Van Halen is a very well known band, so I don't feel the need to explain much here. Note this festival took place near the end of the band's era in which David Lee Roth was the lead singer. In 1984, one year later, they would release the "Jump" album which would be a massive success, but Roth would leave after the world tour that followed. At the time, the band was still promoting their 1982 album "Diver Down."
If you want to know more about the band, here's their Wikipedia entry:
There's much to say about the band's performance. For starters, there was a big controversy about how much they got paid to perform. Multimillionaire Steve Wozniak was bankrolling the entire two US Festivals, and for the 1983 one, he got most of the acts he wanted, even if he had to pay through the nose. As one of the headline acts, Van Halen was paid the most money, a million dollars. That was an astronomical amount for a single concert back in 1983. (It would be about three million dollars adjusted for inflation in 2024, but also, concert ticket prices have gone up way faster than inflation since then.)
However, after Van Halen signed the contract to perform at the festival, David Bowie agreed to perform as the headliner for a million and a half dollars. It turned out Van Halen's contract included a clause that if anyone else at the festival was paid more, they would have to be paid that much too. So their million dollar fee was also boosted to a million and a half.
These developments pissed off the Clash. They were the headline act for Day One of the festival, while Van Halen was the Day Two headliner and David Bowie was the Day Three headliner. Yet the Clash were only being paid $500,000, and they didn't have any clause to boost that when the others were paid more. As a result, in the weeks leading up to the festival, Joe Strummer, lead singer of the Clash, complained a lot in the press, and especially criticized Van Halen. David Lee Roth, Van Halen's outspoken lead singer, then complained back.
For instance, in an interview given to MTV earlier in the day, Roth said, "The Clash are having a lot of troubles, man. They're trying to save the nation, they're trying to implement cultural exchange – and change – they're trying to make some, you know, advisements on terminology of what we're going to live. And they have a new drummer. So they have their hands full out there. [Laughs.] What can I say? By the way, the Clash did save the world – about a half hour late last night, ladies and gentlemen. [Laughs.]"
Then, during the actual performance, he threw in another insult in his banter between songs, holding up a bottle and saying, "I wanna take this time to say this is real whiskey here. The only people who put ice tea in Jack Daniels bottles is the Clash, baby!"
If Roth's comments to MTV sound a bit incoherent ("advisements on terminology?"), that's because he was quite drunk when he said them. Apparently, he was rip roaring drunk (and high as well) for the entire day as the band waited to go on stage late that night. But he was hardly the only one getting wasted backstage that day.
Bassist Michael Anthony later recalled, "We had a big backstage setup and we had a lot of guests. That was one big party. Motley Crue back then was just coming up. And Tommy Lee came up to me with a bottle of Jack Daniels in the middle of the afternoon: 'Come on, dude! Fuckin A!' [Laughs.]. I'm like, 'Brother, I'll drink with you. But let's wait until tonight [to really go hard].'"
Anthony further explained, "We were pretty nervous. Roth was probably a little more nervous than everyone else. I don't like to talk smack about anybody, but he was doing interviews all day long, just kind of hyping the whole thing. And Dave was drinking Jack [Daniels] and whatever. He was pretty well plowed. You get caught up in the whole frickin' festival and the whole thing. And the next thing you know, it's kind of like, 'Oh my God, we gotta go on in an hour!'"
Band manager Noel Monk later said, "David liked to drink a little before going out onstage, but very rarely had he imbibed so heavily that it affected his performance. There were a few times overseas when David had gotten drunk before media appearances, but in the States he had always been smart enough to keep things under control. So imagine my surprise when I returned to the trailer a couple hours later and found David drunk and krelled out of his mind. ["Krell" was the band's nickname for cocaine.] I mean, I was mortified; he could barely stand up."
After the Scorpions finished their set, Van Halen wasn't ready to go on, due to Roth being too wasted. Luckily, the band had made a video to get the crowd hyped up. It supposedly showed wild partying going on backstage, including scantily clad or half-naked women, butlers in tuxedos, and midgets and farm animals wandering around (just to add to the chaotic atmosphere). In fact, it was filmed a week before to fake what the backstage party would be like, but the actual backstage party was just like that, only wilder.
However, the video wasn't that long, and mostly the audience just had to wait. Two hours passed before Roth was deemed capable of going on stage. But even then, he was still very drunk. (Curiously, the Clash also started about two hours late the night before, as I explained in the album write-up for their performance.)
Some people complained that Roth gave a poor performance. For instance, Ozzy Osbourne, who had performed earlier in the day, commented, "Honestly, I don't know why Van Halen even bothered getting up there, they were so fucking drunk." And even Monk, the band's manager, later said, "David put on the worst performance I had ever seen from him." However, the rest of the band played well, and the audience responded positively overall.
Bassist Anthony also has a different opinion, saying of the performance, "We were tight behind him. And when I watch the tape back, we were firing on all cylinders. All four of us, whether Roth was drunk or not. The energy was there. The show is there."
I listened to this a couple of times, and in my opinion I think the band sounded fine. It's not even obvious that Roth was drunk, except for the fact that he went off on some long rants between songs a couple of times. I'd be curious if people think this was a bad show by them or not.
This is sourced from a soundboard worthy bootleg. The entire show is officially unreleased.
This album is an hour and 59 minutes long.
001 Romeo Delight (Van Halen)
002 Unchained (Van Halen)
003 Drum Solo [Instrumental] (Van Halen)
004 The Full Bug (Van Halen)
005 Runnin' with the Devil (Van Halen)
006 talk (Van Halen)
007 Jamie's Cryin' (Van Halen)
008 So This Is Love (Van Halen)
009 Little Guitars (Van Halen)
010 Bass Solo [Instrumental] (Van Halen)
011 Dancing in the Street (Van Halen)
012 Somebody Get Me a Doctor - I'm So Glad (Van Halen)
013 Dance the Night Away (Van Halen)
014 God Bless the Child [Edit] (Van Halen)
015 Cathedral [Instrumental] (Van Halen)
016 Secrets (Van Halen)
017 Everybody Wants Some (Van Halen)
018 talk (Van Halen)
019 Ice Cream Man (Van Halen)
020 Intruder [Instrumental] (Van Halen)
021 Oh, Pretty Woman (Van Halen)
022 Guitar Solo [Instrumental] (Van Halen)
023 Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love (Van Halen)
024 Bottoms Up (Van Halen)
025 You Really Got Me - Happy Trails (Van Halen)
https://www.imagenetz.de/gCrgC
alternate link:
https://pixeldrain.com/u/LdCXssB3
The cover photo of Eddie Van Halen (with guitar) and David Lee Roth is from this exact concert.
Several soundboard recordings and full video concerts circulate from the Diver Down Tour, probably the most well-documented of the VH tours. Unfortunate because Diver Down rarely makes the top five in peoples' rankings of the best DLR VH albums. As far as the energy of the performance and the vibe of the band on stage, they are certainly firing on all cylinders, despite any minor extracurricular backstage pre-show festivities. It's easy to get the impression that something is off during the first song, "Romeo Delight," when Dave misses the second verse and proclaims, "I forgot the f*ckin' words!" But that was how he did it for several shows; it was part of the act. Dave's patter in-between songs gets to be a bit much at times, I'll concede. But as far as the band throwing down an excellent show, they certainly did that.
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Seems a shame that a huge festival like this didn't have artists guesting on other artists' sets - maybe today it's more common practice than it used to be back then, but hearing some of these artists playing together would have made it a one in a lifetime thing
ReplyDeleteThanks so much again for all of your hard work!
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