Van Halen and Potato Salad

This essay marks the start of a new era for me, in that it’s the first thing I’ve written since the roster was set for my upcoming book. In the interest of progressing rather than regressing as I wander into a different phase, I’m becoming more interested in the why as opposed to the my. The why, which involves an effort to explain the reasons behind the truth, has more universal value than the my, expressing my opinions—which is little more than a necessary evil. The trouble is that everyone’s got a better grasp on their own viewpoint than the actual truth. I’m more likely to fail when I explain the why as opposed to the my, but in the rare instances in which I succeed, the reward is greater. That is why, with this essay, I will try to refrain from asserting that Van Halen sucks, and the same goes for potato salad.

Allow me to explain. Not long ago I had a discussion with my friend Matt about music, which evolved into a discussion about food, and later on, we found similarities between taste in music and taste in food. Music and food were on our brains for some reason.

I told Matt that the primary reason I don’t like Van Halen is because of the band’s lead singers; the cheesy egotism they share is repellent. Matt allowed a grain of truth in that indictment, but countered with the following.

“I see what you’re saying. There is an element of unabashed dick-waving to Van Halen, an element of sleaze. But sometimes I’m in the mood for that type of music. And more importantly, sometimes women are in the mood for that type of music.”

“Sure. People embrace Van Halen because they’re decadent and self-assured, and their music constantly reminds the listener that sex is a whole lot of fun. I get that. The problem is that their lead singers bother the hell out of me. Both of Van Halen’s lead singers, and never mind the third one, were bozo showmen with lackluster voices that make me cringe.”

“Cringe? Really? Well, neither one is in the same league with singers like Stevie Wonder, McCartney, or Steve Perry,* but...the vocals really make you cringe?”

I nodded to confirm that I did not care to retract what I had said. Seconds passed by, and then Matt offered a tangent about potato salad.

“The lead singers are probably the weakest links in the band, but it’s like potato salad. One of the ingredients in potato salad is celery. In and of itself, celery doesn’t taste good to me. I would never eat a stick of celery on its own. Gross. But then the celery is mixed with ingredients that appeal to me, and somehow the celery compliments the potatoes, onions, and salad dressing. And I love potato salad, and I’m not going to stop eating it because of one ingredient that I’m not crazy about. If someone offers me potato salad, I’m not going to turn it down because there’s celery in it.”

I gathered what he was saying.

“Okay. So Roth and Hagar are like celery. Just as you’d never buy one of their solo albums, you’d never snack on a stick of celery. And Van Halen is like potato salad, which hardly requires an explanation at this point.”

“Right.”

“Well, that all makes sense, but I’m not fond of celery and I can’t stand Roth or Hagar. And because of that, I hate both potato salad and Van Halen.”

We had gained an understanding of each other, in agreement about the why and not the my. We drove to Tucker’s and split a six-pack of cheeseburgers and had nothing left to talk about for quite some time.

###

All too often, one foul-tasting ingredient ruins the whole experience for me. I am the fussy malcontent who shuns a plate of potato salad kindly offered to me at a party. Likewise, I am the hyper-discerning snob who changes the radio station in the midst of an intense hard-rock overture, fueled by Zeppelin-infused precision, as soon as I hear one of Roth’s trademark girlish yowls. I hate things because of their components. Matt loves things in spite of their components. Clearly I am the one who could benefit from some reform.

Conor is an old friend who played guitar and sang along with Matt in a band called Reveal. When I asked Conor to provide a modest 50 to 100 words explaining why Van Halen rocks, he was thrilled. In no time, he let it known that his prose tribute to Van Halen would exceed 400 words, since he truly wanted to expound on the group’s awesomeness. Once his reply came, I parsed through what he had written, in the interest of citing an opinion to challenge my own. What follows explains why some people love Van Halen.

“My idea of a great rock band is a synergy of talent that 1.) makes unusual backstage demands, 2.) doesn’t get along, 3.) innovates, 4.) rocks, and 5.) destroys hotel rooms.”

1.) Van Halen’s most notorious backstage demand was that a jar of M&Ms, absent of all brown shells, be provided for the band before the start of every show. I was under the impression that the band did this for the sake of haughty mischief, or perhaps latent racism, but Conor informed me that this was not the case. In actuality, the bizarre request was made as a roundabout way to ensure safety at the workplace for their crew members.

“Van Halen added addendums to their contracts that required the venue to perform specific tasks, but they found promoters were not taking the demands seriously; sometimes conditions were still hazardous for the band's crew. The solution was an additional demand within the safety section of the addendum that required the venue to provide a jar of M&Ms in the band’s backstage area, with all the brown-colored candies removed. If the jar wasn’t backstage when the band showed up, they knew those safety standards had not been met.”

Sweet Jesus! Do you realize what this means? It means that it’s not insane to compare Upton Sinclair to Van Halen. In 1906, Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, a scathing exposé of the meat-packing industry that prompted a demand for more stringent standards of safety in factories across the nation. Nearly 80 years later, Van Halen sought similar advancements in basic human rights for roadies. It was wrong and inexcusable when a 15-year-old boy had his hand hacked off by a faulty meat grinder in 1906, and the same goes for old T-Bone Willis when he got blinded by a pyrotechnics mishap at a Ratt show in ’82. Both Upton Sinclair and Van Halen led crusades against negligent power-holders whose intent was to maximize profit and dehumanize the working class. With this in mind, it is also not insane to claim that Rage Against the Machine could have learned a thing or two from Van Halen. It’s amazing. Who knew cock rockers could have such virtuous motives?

The glaring qualm that I have with this bit of enlightenment is that it doesn’t enhance Van Halen’s music in any way. The group’s music never coincided with their progressive reforms for roadie safety. Van Halen never recorded a ballad to lament the plight of a roadie who was poisoned by Alice Cooper’s python, or had his eardrums ruptured while loading explosives into Keith Moon’s kick-drum. What separates those who enjoy Van Halen from those who don’t is this: Van Halen devotees are thankful the group never put out “The Ballad of Gordy the Roadie.” ** On the other hand, I’m convinced that such a song would have enhanced the group’s creative range.

But true Van Halen fans realize that a ballad about an oppressed roadie would stray too far from the core message of the band. Here is an approximation: “We want hot sex, nervous parents, and mounds of cash.” Van Halen critics bicker that this message is delivered with narrow-minded redundancy. Those who love Van Halen will contend that aside from getting hot sex, making parents nervous, and acquiring mounds of cash, genuine rock and roll doesn’t really have much else to say.

Both arguments are sound. If you’re still on the fence about whether or not to embrace Van Halen, consider the lyrics to their hit song “Jump.”

“I get up, and nothing gets me down.” If you like that lyric just the way it is, then clearly, you adore Van Halen. However, if you would prefer, “I get up, and nothing gets me down...except for the shameful treatment of stagehands as perpetrated by greedy concert promoters,” then Van Halen will always leave you longing for more.

2.) As evidenced by the three lead singers the band employed during its reign at or near the top, the members of Van Halen tended not to get along well with each other. Lurid stories of internal strife abounded throughout the group’s history. According to Conor, the combustive clash of egos that hounded Van Halen validates them as a great band.

“A band without conflict is boring. Modesty and stability don’t always propel a band to legendary status, or create good songs. I want to listen to a band with drug problems, lineup changes, and megalomania. I want a lead singer who is completely delusional.”

Without question, it is true that a band without conflict lacks a certain appeal. But the conflict can be expressed in one of two ways: within the band itself or within the songs themselves. A band such as Van Halen expresses conflict in life as opposed to art, whereas a band like Radiohead is the exact opposite. The five members of Radiohead have played together since 1985, without any lineup changes; in that regard, they embody stability. But Radiohead’s songs are mostly about neurotic chaos in a senseless world, constant discontent, and sorrowful longing. In contrast, Van Halen rarely dealt with chaotic and morbid themes such as mental illness, third world misery, and baleful technology. Van Halen lived the searing conflict but chose to create songs about frivolous and joyful things. Radiohead choose to craft songs searing conflicts, within the confines of a stable group foundation.

Van Halen are the embittered and combative couple on the verge of divorce who, despite openly hating each other, throws rowdy parties and entertains guests with tales of their bawdy trips to exotic locations. (Including Panama?) Radiohead are the contended couple at a party who will probably remain intact for many years to come, yet insist on steering all conversations into gloomy topics ranging from Orwellian forebodings to global warming to the brutality of the Karma Police.

Of the two unions in question, whose party would you rather attend? Do you prefer a happy presentation with chaotic undertones to a morose presentation with stable undertones? Conor does...but I don’t.

3.) Mike Campbell is my favorite guitarist of the 1980s, and up until ten minutes ago, I didn’t even know his name. He plays lead guitar for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. While we’re on the subject of premier ‘80s guitarists, the Edge deserves a mention, too. But I rarely listen to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers or U2. I think the ‘80s were a shaky decade for music.

He’s certainly not my favorite, but Eddie Van Halen has got to be the greatest guitar player the ‘80s produced. I am not crazy about the tune “Panama.” I can’t understand why Diamond Dave invokes the name of a country in Central America in the chorus, and trying to pin his motives seems pointless. Apparently “Panama” is an ode to Roth’s luxury car, but that hardly matters; the song deserves a listen because of the riff provided by Eddie Van Halen. It’s an awesome riff, charged by metal lust with hints of glam, that must have left Jimmy Page and Mick Ronson kicking themselves and wondering, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Conor is more effusive in his case for Eddie.

“Eddie Van Halen revolutionized guitar playing. He constructed his own guitar, known as the ‘Frankenstrat.’ Before writing the song ‘Eruption,’ tapping was only used to play the Chapman stick, a stringed instrument that was tapped instead of strummed. It was such an unknown way of playing the guitar at the time that Eddie would perform this method with his back to the audience to prevent everyone from figuring out what he was doing and copying him.”

Nobody should deny that Eddie was an innovator...but he sure was a snob about it. They say a great magician never reveals how to do his tricks. I say, “Have you ever noticed that all great magicians come across as vain assholes?”

If, by some miracle, I was to come up with the invention for a fully functional Hoverboard, inspired by Back to the Future 2, I would feel that sharing my knowledge with my new peers in the world of science was essential. I’d be obliged to clue in my contemporaries on how they could make Hoverboards a reality. But if Eddie Van Halen invented a real Hoverboard, just as he did with “tapping,” he would bask in glory but keep his knowledge to himself. He was more interested in the expansion of his ego than the betterment of his field at large. And perhaps that is what all the best rock stars are in it for...but dude, turning your back on the crowd to coddle and protect your precious secret is downright weird.

“Get over yourself.” Such advice applies to everyone—virtuosos, geniuses, and innovators not excluded.

4.) Does Van Halen rock? Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Yes, but they do so in dumb fashion, even by the standards of rock music. Conor supports the short answer but would quibble with the long answer, and I would do the inverse. A case can be made that only impotent losers care about the intellectual merit of a song, especially when the music boasts raw sexual power or an irresistible groove. My musical appetites for raw sexual power and irresistible grooves that don’t require much thought are pretty much sated by Led Zeppelin. Conor isn’t as easily sated on these two fronts; he craves infectious sleaze from more than just one band. That’s another reason why he loves Van Halen and I don’t.

5.) The claim that a great band must routinely destroy hotel rooms is one that I reject. Using power tools to mount all the furniture to the ceiling in a lavish suite in no way ensures that your next album will merit a four-star review from Rolling Stone.

My dad and my brother Dave have amassed almost 40 combined years of service on the police force. This means that, surprisingly, traces of cop instincts speckle my D.N.A. Among these cop instincts is the lame conviction that it is wrong to commit acts of vandalism. Van Halen peed on drapes, rammed surfboards into TV sets, and tore down ceiling fans with the following thought in mind: “Some poor piss-ant is going to have to clean up this mess.” And more than once, I’m sure, the worker whose job it was to tend to the ruinous squalor left behind by Van Halen was the same guy who bought a copy of 1984 the day it was released. Come on, Conor...do you really think that shit is cool?

What ever happened to the Van Halen from 20 paragraphs ago, the band that showed respect for the working class? I really put my ass on the line asserting that Van Halen can be likened to Upton Sinclair. And now I seem like a fool and Van Halen reek of hypocrisy. Splendid.

###

As a coda to this essay, I asked for Conor’s thoughts on potato salad. Here is his reply.

“Eggs? Celery? Potatoes? Whose idea was this? It’s freakin’ potato salad and it tastes good. It’s freakin’ Van Halen and it rocks.”

There you have it. In matters of food and music, you can’t argue taste-buds...but for some reason, I will always try to, anyway.




*Steve Perry, nicknamed “The Voice,” is the lead singer of Journey. When I offered Matt a footnote to briefly explain why Journey’s music so massages his soul, he shouted, “I wipe my ass with footnotes, Olig! Don’t include Van Halen and Journey in the same essay.” He nodded thoughtfully and then added, “All I will say on the matter is that one band rocks like a bull while the other rocks like a China Shop.”

**When I asked Conor if he would like Van Halen more or less had they recorded a tribute to their roadies, he said it would all depend on the quality of the song, which remains hypothetical. Fair enough. He added that Roth would never hazard into such sentimental territory, but Hagar just might. The Red Rocker is more emotive. Hagar sincerely wanted to know why this can’t be love, whereas Roth didn’t seem to care much about that sort of mush. Roth was happy as long as the local strippers brought him Big Macs to eat at midnight, then treated him to dessert.