I have a good Eddie Van Halen story that I was too upset & ill to share yesterday. I had chemo yesterday morning & got home to hear the news of Eddie's passing. Not a good day. So let's hop in the time machine & head back to 1978. I was 17 & a junior in high school. At this point I am seriously getting into music which affected my life (good & bad) for decades to come. The first record came out in February of 1978. I was hanging out at my favorite record store & they said listen to this & put the record on as there was no radio play yet. Eruption comes on & it was like a bolt of lightning. My friends & I freaked out because there wasn't anything else out there that sounded like that. Bought the album immediately. A few months later they came to town as an opener for Black Sabbath on the Never Say Die tour. Van Halen absolutely destroyed them. Sabbath were not at their best & it turned out they fired Ozzy after the tour. They were so bad that we left the show early. Went to a party at a friend's place & I came up with the bright idea of heading down to the Edgewater to try & meet the band. The hotel was the stay of choice for bands. You could fish from the rooms & it was made famous by Frank Zappa song about mudsharks. So, we got there & bluffed our way into the cocktail lounge being underage & all. Turns out both bands were there & it was party time in the bar. We noticed Eddie was sitting at a table by himself in the corner so we wandered over to say hi. I think Eddie figured out we were there on the sly & told us to have seat saying he'd rather hang with fans than anyone else. We ended up getting quite a buzz on with him & he was very cool & nice to us. We met Ozzy, too. He was nice to us, too. On the other hand, David Lee already was really arrogant & aloof. 1 friend ended up spilling a really sloppy drink like a tequila sunrise on him by accident. He was not pleased! To cap it off, on the way back to the car I see a flash of green & dove on it. Turned out it was $40 which was a healthy amount of money in those days. What a night! I saw VH a bunch in the early days. I think they would've been an even bigger deal if Sammy Hagar was the singer from the beginning. DLR was entertaining but irritating & finally he was just insufferable. I saw them with Sammy a few times including a memorable show with Alice in Chains opening. Didn't catch any of the reunion shows. Now I kind of wish I had but I don't think it would've topped the early shows. RIP Eddie, you were 1 of a kind for sure!
