I was raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, often referred to as The Mormon Church. When young people start high school, we also start a religious class called Seminary. The 50 minute class is held daily in conjunction with school… very early in the morning.
I grew up in Glendora, Ca., a small community about 30 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. Glendora has a foothill range that runs east/west and divides the town. The north side of the hill attends Glendora High School and the south side attends Charter Oak High School, in Covina. I lived on the south side and went to Charter Oak. We attended church on the north side of town. I had two sets of friends, which was cool for a teenager.
My freshman year of high school, my seminary class was on the north side at the “old” Elwood building… at 5:30am. After that class, we hustled the 15 min drive to Charter Oak for Zero Period band at 7am. Our teacher was Margo Smith, a sweet, 30 something single woman, that was the embodiment of a church lady.
My father taught the upperclass, so I was always early. One morning, Richard Butler, a wild, rough kid that had befriended me, came in early. He went into the library and grabbed a record player. These were a self contained box, with a speaker on the side. He brought it back to the classroom and plugged it in.
He pulled a vinyl record from the sleeve, put side one on the record player and turned up the volume. I heard this descending siren like sound followed by a thumping bass guitar playing quarter notes and then this quick trill of guitar followed by what I immediately thought was the greatest piece of music I had ever heard in my short 14 years.
Sister Smith was busily preparing her lesson as this all transpired and she seemed to ignore what we were doing… until the song hit the chorus.
Ooh, yeah
(Ahh)
Runnin’ with the devil
(Ahh-hah, yeah)
(Woo-hoo-oo)
Runnin’ with the devil
Yes I’m, yeah, hoo
I think she lost 10 years from her life in that moment. Her head snapped up with a look of sheer disbelief and I don’t think the song was halfway through the second verse before she was across the room and had the needle off the spinning vinyl! Needless to say, I didn’t get to hear the rest of the song that day.
How ironic that my love affair with Van Halen began that early morning in a church! I quickly bought the album and played it over and over. It was amazing to hear the things that Eddie did with a guitar. Eruption became every guitar players goal. In those days there was no YouTube to watch your favorite artist play your favorite song. Learning a riff was an exercise of either lifting the needle over and over or hitting rewind on the cassette player.
A couple of years previous, I had taken guitar lessons for maybe a year. It didn’t take long to realize that I didn’t have the dexterity in my fingers to play effectively, so I gave up. I had been in the band since the 5th grade and was in the percussion section. At this point as a freshman in high school, I was just starting to play the drum set, so Alex Van Halen was really my first influence. A year or so later, I discovered Rush and Neil, so my musical focus turned to them. I still bought every Van Halen album as soon as they came out.
Today, Oct 6th, 2020, the world lost a giant in Edward Van Halen. Without a doubt he is the most influential guitarist of the last 40 years. A pioneer that changed the path of Rock n Roll in 1978 and forward.
RIP Eddie. 1/26/1955 – 10/6/2020
