http://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2015/10/van_halen_rising_how_a_former.html
‘Van Halen Rising’: How a former college history teacher wrote one of the year’s best rock bios
By Matt Wake | mwake@al.com
on October 09, 2015 at 3:25 PM, updated October 09, 2015 at 4:30 PM
Drugs, alcohol, sex, fame, egos, jealousy, money. Pretty much every juggernaut rock band meets its demise due to one or more of those reasons. It makes for salacious reading but also tends to cause rock band biographies to blur into each other, once you read past where the band “makes it.” The more interesting part of a successful band’s trajectory is almost always before they’re successful. The raw, embryonic sound in flux. The dues paid at crappy bar gigs playing to 10 people. The not-as-cool haircuts and budget stage clothes. The big-break opportunities that didn’t quite work out.
Yet these formative, crucible periods get surprisingly rock bio ink. For example, Ian Christe’s enjoyable 2007 tome “Everybody Wants Some: The Van Halen Saga” spent roughly just 50 pages on Van Halen’s early years before the band released the 1978 self-titled debut album that revolutionized guitar rock overnight and will remain a classic as long as there’s recorded sound.
In comparison, Greg Renoff’s fantastic, immersive new book “Van Halen Rising: How a Southern California Backyard Party Band Saved Heavy Metal” devotes 350 or so pages to those early years. Starting from guitarist Eddie Van Halen and brother/ drummer Alex Van Halen’s family arriving in America in 1962 as Dutch immigrants with little more than a few suitcases and piano to their name, to when the Van Halens first crossed paths, first as rivals, with a flamboyant young frontman named David Lee Roth, himself the James Brown and Al Jolson obsessed son of a wealthy doctor, up through the release of the 10 million-plus selling “Van Halen” LP and finally into the group’s first world tour, opening for Black Sabbath. “How did Van Halen become a band good enough to have a guitar player that was going to revolutionize the whole instrument from the first album on?” Renoff, age 46, says via phone. “How did Van Halen become a band good enough to blow Black Sabbath off the stage? Those questions couldn’t be answered by focusing on 1982 or 1981. It had to be focusing on earlier years.”
“Van Halen Rising” is one of the best rock books to be published so far this year. Even if you aren’t a big Van Halen fan, it’s fascinating to read how a band that became so massive started so small and slogged for four years playing covers (of songs from bands ranging from Aerosmith to ZZ Top) at bars, junior colleges and backyard parties before getting signed. Kiss bassist Gene Simmons helped Van Halen make demos in 1976 only to later be told by Kiss manager Bill Aucoin that VH had “no commercial potential” before Aucoin passed on them.
Renoff, whose other favorite bands include Led Zeppelin, AC/DC and Rush, holds a PhD in history. And it shows in his research. The former Drury University instructor conducted more than 230 original interviews for “Van Halen Rising,” ranging from early musical colleagues and then-teenage friends of the band (who Renoff reached through means including word-of-mouth and Facebook), to original VH bassist Michael Anthony, to the man who produced their first six albums, Ted Templeman. Renoff began working on the book in 2009. He uncovered some real nuggets, including previously untold stories of how Eddie Van Halen developed his signature soloing style of utilizing two hands to tap flurries of notes on the fretboard.
“Van Halen Rising” also contains a ton of cool early Van Halen images. Photos, flyers and even images of postcards mailed home to friends from the Sabbath tour.
Vintage, Roth-era Van Halen may have bloomed into a rock supernova but it was a populist one, which adds to the appeal of the band’s origin story. As LA Weekly music editor Andy Hermann recently noted: “In the rigid caste system of your average American suburban high school in the early ’80s, they were the great equalizer, the only group the jocks, shop class kids and dorks such as myself could agree on — and even bond over.”
The group’s classic lineup (we’re not going to get even talk about the Van Hagar era although “5150″ didn’t suck) was no stranger to Alabama. During that 1978 tour with pioneering metal act Sabbath, Van Halen performed at Birmingham’s Boutwell Auditorium, Mobile’s Municipal Arena and Huntsville’s Von Braun Civic Center. Songs played on the tour included “Runnin’ With the Devil,” Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” and a hit cover of Kinks’ “You Really Got Me,” all three of which also appeared on the setlist for Van Halen’s Sept. 17, 2015 Oak Mountain Amphitheatre concert.
“Van Halen Rising” publishes Oct. 13 via Toronto-based ECW Press. On a recent afternoon, Greg Renoff, a New York native who grew up in New Jersey, was in the office of his Tulsa, Okla. home when called for this phone interview. Excerpts are below.
[click the link above to read the interview]
