Free Everybody Wants Some by Ian Christe Page B

garage. Now Van Halen were trying to put on a pop spectacle that could compete with The Six Million Dollar Man and Love, American Style . They blessed their crowds with the gracious bounty of everything rock and roll and a little technology could offer, then hoped the fans would provide the rest.
    The tour started with a roar, and the second week the band played before 106,000 at the California World Music fest, joining heavyweights Aerosmith, Toto, UFO, Cheap Trick, and Ted Nugent—bands that Van Halen would have stood in line to see just a year earlier. That night, Van Halen and three hundred close friends arrived in a convoy of sixteen limousines. David Lee Roth presided over the backstage, joined by a chimpanzee dressed like him and two little persons hired as bodyguards.
    The band concocted an elaborate stunt for the show, at the expense of Aerosmith. On a grassy incline behind the stage, visible to the crowd, a $100 yellow Volkswagen was parked throughout the day. Periodically, someone at the soundboard would make an announcement asking for “someone in the Aerosmith organization to please move their car.” Van Halen had arranged for a Sherman tank to roll out onto the field before their set and crush the “Aerosmith” car, but apparently word leaked to Aerosmith and the caper was curtailed before any military hardware could be deployed. The party still stormed well into the next day, leaving many casualties, including Dave—he fainted onstage in Spokane, Washington, five days afterward. He later blamed a stomach virus.
    Their quest for carnage was soon satisfied in July at the Illinois State Armory in Springfield. According to the State Journal-Register , the band destroyed a limousine there and started a fire that caused $2,000 worth of damage. They were stopped overnight for a police investigation, forcing a cancellation of the Cincinnati show the next night.
    Tour mishaps became growing experiences as the band struggled to keep up with its success. Backstage sex movies, drug abuse, and clashing egos came with the territory—though the Van Halen brothers remained close, often sharing hotel rooms. “When we started out, the emphasis was on sex, drugs, and rock and roll,” Alex told Guitar Player . “Forget the drug part, we’ll drink ourselves to death. You do your tour—two hours onstage—and then get the hell out of there so you can get laid!”
    The band took rock hedonism to new levels. When they found something that made them laugh—like a sex shop in Cleveland overloaded with inflatable love dolls—they shared it with the audience, hanging a full harem of lingerie-laden air hoochies from the lighting rafters. The fans got laid, the band got laid, and their crew and business associates got laid. Even the journalists sent out to cover the band got laid. “What happens after our show isn’t that different than [what] happens on a lot of tours,” Dave explained. “It’s just that we’re the ones who will let you take a picture.”
    A Van Halen concert was a constantly shimmying rock variety show packed with as many highlights as imaginable. When you went to see the Who, you had to wait a while to see Pete Townshend’s windmills. At a Led Zeppelin show, Jimmy Page didn’t break out the violin bow for his guitar until the second hour. But with Van Halen, the money shots started the moment Roth made his stage entrance with the bang of the lights and flying aerial splits off the drum riser.
    The impact of Van Halen’s early streaks across the United States was tremendous and far-reaching. Kirk Hammett of Metallica saw them play in Oakland in 1978. Henry Rollins—then still Henry Garfield—and his pal Ian MacKaye, the future leader of Minor Threat and Fugazi, watched Van Halen open for Ted Nugent and were amazed. And not only the young minds were impressed. Leslie West of Mountain, a band Van Halen had covered, was deep into drug problems, and claimed he had all but abandoned playing guitar