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Was he asked? Ted has only produced 3 albums in the last 25 years.
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I'll give it a read. I'm sure it will have great personal stories in it. I would think anyways. At the same time I wonder if it will come off as authentic as Greg's book. I could feel the late 70's L.A. Breeze reading it. But like anything else V.H. we get to sit and wait for it. What a shock there right ? God forbid they put it out earlier for a Christmas release if it's completed. This guy should work with the band again. They can make slow bad decisions together !Comment
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Yeah, I don't quite have expectations that it will be as good as Greg's was. Greg's was simply (by far) THE best book I've ever read about Van Halen, and that includes the parts of Roth's CFTH book that dealt with the band.
But I think it has the potential IF Monk is still coherent and can actually remember what happened. On the other hand, it could be a case of Monk and Monk's co-author just wanting to use Monk's name to cash-in, and it ends up being a Hammer Of The Gods bullshit myth-fest.Scramby eggs and bacon.Comment
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As representations of truth autobiographies are terrible.
Everyone's memory is much worse that you think. Add a bunch of booze blow and everything else plus 30+ years and the inbuilt bias of autobiographers to make themselves look good and who knows anything anymore.
The science of memory is just scary and all scientific studies of it are depressing. One way to think of it is that every time you remember something it's like a file on your computer being created and overwriting the original one which is then gone forever. If you remember something wrongly once then that false memory is there for keeps and exactly as true to you as remembering this post you are reading.
More important than this trivia if you are ever on a jury please remember that eye witness accounts are far less reliable than you would instinctively ever imagine.
If Monk kept a daily written diary which was honest at the time then great, otherwise it's all just a bit more entertainment...Last edited by Seshmeister; 09-08-2016, 11:48 PM.Comment
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Well, yeah, that's the thing.
I mean, basically the Van Halens (to the strong consternation of Roth) fired Monk after the 1984 tour concluded, so with this book I'm pretty much expecting what Monk has to say about the Van Halens will end up being less complimentary than whatever he says about Dave.
In terms of the period between the end of the 1984 tour and Roth leaving the band, while those 6 or so months haven't been chronicled down to the day, the essence of what happened has been discussed by the band members in interviews near to the events. And I'd tend to give those takes on what happened far more weight than anything any of them would say about that period today. And even on a specific subject like Dave leaving the band, Pete Angelus says that Roth and the band agreed to take a year off, then the rest of the band said they didn't want to take a year off while Roth was making his movie so Ed basically made a press release to Rolling Stone saying Roth quit, and Roth was supposedly blindsided by all of it. All of which kinda flies in the face of the conventional wisdom of what happened. Yet, Angelus like Monk was also someone in the know and active with Van Halen behind the scenes, so who do you believe at that point?
As you say, Sesh, should it be the case that Monk kept some sort of a journal at the time then maybe you give what he has to say more weight as opposed to him 30 years after he stopped working for the group sitting around trying to remember.Scramby eggs and bacon.Comment
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And that's what it comes down to for me. Did they all mutually agree to an extended break? If so, why would they care how Dave spent that time? It reminds of the old favorite of how Dave came to be in the band- "we got tired of paying Dave to rent his PA". Then you read Greg's book and it wasn't nearly as simplistic as that. Same thing with the whole "Dave quit to be a movie star" narrative that the VH's put out there. I just don't see it as being that simplistic. I know they expanded a bit in subsequent years - basically, their personal differences made their working relationship untenable - but the Dave quit to be a movie star is still a strong narrative/lore, much like Dave's departure date being 4/1/85.
Sam talked about putting out Unboxed in '94 and how the money from that was going to be used to pay off his wife in their divorce. He said he told the VH's about it and his reasons for it and they were supposedly cool with it. Then at some point in the future they got twisted about it and even held the release of it against him. Seems very similar to the whole break thing- agreed upon, then becomes an issue.
I guess with the fog of time we'll never get a clear picture, but damn it, I want a clearer picture anyway!Comment
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Basically you can't believe anything that comes out of OBC's mouth, or Al's. And Dave has a habit of telling things in a larger than life way and tends to exaggerate. My guess is the break up happened for all of the reasons all of the guys have claimed over the years but it really all boiled down to they couldn't stand one another. So there's some truth to everything all of them have said but they all either exaggerated or tossed in a few outright lies that suited their particular narrative.American by birth. Southern by the grace of God.
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