Getting rid of Bassist Mark Stone

[THE SAINT]

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(EVH & AVH – with Redbeard) – (Talking about Mammoth) –

EVH: That was Alex, Mark Stone, and me. That’s when I used to lead sing. I’ll never forget playing at the Velascos party which was like uh, a semi-weekly bash that we’d play.
AVH: Uh huh
EVH: In some of these… got a room not much bigger than this. Except uh, you know, had this many people and tried to pry them in there. And uh, I remember Mark’s parents came…
AVH: Oh yeah. His brother… His brother.
EVH: In the middle of a song! And his parents too! Yeah!
AVH: Yeah. Yeah.
EVH: Ok… We’re in the middle of a jam playing, and here comes his parents and his brother, and they just take him home…..
AVH: Cuz we were-
EVH: In the middle of a song! You Know?
AVH: Cuz we were. Because we were a bad influence on him.
EVH: Here’s a guy who’s
AVH: We’re evil.
EVH: Who’s going to school to be a pharmacist, He’s making LSD molecules out of whatever you call it, the plate? Uh..
AVH: The balls with sticks? You know how you make molecules?
EVH: And they were worried about us?

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What kinds of bands did you play in before Van Halen?

(EVH 1995) In fourth grade we had a band called the Broken Combs. Later we had a band called Revolver with a bass player who played great Mountain stuff. By this time I'd become a major Clapton and Cream freak. We got the baddest-assed bass sound, but the bass player was always popping reds, and it didn't work out. For another band, Mammoth, we had this bass player who was really creative but smoked too much hash. He was going to school to be a pharmacist – swear to God. He spent more time at home building LSD molecules. We were playing parties with a repertoire of a hundred songs, and he wouldn't remember stuff.

EVH: We started playing clubs like Gazzari’s and the old bass player we had, used to smoke too much pot and hash. We had a repertoire of about 300 songs that you had to remember, and he’d be so high, he’d be playing a different song. So we got rid of him, and got Mike.

EVH: We played everywhere and anywhere, from backyard parties to places the size of your bathroom. And we did it all without a manager, agent, or record company. We used to print up flyers announcing where we were going to play and stuff them into high school lockers. The first time we played we drew maybe 900 people, and the last time we played without a manager we drew 3,300 people."

[cadaverdog]

That was the good old days. You could go to a party, listen to some music, drink some beer, smoke some weed and the worst thing that might happen is you get your ass kicked in a fist fight. By the late 80s you had to worry about getting shot if the wrong people showed up.I was leasing a house with an option to buy in the late 90s and these guys moved down the street that set up rave parties. People were always driving by to find out where one would be. One day some punks came by and asked but they wouldn't tell them so they came back and started shooting at the house. Then the people in the house started shooting back. I told my landlord I was moving the next day. He practically offered to give me the house to stay but there's no way I was going to after that.