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The argument could be made that a band as bombastic, egotistical and
over-the-top as hair-metal champions Van Halen warrants a biographer who
shares those same characteristics. But the fallacy of that line of thinking
will soon become obvious to anyone who cracks the hardcovers and delves into
the more than 300 pages of Everybody Wants Some: The Van Halen Saga by
journeyman rock scribe Ian Christe, which lacks the other ingredient
essential to the finest moments of a three-decade career that sold 75
million albums: a self-deprecating sense of humor.
“I didn’t think it would be fair to write this book without learning how
to play ‘Eruption,’ getting a good idea of the mental and manual speed of
Eddie Van Halen plus appreciating how much work and practice goes into
playing, if not developing, his style,” Christe, whose resume includes The
Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal as well as free-lance
contributions to Spin, Guitar World and Popular Mechanics, writes in a
pointless introduction. He then proceeds to recount in numbing detail how he
finally mastered the famous guitar instrumental — without explaining what
this did for him as an author — before concluding, “I want to say the reason
nobody has ever attempted to write this book before is there was never a
writer who could play ‘Eruption.’ Or maybe they all died trying.”
Well, maybe. Then again, it could just be that less solipsistic writers
and more discerning critics concluded that Van Halen wasn’t worth the effort
to produce an exhaustive, scholarly biography akin to Peter Guralnick’s two
volumes on Elvis Presley, or that behind all of the tabloid headlines,
chest-thumping solos, smoke and mirrors, there wasn’t enough really good
dirt to produce a truly trashy rock read akin to the classic of the genre,
Stephen Davis’ Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga.
To be sure, Christe chronicles the sweeping scope of the Van Halen saga,
starting with Eddie and his drummer brother Alex immigrating to the United
States from Holland and joining forces to play jacked-up cover songs with
bassist Michael Anthony and singer David Lee Roth (whom we generally laughed
with), and running through the chart-topping successes of a second act with
Sammy Hagar (whom we always laughed at), with plenty of lawsuits, marriages,
divorces, broken hips and bouts with cancer and alcoholism along the way.
But since most of the quotes from primary players are clipped from other
articles, and all of it is related in breathless, laughably overwritten
prose, there is seldom any genuine insight, much less a sense of cultural
perspective.
“Millions of divorced kids listening to Van Halen in 1985 had just
accepted that Mom and Dad weren’t going to get back together, and now they
were expected to deal with David Lee Roth leaving Van Halen,” Christe
writes, as if a millionaire rock star leaving a group whose best days were
already behind it (and yes, that’s an intentional slight to Van Hagar and
the band’s third incarnation with Gary Cherone) is on par with the trauma of
a broken home. Elsewhere, the author makes overwrought comparisons between
Eddie and Orson Welles/Charles Foster Kane, and he begins the tale proper
with this startling sentence: “Like the stories of other great American
heroes from Henry Ford to Walt Disney to Fievel the Mouse, the saga of Van
Halen begins in an ancient land, far from the United States and its constant
supply of hot water and electricity.”
Nevermind the dissimilarities between Ford (who sold very real cars) and
Disney (who sold celluloid dreams), or the fact that Fievel was Russian, not
American. I’m still marveling over the notion that the best things about the
U.S. of A. are alternating current and running water, and the implication
that the overdressed, over-amplified, prone-to-overplaying heavy-metal
cartoons who gave us “Jump,” “Dance the Night Away” and “Poundcake” are as
essential to civilization as those basic utilities. It’s amazing Christe
doesn’t advocate that Van Halen be chiseled into Mount Rushmore — though
maybe he would have if he hadn’t been so distracted with trying to master
his hammer-on’s.
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