapton is like getting a sensual massage from a woman you've loved for the past ten years; listening to (CLASSIC) Van Halen is like having the best sex of your life with three foxy nursing students you met at a Tastee Freez. This is why rock historians and intellectuals feel comfortable lionizing Eric Clapton, even though every credible guy in the world will play Van Halen tapes when his wife isn't around."
on JUMP:
"It took Van Halen five years to before they threw caution to the wind and admitted they were a boderline keyboard band. Eddie Van Halen insists "Jump" could have been made in the late 1970's, but DAVID LEE ROTH refused to cooperate. Why? Because sythetic music was NOT HARD ROCK.
On paper, this debate seems like complete nonsense. But it's a crystal-clear example of why EVERY TRUE METAL FAN IN THE WORLD took ROTH's side when he split with the rest of Van Halen. Dave didn't think like a musician; he thought like a ROCK GUY. He understood the VILE DEPRAVITY of keyboard metal."
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