US Festival '83, Glen Helen Regional Park, San Bernardino, CA, 5-29-1983 - Day 2, Part 7: Van Halen

The seventh and last act to perform on Day Two (Heavy Metal Day) of the 1983 US Festival is Van Halen.

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:

Van Halen - Wikipedia

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://pixeldrain.com/u/Et2RXujf

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/BfPALZ6TnRQGhF4/file

The cover photo of Eddie Van Halen (with guitar) and David Lee Roth is from this exact concert.

Steve Winwood & the All-Star Garage Band - City of Hope Benefit Concert, Universal Amphitheatre, Los Angeles, CA, 10-16-1996

Merry Christmas and happy holidays in general. Here's something that I think is extra interesting. I had no idea it even existed until I stumbled across it a few days ago on YouTube while looking for something else. I'll bet you have no idea this existed either, but you should give it a listen.

In 1996, there was a high-profile black-tie gala in Los Angeles for the City of Hope, a foundation raising money to fight several deadly diseases. All sorts of rich and famous people attended, and it raised over $3 million. For the evening's concert, a very unusual mix of famous musicians got together to create what they called the "All-Star Garage Band": Steve Winwood, Don Henley, Bryan Adams, Sheryl Crow, Melissa Etheridge, John Mellencamp, Eddie Van Halen, Me'shell Ndegeocello, Bobby Keys, Tony Rich, Richie Sambora, Jim Price, Narada Michael Walden, Paul Shaffer, and Max Weinberg.

It was different than your usual concert for this sort of event, where famous musicians take turns go on stage, sing a song or two, then leave the stage. Instead, in keeping with the "garage band" concept, most of them stayed on stage for the whole show, and played various instruments and/or sang backing vocals when they weren't in the spotlight. For instance, in addition to singing a couple of songs, Don Henley of the Eagles either played cowbell or a full drum set on some of the other songs.

I find this a fascinating mixture of musicians that I never imagined would play together. What's even more interesting is that in nearly all cases, they did classic songs that they normally didn't play. Nobody was promoting their latest record, and nobody even sang any song they actually wrote (with the exception of Steve Winwood, who co-wrote "Gimme Some Lovin'"). It seems they had a ball playing the songs they all loved and grew up with.

Winwood sang the most songs (though not by much), and played organ on all the songs, so I've filed this album in the Winwood part of my music collection. I've helped beef up the Winwood emphasis by adding some songs featuring him at the start and end of this album that come from different concerts around the same time. The first two songs, "Higher Ground" and "Gimme Some Lovin'," are duets between Stevie Wonder and Winwood at a 1997 awards show. This means that "Gimme Some Lovin'" is performed twice on this album, but I figure that's acceptable because one version is a duet (plus, it's a fantastic song!). The last two songs come from a 1996 Chic concert in Tokyo, Japan. Both Winwood and Slash joined in on Winwood's hit "Higher Love" and the Jimi Hendrix classic "Stone Free." Winwood sang lead and played organ on those songs, while Slash did all the guitar soloing.

Speaking of guitar soloing, one interesting thing about the main "All-Star Garage Band" show is Eddie Van Halen's guitar playing. Personally, I'm not a really big fan of the band Van Halen, although I do enjoy their well known songs. But I gather it's been very rare for Eddie Van Halen to play lead guitar outside of that band (unlike, say, Eric Clapton, who has played on zillions of other musician's projects). Yet Van Halen is all over this. He plays his easily identifiable style of soloing on a bunch of songs (unfortunately not giving guitarist Richie Sambora much of a chance to shine).

The recording sound quality is good, not great. I searched the Internet fairly thoroughly, but all I could find of the show was some YouTube videos, from a variety of sources. All of them come from a VH-1 broadcast of the concert, but some were recorded better than others. In particular, "Stay with Me" sounds rougher than the rest, but I've included it here since I deemed it just good enough. For two of the songs played at that concert, I couldn't find any versions at all: "Get Ready" by Tony Rich and "Tequila" by Bobby Keys. If anyone has those, please let me know, and I'll add them in. And if you have better versions of other songs, or even have one consistent recording of the whole thing, also please let me know so I can upgrade the sound.

From what I understand, the show wasn't broadcast on VH-1 until 1997. By that time, the footage was edited so that the band leader (and longtime Tonight Show with David Letterman sidekick) Paul Shaffer gave introductions to each song that were recorded later in a different place. I've cut out what bits of these intros the YouTube videos had, which often wasn't much. That means there's no actual between song dialogue by the people on stage, since all that had been edited out of the broadcast. Also, there generally are only a few seconds of applause at the end of each song before Shaffer resumed talking or the broadcast cut to a commercial. So I've added more applause to the ends of most songs, patching in the applause from the few songs that did have a decent applause length.

The core "All-Star Garage Band" recording is 42 minutes long. With the added Winwood bonus tracks, the full album is 58 minutes long. And by the way, since I got these from YouTube videos, you can go to that website and watch the footage of all of these songs. It's interesting to see so many big stars often playing more humble backing musician roles.

01 Higher Ground (Stevie Wonder & Steve Winwood)
02 Gimme Some Lovin' (Stevie Wonder & Steve Winwood)
03 I Fought the Law (John Mellencamp & Bryan Adams with Eddie Van Halen & the All-Star Garage Band)
04 Stay with Me (Melissa Etheridge with the All-Star Garage Band)
05 Bitch (Sheryl Crow with Eddie Van Halen & the All-Star Garage Band)
06 In the Midnight Hour (Don Henley with the All-Star Garage Band)
07 C'mon Everybody (Bryan Adams with Eddie Van Halen & the All-Star Garage Band)
08 Shotgun (Steve Winwood with the All-Star Garage Band)
09 When Something Is Wrong with My Baby (Steve Winwood & Sheryl Crow with the All-Star Garage Band)
10 Hold On, I'm Comin' (Steve Winwood & Don Henley with the All-Star Garage Band)
11 Gloria (John Mellencamp with Richie Sambora, Eddie Van Halen & the All-Star Garage Band)
12 Gimme Some Lovin' (Steve Winwood with the All-Star Garage Band)
13 Get Back (Richie Sambora & Melissa Etheridge with Eddie Van Halen & the All-Star Garage Band)
14 Higher Love (Steve Winwood with Slash & Chic)
15 Stone Free (Steve Winwood with Slash & Chic)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/tmewM4sf 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/LvyaZa4BV9XpG7h/file

For the cover, I found two nice photos for the actual event, and I couldn't decide which one to use. So I simply used both of them. The top photo shows, from right to left: Bryan Adams, Max Weinberg, Richie Sambora, Eddie Van Halen, and Steve Winwood. The bottom photo was taken that same evening, back stage. It shows, from right to left: Don Henley, Van Halen, Winwood, Sheryl Crow, Narada Michael Walden, and John Mellencamp. Unfortunately, not everyone on stage that evening could be captured in these two photos, but at least it shows most of them.