From Mote Magazine 8/14/07

http://www.moregoatthangoose.com/blog/index.php?id=trent070814

by Trent McMartin

Bio Trent McMartin is a Canadian music journalist and entertainment writer. His career in journalism happened accidently when an editor from an online newspaper discovered his posts on the message boards at Rollingstone.com. His work has been featured in such daily newspaper publications as the Chicago Tribune and Calgary Herald. Any comments, e-mail Trent at trent@music-critic.ca visit trent at wikipedia

With the latest Van Halen reunion tour (yawn) set to kick off with shows in Toronto on Oct. 10  (Air Canada Centre), Vancouver on Dec. 5 (GM Place), Edmonton on Dec. 9 (Rexall Place) and Calgary on Dec. 11 (Pengrowth Saddledome), Mote Magazine has decided to give us…

10 Things You Didn’t Know (or don’t want to know) About Van Halen!

1. Though it was confirmed that original bassist Michael Anthony had officially left Van Halen in 2006, his ousting can be traced back a decade when he played on only three of the twelve tracks on 1998’s pitiful Van Halen III. Reportedly, the Van Halen brothers also did not want the bass player to be involved with the 2004 reunion but Sammy Hagar insisted, refusing to participate if Anthony were not reinstated in the bassist role. In the end Anthony agreed to be paid less.

2. In 1977, future “Family Jewels” reality series star Gene Simmons saw one of Van Halen’s shows and financed their first demo tape. Simmons supposedly wanted to change the band’s name to “Daddy Longlegs” and had even designed possible album cover art depicting a daddy longlegs wearing a top hat. Realizing the name was ultra lame, the band stuck with the Van Halen moniker.

3. Sticking with the KISS theme, according to Gene Simmons, Eddie Van Halen reportedly approached the bassist in the early eighties about the possibility of joining KISS as their new guitarist, replacing a strung out Ace Frehley. Simmons ultimately convinced Eddie to stay with Van Halen while KISS decided to go with Vinnie Vincent (yes folks, you read that right).

4. None of the group’s David Lee Roth era albums ever hit the coveted #1 spot on the Billboard album chart, while all four of  “Van Hagar’s” studio albums did, starting with 1986’s 5150.

5. The infamous “M&M candy” removal stipulation did in fact exist. In the early eighties, the band’s contract rider specified that a bowl of M&M candies, with all of the brown ones removed, was to be available in their dressing room. Years later, David Lee Roth refuted this demand as not one of diva behaviour, but a safety precaution signifying that the staff were correctly reading and honouring the technical and safety provisions in the contract. If brown M&M’s were in the bowl, then the band had reason to believe that the other demands of the contract were also not being fulfilled.

6. Eddie Van Halen was not paid for that killer solo he did on Michael Jackson’s mega hit “Beat It.” The guitarist performed two takes, supposedly the better one was chosen, and the rest is history.

7. Eddie pissed off Kurt Cobain. Before a December 1993 Nirvana show in Los Angeles, Eddie Van Halen was seen and heard backstage begging Kurt Cobain if he could jam with the grunge band that night. Annoyed, Cobain replied, “No, you can’t play with us. We don’t have any extra guitars.” Persisting on, the heavily intoxicated Van Halen, who was on his knees, shouted out, “Well, let me play the Mexican’s (referring to Nirvana touring guitarist Pat Smear) guitar. What is he, is he Mexican? Is he black?” Seeing all this, filmmaker Dave Markey, who was videotaping the show that night, turned off his camera in pity of the inebriated Van Halen, thus saving future generations from witnessing this fiasco on youtube.

8. Not only is Sammy Hagar rich from his successful tenure as frontman for Van Halen, but the Red Rocker just recently sold an 80% interest in his Cabo Wabo Tequila to Gruppo Campari, the seventh-largest spirits company in the world, for $80 million.

9. David Lee Roth is a trained paramedic having been on hundreds of individual ambulance rides in New York City. He once even saved the life of a Bronx woman who had a heart attack by shocking her back to life with a defibrillator.

10. Eddie Van Halen once wrote and performed two songs for an adult film titled Sacred Sin. “I like his (director Michael Ninn) work,” Van Halen told adult site AVN.com in 2006. “Michael Ninn is like a Spielberg to me: the imagery, the way he makes things look, just...sensual.” Yeah, and Peter North is like Harrison Ford. Give us a break.