AGING WITH GRACE IN THE ROCK WORLD (Van Halen is doing it; others aren’t)
Van Halen cranks up the party machine while addressing the passage of time with grace
David Lee Roth, Eddie Van Halen
and the band used to embody
American indulgence like few other rockers. Now they are reasserting their legacy without pretending to be young men, Mark Lepage
writes.
You want lines? Diamond Dave’s got a million of ’em. As punk, college-rock sincerity and yoga bloomed around him, David Lee Roth confessed that he “used to jog but the ice cubes kept falling out of my glass.” As the ’80s unfurled, he caught the zeitgeist and stated his conviction that money may not buy happiness, but “it can buy you a yacht big enough to pull up right alongside it.”
Of all the bands of their era, Van Halen most embraced yahooing American indulgence – not necessarily drugs or alcohol, although they consumed their share, but the Live Large and Ugly impulse, the conspicuous display of Hollywood wealth, revelling in fab stardom, triumphal, without any pretence to working class or populist cred. There’s something to be said for a singer who can articulate: “I am not this way because I’m in a band; I’m in a band because I’m this way.”
And VH gave every indication of Aging Disgracefully, from the singer on in.
And yet something happened between the Jump of 1984 and the Hop Around Gamely of 2012.
Yeah, almost 30 years and umpteen singer changes and Hagar the Horrible happened, but against all odds and their elemental intentions, Van Halen are poised to cash in on their catalogue, rev up the party engine and still come away with something like … grace.
Aging gracefully, in rock terms. As DLR and the VH brothers (and son) head to the Bell Centre Thursday to crack open their hard-rock piñata and spill the brown M&M hits all over the old and young fans, it seems as though they know the time is short, and there is more to owning it than simply making a buck off a legacy. They seem to want to validate theirs, and to bring it home without denying the passage of time.
It’s the re-re-reunited Van Halen. The new album, A Different Kind of Truth, is unexpectedly solid, but it’s more than that. They’re older now, and a recent video reveals they know it.
Now, there is, of course, ample precedent for aging disgracefully in rock, and some might even hold that a rock star has a duty. That “some” would be me. Is this not the music of eternal suspension, of the endless summer? Is this not the permanent acne of the soul? Sure, grow up. And what? Get a job? I’ve got an app for that.
Nobody courts disgrace. It just happens, in both obvious and mysterious ways. Let’s consider the visually effective, but fundamentally tragic, hair extensions or rugs that some of our most venerable sexagenarian-plus rock and pop stars must surely be sporting.
Have you ever considered the possibility that Mick Jagger or Steven Tyler might not actually be grey, but … bald? I have no secret information to suggest either of the gents is as bald as grampa, but I do know what pushing-70 men look like.
Incidentally, before we progress any farther, Keith is exempt. Keith Richards would be Disgrace Patient Zero by any reasonable person’s assessment, but he’s Keith. And we’re not reasonable.
No, the grotesque side is more concerned with neo-vulgarians like Axl Rose, who have shown us how ugly their self-obsessions get as they age. Before Axl, Ted Nugent showed that bodies at rest tend to remain at rest, bodies in motion tend to remain in motion, and loud-mouthed right-wing guitar hacks tend to roll on into senior axe hacks who never learned what rock ’n’ roll was about. And I’m not about to tell him. He’d crossbow me.
Aging disgracefully. The list is long. Everyone who ever clung to yesterday’s glory when it was rotten like yesterweek’s fish, anyone who thought the point was pretending rather than being young, anyone who sold or lost or traded away the flame of faith for the neon of careerism, you know who you are. Enjoy. You can take it with you, but your money’s no good in Hades.
Mick, Madonna, Elvis, Jacko, Mariah, Whitney, Courtney – stardom itself has got to be fun, but the trade-in is pricey. And it’s not about surface ugliness – far from it – or style. Take, for instance, a pair of ur-punks, Iggy Pop and Lemmy Kilmister, who show those others up. They both look like melting wax monsters, but share the dignity of having remained true to the impulse that brought them here. They are the mutts who render all purebreds pointless.
There is also the ultimate shame of incapacity, of no longer being able to do it. But that truth comes home quickly to rock bands or pop stars who can no longer play or sing. They go away. So we’re talking about behaviour, carriage, intent, style, vanity. Of how you address your legacy and carry it forward. Of what you’re clinging to. And it might occur to you: Van Halen? Really? Surely it must be near impossible for a Hollywood hard-rock band to age well, especially one with David Lee Roth in front of it.
You’d think so. Admittedly, Van Halen has Van Halen, which is the beginning of the story. When it comes to grace, there is none like virtuosity, and Eddie Van Halen is elevated by an indissoluble gift. Virtuosity degrades, but whatever micro-sliver of whizbang he’s lost (and it’s not apparent) is compensated by his insideout knowledge of the instrument, a kind rivalled only by a select cabal of players who have ever existed, and his innate musicality. But that’s Edward. He can still play. What about the others?
The drummer? Drummers don’t age, thank God. They keep time, and then they keel over. Drummers beat on things, and that keeps you young. So Alex Van Halen is still Drummer Alex. But Dave? I mean – come on. David Lee Roth was always more showbiz than rock hunk. It was just that his chosen line of showbiz required abs and a heavy-metal mane. And yet, he is the minor hero of this story, because he knows what he has to lose, and what he’s lost.
There’s one video in particular that prompted this piece, called The Downtown Sessions, an acoustic collection of hits, with the re-re-reunited VH sitting down in the studio to whack out a few on the acoustics and the bongos. I know – bongos. But try to keep reading.
David Lee Roth is too self-aware to pretend it isn’t 2012. And he probably owns a mirror. there are no hair extensions; instead, there is a cloth cap over his receded hair, and a pair of overalls where the leather pants once were. Farmer Dave. One is reminded of another DLR line, about rock critics liking Elvis Costello “because rock critics look like Elvis Costello.” Well, now we all do.
Eddie chops into Panama on the acoustic, and Dave is wailing and schmoozing, but also coughing off-mic between the lines. Next is You and Your Blues from the new album, and Dave is talking about “who I was then, back in 1979, with the hair and the two gloves” and cracking wise about vaude- ville and Mickey Mouse. It’s all on camera. Can you imagine Madge doing that?
Meanwhile, Eddie hammers away with his ham-fisted right hand and the boggling strength of his left, all over the fretboard. With Eddie, you have the wizard, and with Dave, you have the mensch – the frontman who can point affably, appealingly to the passage of time, even as the band cranks up the party machine and ultimately has it both ways.
It’s not Handel or Haydn – it’s Hot for Teacher. But even in this most reductive form, it is a reminder that you can be exalted, humbled, energized, overpowered, rapt, moved, aroused, stricken – not necessarily by this song, but by many songs, and all in the space of 3:48.
Only a song can do that. Or a kiss. You can’t always replay the kiss, but you can play the song over ad infinitum and experience it even more deeply. Which is what these guys seem to be doing, even if that song isn’t Like a Rolling Stone or the kiss isn’t the kiss in Casablanca. It’s just a sloppy kiss. Sometimes, those ones will work as well. Oh, on that Elvis Costello line: Well, Dave, apparently, guys who look like Elvis Costello marry girls who look like Diana Krall. So, we live in hope. And we visit Panama.
Van Halen performs Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at the Bell Centre, with Kool & the Gang. Tickets cost $68.50 to $155.50. Call 514790-2525 or order at evenko.ca.