{"id":1090,"date":"2020-10-09T21:36:51","date_gmt":"2020-10-10T01:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/?p=1090"},"modified":"2021-03-10T22:31:08","modified_gmt":"2021-03-11T03:31:08","slug":"thanks-for-the-memories-eddie-van-halen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/thanks-for-the-memories-eddie-van-halen\/","title":{"rendered":"Thanks for the Memories, Eddie Van Halen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I don\u2019t remember exactly when I first heard Van Halen, but I was no older than ten or eleven. I think a babysitter played their music at my house, and that\u2019s how they came into my orbit.<\/p>\n

They sounded\u00a0unlike anything I\u2019d ever listened to at that point, and something about them\u00a0felt thrilling and a little bit taboo. And that was largely\u00a0thanks\u00a0to one Eddie Van Halen, a virtuoso who figured out how to make his guitars produce incredible, impossible sounds. We had\u00a0some great\u00a0rock guitarists in that era, but if they were all playing chess, Eddie was playing advanced Go, coming up with moves and patterns nobody had ever seen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Although\u00a0Van Halen was popular when I was a kid, mine was a very lonely fandom. In my\u00a0snooty prep school\u00a0world, there was nothing<\/strong>\u00a0cool about liking Van Halen. The lone exception came when Eddie soloed on \u201cBeat It,\u201d because\u00a0everyone liked Michael Jackson.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Two legends. No waiting.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nice preppy Holton-Arms\u00a0girls weren\u2019t supposed to listen to tacky hair metal dudes singing sleazy songs about booze and parties and sex. Nobody I knew would admit to liking them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And at that age, I was generally a little sheep who went along with the crowd. But on this one thing, I absolutely would not yield. I was obsessed. I loved their music, and I did not\u00a0care who gave me crap about it. I doodled the VH logo all over my school notebooks. I bought a logo necklace at one of their concerts and wore it until it turned green.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Portrait of the author as a very young, ANGRY\u00a0Van Halen fan.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My long-suffering mom had to take me to my first two Van Halen concerts (1981 and 1982) because nobody I knew would go with me, I was way too young to go alone, and she knew sitting through a show would be less of an ordeal than listening to me bitch and whine for weeks about not getting to see\u00a0them. Poor Mom.\u00a0I think arenas instituted “parent rooms” just for people like her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One fine morning while\u00a0I was waiting at\u00a0a Ticketmaster outlet for tickets for the 1984<\/em> tour, I just so happened to see two popular Holton girls in line. Well, well, well<\/em>. I kid you not\u2014they told me they were buying tickets \u201cfor a friend.\u201d Suuuuuuure, Jan.<\/p>\n

My Van Halen fandom was a gateway to harder heavy metal like Judas Priest and Black Sabbath. I felt somewhat let down when\u00a01984<\/em> came out because of the synthesizers, which made Van Halen sound a lot more like everyone else. (I was a hipster way before hipsters were a thing.) “Panama” was\u2014and still is\u2014a total banger and Eddie’s intro to “Hot For Teacher” is legendary, but I wasn’t all that taken with the rest of the album. And then David Lee Roth left the band and so did I; Van Hagar did nothing for me. Sorry, Sammy.<\/p>\n

Ironically, at college I was finally surrounded by people who liked Van Halen, but by then I\u2019d moved on to punk rock, new wave, and the first strains of industrial music. I\u2019ve always had bad timing, I guess.\u00a0But I will always consider myself damn lucky that I got to see Eddie Van Halen play live three times. Thank you, teenage self, for being so uncharacteristically stubborn about liking an uncool thing, because I saw a genuine legend\u00a0in his prime.<\/p>\n

In recent years, I hadn\u2019t thought about Van Halen much other than getting an occasional earworm for one of their older songs. A few months ago, an idiotic\u00a0fight broke out on Twitter when singer Billie Eilish said she didn\u2019t know who Van Halen was. I didn\u2019t care, as she’s really\u00a0young and VH\u00a0hadn\u2019t been active for a while so why would<\/i> she know them, but I guess some fans took offense and went after her. Which was stupid. In response, just about everyone on my Twitter feed started shitting all over Van Halen. Which was also stupid. The whole thing felt like being in high school all over again.\u00a0And Eddie’s son Wolfgang said the only thing that needed to be said about all of it:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

If you haven\u2019t heard of @billieeilish<\/a>, go check her out. She\u2019s cool. If you haven\u2019t heard of @VanHalen<\/a>, go check them out. They\u2019re cool too.<\/p>\n

Music is supposed to bring us together, not divide us. Listen to what you want and don\u2019t shame others for not knowing what you like.<\/p>\n

— Wolf Van Halen (@WolfVanHalen) December 2, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n