Everybody Wants Some by Ian Christe Page B

bashed repeatedly to bring the show to a climax.
    During 1981, the band sold out three nights at the Philadelphia Spectrum and two nights at the Capital Centre in D.C. The  New York   Times  gave the band’s Madison Square Garden appearance a respectful nod, describing the three-ring circus administered by Roth with the help of “right hand man” Eddie Van Halen. The newspaper of record even credited “the heavy-metal brand of hard rock” with keeping the record business afloat.
    Though the full tour was too expensive to haul to Europe, Van Halen appeared on Dutch television. On the streets of Amsterdam, Dave was comically brushed off by passersby, except for a well-meaning elderly man who thought he was a French tourist. Dave found his bandmates near a wurst wagon and mock-interviewed them about Van Halen. Eddie and Alex began rapidly discussing the band in Dutch. They pretended to be starstruck by the arrival of bassist Michael Anthony—a man so unpresumptuous that he still admitted to being thrilled when fans asked him to sign autographs.
    Dave continued questioning the band as they cruised the Amsterdam canals. Eddie replied in his native Dutch: “The best city in the world, with the best beer and the best romance.” He and Alex glowed with pride, enjoying the royal treatment twenty years after leaving the country as small boys.
    Par for the course,  Fair Warning  was platinum by year’s end, but sales of each of the band’s first four albums pointed toward a slight downward trend. The band shot a music video in a foggy forest near a giant brontosaurus sculpture, but the footage was never edited because the record label saw no need to promote an album without a single. That insatiable appetite for airplay would hang over the band during their next record.
    Van Halen now presided over a great reawakening of hard rock music and were already surpassing many of their idols. Among the monoliths of the 1970s, only Queen still thrived, and that was by making forays into dance and funk. Led Zeppelin had disbanded in December 1980 after the sad death of drummer John Bonham. Black Sabbath had split with their original singer, Ozzy Osbourne, and were in a commercial stalemate. Kiss had lost drummer Peter Criss and guitarist Ace Frehley, and their latest studio album,  Music from the Elder , was a confusing hodgepodge of medieval horns and Gregorian chants. Even Aerosmith were suffering lineup changes and commercial doldrums, and were about to enter a period of inactivity.
    On the ground in Hollywood, however, the situation was exploding. Though hard rock had been passé when Van Halen arrived at the Starwood, the club scene they left behind was now crowded with baby Halens with outrageous lead singers and flashy guitar heroes. “I used to sit on the stage at the Whisky, and Van Halen would be exploding all over the place,” singer Stephen Pearcy of Ratt recalled.
    Dokken, Mötley Crüe, Quiet Riot, and Ratt were all on the verge of minting platinum records, and they owed much of their stage acts to Van Halen. Singers like Vince Neil of Mötley Crüe bleached their hair to look more like David Lee Roth, and everyone practiced their guitars twenty-four hours a day to be more like Eddie. Those lacking in charm and talent made up for it in stagecraft, incorporating storefront Satanism, strippers, and fake blood into their acts. “I’m not that goofy, am I?” Eddie asked  Musician  about his more obvious imitators.
    Some of the glamsters had old connections to Van Halen—Chris Holmes from W.A.S.P. hailed from the Pasadena party scene, and George Lynch from Dokken had inadvertently steered Gene Simmons to see Van Halen in 1976. The link between the band Hollywood Rose and Van Halen was truly special—in the early seventies, drummer Johnny Kreis’s dad, Richard, had played with Jan Van Halen in a polka band, with Alex often playing drums. Though Hollywood Rose didn’t leave behind any albums, their singer Axl