Faber & Faber Acquires Biography Of Eddie Van Halen

I think the only surprise is that it took this long…

English cover

To mark the one-year anniversary of Eddie Van Halen’s early death comes his first full-length biography – a searching, affectionate and in-depth look at the life and legends of this true musical virtuoso.

Arriving in California as a young boy in the early 1960s, Edward Van Halen and his brother Alex were ripe for the coming musical revolution. The sons of a Dutch, saxophone-playing father, the brothers discovered the Beatles, Cream and others.

From the moment their hugely influential 1978 debut landed, Van Halen set a high bar for the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, creating an entirely new style of post-’60s hard rock and becoming the quintessential Californian band of the 1980s. But there was also an undercurrent of tragedy to their story, as Eddie’s struggles played out in public, from his difficult relationship with the band’s original singer, Dave Lee Roth, to substance abuse, divorce and his long-running battle with cancer.

PT5150: Thanks Ron is there a link to buy this ?

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Not really. It’s early yet, this is just starting to get listed (again) it seems.

It’s due in Sept or Oct, and here are the ISBN numbers, so you can look for it.

ISBN-10 : 0571311458
ISBN-13 : 978-0571311453

http://www.loudersound.com/features/the-story-of-van-halens-nightly-destruction-of-black-sabbath

The story of Van Halen’s nightly destruction of Black Sabbath
By Paul Brannigan (Classic Rock)
2021-07-21 12:00:01

An excerpt from Paul Brannigan’s new book Eruption: The Eddie Van Halen Story, featuring Ozzy Osbourne, Phil Lynott and more

Paul Brannigan’s new book Eruption: The Eddie Van Halen Story is out next month.

Published to mark the first anniversary of the guitarist’s death, it tells the story of Eddie Van Halen’s life, from his earliest days in Amsterdam, through the band’s formative years as Van Halen learned their trade in Hollywood clubs, to the release of the debut album that revolutionised rock and the decades of success that followed.

“With unique insights,” say publishers Faber, “Paul Brannigan’s Eruption reaches beyond the headlines to explore the cultural and social contexts that shaped this iconic guitarist, while also turning up the dial on a life lived at volume eleven.”

In this excerpt it’s 1978. Van Halen has been out for six months, and the band have been on the road since the beginning of March. They’ve supported Journey, and Montrose, and The Rolling Stones, and they’ve completed a run of UK dates with Black Sabbath. Precision-tuned after so many shows, Van Halen are on fire. And now they’re ready to head back home.

On 22 August, the quartet re-joined their friends in Black Sabbath for their US tour. The promoters should also have hired a crime-scene investigator to document the tour and draw chalk outlines around Ozzy, Tony, Geezer and Bill onstage, for it was clear to all in attendance that Sabbath were being murdered, night after night.

“The record company was all over Van Halen,” recalls Geezer Butler. “They already thought we were old-hat and over the hill, so Van Halen were getting all the star treatment from the record company, and we were getting nothing. When the Never Say Die! album came out, we went to a reception for it at Warner Brothers, and they were playing Bob Marley’s album and they didn’t know who we were! Our sales had dipped, and I guess they were on the verge of dropping us.”

“I remember being in a hotel room in San Diego with Geezer and one of the reps from the record company,” says Osbourne, “and we’d had a few drinks, and one of us said to this guy, ‘Be honest, you’re only using us on this tour to promote Van Halen, aren’t you?’ And he said, ‘You’re right.’ And if you’re with a record company that won’t back you…

“When a band goes on stage before you and goes down better than you, you either say, ‘Right, we’re going to go out there and fucking show them how to do it,’ or you just fold up. And they had years on us, and we’d been fighting this lawsuit with our old manager for fucking years, and I was just fucking tired of fighting. We never joined a band to become lawyers or fucking accountants, and that’s how it ended up. We didn’t have a clue.”

With a few days off during a short Midwest club run with AC/DC, Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott, Scott Gorham and Gary Moore went along to the 14 September show at Detroit’s Cobo Hall to check out the Pasadena band.

“We were on the same label in America, Warners, and whenever we hooked up with anyone from the label, you always heard, ‘Wow, man, I was just out with Van Halen — what a fucking band!’” California-born guitarist Gorham recalls. “It got to the point where Phil would tell them, ‘Look, if you get into this fucking car, you’re not going to talk about Van Halen, all right?’

“So we were interested in this band we’d heard so much about. And these boys came on and just shredded everybody a brand-new asshole. They were amazing. When Eddie started doing his tapping thing, I turned around to Gary and said, ‘What the fuck is that? What is he doing there?’ Gary was just staring at him, and he said, ‘I don’t know.’

“Ten minutes later, I went to ask Gary another question, and he was gone. The next day, I was standing in his hotel room, and he said, ‘Hey, check this out…’ and he started tapping away. He’d gone back to the hotel the night before to teach himself how to do it.”

UK music journalist Sylvie Simmons caught up with the tour in Fresno, California, on 22 September and was equally smitten by the energetic young Californians.

“For sheer crowd-pleasing, Sabbath are hard to beat,” Simmons wrote in Sounds, “or they would be if it weren’t for a band like Van Halen. In some respects, they’re like a young version of Sabbath, fresher, without that embalmed-from-ten-years-ago look.

“Dave Lee Roth must be the most energetic front man on the rock circuit today, but louder, bigger. Even the flares on his pants are bigger. His jack-knife leaps from the drum kit have to be seen to be believed. His singing is peppered with wows and pings and squeals. His between-song spiels are shameless — “Fresno, the rock’n'roll capital of the world?” C’mon!

“Women just flock to him. All the girls in this mostly-male crowd seem to have made their way to the front of the stage and are grabbing his legs. The rest of the band are rock heroes of the old mould and they really know how to play.”

Songs Simmons picked out as highlights included Runnin’ with the Devil, Jamie’s Cryin’, Feel Your Love, Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love and the quartet’s set-closing cover, You Really Got Me — “a really macho, suggestive version of the Kinks’ classic that has the audience going wild”.

“Any other band but the confident Sabs”, she concluded, “would refuse to follow this group. They’re that good live.”

Later that night, in a hotel bar in the city, to the soundtrack of a jazz trio playing Barry Manilow hits, Ozzy Osbourne told Simmons, “Van Halen are one of the most high-energy trips I’ve seen in America for years. They’re fucking great. It’s like watching an early me when I see that David up there. When I was 21, you know? I only hope that they last as long as we’ve lasted.”

Paul Brannigan’s Eruption: The Eddie Van Halen Story is published on September 23.

It’s on Amazon.ca for $38 and change (CAD about $30 USD) set to be released Nov 9th. It’s been on there before and disappeared before the release date.

https://www.amazon.ca/Eruption-Eddie-Van-Halen-Story/dp/0571311458/ref=pd_ybh_a_5?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=HP00PFXA244VPN5B50SD

ron: For me, Amazon.ca (Canada) says this about my USA address, “This item cannot be shipped to your selected delivery location. Please choose a different delivery location.”

Well that sucks.

http://www.loudersound.com/news/van-halens-first-manager-recalls-her-first-vision-of-virtuoso-eddie-at-riotous-1974-party-at-david-lee-roths-dads-mansion

Van Halen’s first manager recalls her first vision of ‘virtuoso’ Eddie at riotous 1974 party at David Lee Roth’s dad’s mansion
By Paul Brannigan (Classic Rock)
2021-08-23 07:30:32

Van Halen’s first manager shares her memories of her first meeting with guitar god Eddie in exclusive Classic Rock extract from new EVH biography ‘Eruption’

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Classic Rock Exclusive: Van Halen in early 1975, at a promo shoot for Transatlantic Management outside the gates of the Huntington Library, Pasadena (Image credit: Copyright: Catherine H-H / Eruption: The Eddie Van Halen Story)

Van Halen’s first manager, Catherine ‘English Cathy’ Hutchin-Harris, shares her memories of seeing “virtuoso” Eddie Van Halen’s band for the very first time in Eruption, Classic Rock writer Paul Brannigan’s forthcoming biography of the late guitar legend.

Having set up Transatlantic Management to handle the affairs of Californian hard rock acts Sorcery, Sudden Death and Yankee Rose after relocating to the US in 1967, Londoner Hutchin-Harris tells Brannigan that she was invited to the 1974 gig at vocalist David Lee Roth’s father’s mansion in San Marino, California by the singer, who had received her phone number from a friend, Linda Estrada. At the time, the unsigned four-piece band from Pasadena were still called Mammoth (a name later respectfully adopted by Eddie Van Halen’s son Wolfgang for his own band, Mammoth WVH), but, as ‘English Cathy’ recalls, even before they became Van Halen, the group displayed huge potential and were already drawing hundreds of devoted fans to their self-booked backyard parties.

“When we got to the house, which was in San Marino, there were cars parked everywhere, and my assistant Lynore and I had to park quite a way away, and walk over in our platform shoes,” ‘English Cathy’ recalls. “We could hear the music from streets away, and when we got into the party it was crazy, absolutely crazy. The first thing that hit me was Edward. He was unbelievable. He was playing with his fingers over the frets, which nobody did then, and I was absolutely blown away. Lynore and I looked at each other and I said, ‘Oh. My. Goodness. This kid is a virtuoso.’ They were kinda just another rock band until Edward cut loose. David was brilliant on stage, but it was Edward who really grabbed us.”

“After they finished playing, I introduced David to Lynore,” Hutchin-Harris tells Brannigan. “When he heard her name he said, ‘How poetic!’, and proceeded to quote Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven to her, as Poe had also written a poem called Lenore. Lynore was wearing this beautiful antique negligee as a dress, and when Edward was introduced to her, he accidentally spilled his drink all over her, turning her dress see-through: that appealed to David in particular, I remember. Edward used to drink Singapore Slings — vodka was his drug of choice – and he drank a lot.”

“The party got so rowdy: I remember kids were throwing beer bottles and they were smashing on the rocks beside the pool. I looked at Lynore and said, ‘We have to leave.’ I mean, some of these kids were only fourteen or fifteen, and the band were all under twenty-one, so I was concerned that if the police came, I’d be the oldest one there, and I’d be the one to get busted!”

“David called me afterwards, and he sounded a bit disappointed when he said, ‘Oh, you guys left…’ I told him that I didn’t want to get a night in jail for drinking with under-age kids, but I’d be interested in helping out and getting them gigs.”

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Classic Rock Exclusive: the original notes for Van Halen’s March 1975 gig calendar, as booked by Transatlantic Management boss ‘English Cathy’ (Image credit: Catherine H-H c/o Eruption by Paul Brannigan)

Transatlantic Management began looking after the band’s affairs in late 1974 through to the summer of 1975, by which point the group had changed their name to Van Halen.

English Cathy’s calendar for Van Halen gigs in March 1975 – revealed here exclusively on Classic Rock for the very first time – shows the Pasadena quartet’s bookings, and agreed appearance fees, at a variety of venues in southern California, from headline appearances at high schools and Los Angeles area clubs (Myron’s Ballroom, Gazzarri’s) alongside a support slot with theatrical rockers Sorcery on March 6 at the prestigious Golden West Ballroom, plus an outing to see the epic final show of Led Zeppelin’s 1975 North American tour at The Forum in Inglewood, California.

In previously-shared extracts from Eruption revealed exclusively on Classic Rock, Brannigan spoke to Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler about Van Halen’s first UK tour, playing as support to Sabbath in spring/summer 1978, and to Ozzy Osbourne and Thin Lizzy’s Scott Gorham, who recall the quartet’s show-stealing performances on the US leg of Sabbath’s Never Say Die! tour in the second half of 1978.

Paul Brannigan’s Eruption: The Eddie Van Halen Story is published in the UK by Faber & Faber on September 23. The book will be published on August 30 in Germany by Ullstein, under the title Eddie Van Halen: Ein Leben, and later in the year by Permuted Press in the United States.