13 - Steve Rosen talks Eddie Van Halen

Acclaimed journalist, Steve Rosen, speaks with Jack Mangan of Support Life And Music about his 2024 book, "Tonechaser," chronicling the rise, fall, and end of his close friendship with Edward Van Halen.   

Some topics/quotes from this Summit:   

• Alex Van Halen's book (SPOILER: Steve likes it)
• "But what do I do now? Do I keep writing the book? People are going to think: 'Edward passes away, and you know you're going to just write a book and cash in on that,' and the thought of that made me sick in my stomach." 
• "And I will tell you that those 1st 2 albums, and the 1st 2 tours is when he was happiest, in my mind. Everything was new to him, you know, and everything was an adventure and an exploration." 
• "Without trying to be glib or anything, I knew that early on the cigarettes were were going to kill him. They're going to kill him before the coke or the alcohol did. . . And you know, that's sadly what happened."
• ". . . and Blackmore was amazing, and I know I kind of say those things about him, and I write about him in the book. That's just who Richie Blackmore was. That doesn't take away one ounce of who he was as a guitar, player and songwriter. My God! The sound of his guitar!"  
• "I've seen a lot of journalists who have been running for years, and I saw how blase they got. I thought, you fuckers! Do you know how lucky you are sitting in that room?"
• "And Edward would say over and over, 'Yeah, I've never played sober,' you know, and he was terrified to do it. Could he have done it? Yeah, absolutely."   
• "Could these guys have created without the drugs. I certainly think so. Did they think so? They didn't. And so that becomes part of the process. I don't think it's necessarily self destructive. I don't think that they set out to damage themselves."  

Support Life And Music: Fighting back against music industry suicide and self-destruction. https://www.supportlifeandmusic.org/  

Tonechaser book: https://www.tonechaserbook.com/

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy