A music journalist with a career spanning 50 years, Steve Rosen's new book "TONECHASER: Understanding Edward: My 26-Year Journey with Edward Van Halen" is a heartfelt reflection of his time with the guitar legend. Steve opens up about the friendship with EVH, what went wrong, his classic GN'R interviews, and much more!
More info:
https://www.tonechaserbook.com/
https://www.instagram.com/steve.rosen.guitar.picks/
WEBSITE: www.afdpod.com
More info:
https://www.tonechaserbook.com/
https://www.instagram.com/steve.rosen.guitar.picks/
WEBSITE: www.afdpod.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You know what this is Appetite for Distortion. Welcome to
(00:31):
the podcast Appetite for Distortion, Episode number five hundred and thirteen.
I don't know why I said that so dramatically, Brando.
Here and today we are joined by the author of
Tone Chaser, Understanding Edward My twenty six year journey with
Edward van Halen. Welcome to the podcast, mister Steve Rosen.
How are you, sir, Brando?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I'm doing great, buddy. Thanks so much for having me,
and thanks for your patience. There are all the people
out there I made this very sweet person wait on me.
I never do that, so I have some patience with us.
So thanks man.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
It's it's a good segue because I actually have patience.
In Hebrew tattooed on my arm Southly you really? Yeah?
Which is I asked the kind of an oxy uh
moron having you know, somebody who's Jewish having tattoos or whatever.
But obviously I'm not that religious, and uh.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
It's funny and because we could certainly go up on
this patent as well, but I know that Jews aren't
to have tattoos. But I think at a point in
time it it got past what it kind of used
to me, you know, and I I see Jews the tattoos.
I think it's a good thing.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
So yeah, thank you good. The tattoo culture certainly has
a has changed a lot in my lifetime. And if
you're watching this on zoom, not only I don't know
what it's like show and tell all of a sudden,
speaking of which you may hear my son in the
background playing, so that's part of the show and tell
here on appetite for this so he may join us.
We'll see, you know, showing off tattoos. But I'm also
(02:04):
wearing my Van Halen shirt from the twenty twelve tour.
Unfortunately for me, the one and only time see I'm
frustrated too. I don't know if you've heard again Harrison
Harrison Rex screaming back there. The one only time I
saw Van Halen was in twenty twelve because they and
that was kind of on the Guns and Roases podcast.
(02:24):
I had never seen gn R until two thousand and two,
and now I was with Bucketheads, so I hadn't seen
Axel and Slash, you know, until they got reunited. So
that's all I'm excited to talk to you. And the
kind of well, you knew Edward Eddie van Halen for
quite some time. But before we get to that moment,
we learn more about you. How you got to be
(02:46):
this person who spent such a long time with Edward
van Halen and all other musicians, and just being a journalist.
Headed A had a young Steve start out Moses path
to get where we are today.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Little Stevie Roseman, that was like a friend of mine exactly.
I grew up in Saint Louis and moved out here.
My family moved out here to California in fifty nine,
so I grew up in Culver City, California. I was
I was listening to music, you know, had a little
(03:21):
transistor radio. It's funny Brian Wilson just passed away. Culver
City was about a half hour from where the Beach
Boys were from Formosa Beach, and you know, the beach
cities were very close. So I mean, I love the
Beach Boys. I loved listening to those songs, all that
(03:43):
surf music. You know. I can remember hearing like Pipeline
and all of those surf instrumentals, and I can remember
that there was something about the the reverb. I didn't
know what it was I didn't know it was reverb.
It was just something about the sound of the reverb,
you know on these guitars. You know that somehow resonated
(04:03):
with me, you know, pun intended. Uh So. I love music.
I love to read. Uh And from early on I
was writing. I mean, I can remember the point in
time when you're in I don't know it was it
second or third grade where you actually learned to write,
you know, and you're learning those little letters, and you
got that little paper with the there's like a little
(04:25):
serrated line in the middle. You got to come up
and over. I can remember the process. I loved that.
I can remember the point where it's like, oh, if
you put the you know, c at together, that makes it.
I remember that clearly somehow. Uh So, I loved all
those things. I get a little bit older, and you know,
(04:45):
I get a guitar, and I start playing guitar, and
I have bands with friends, and I get a little
bit older. I'm in high school. I'm a senior in
high school. I wrote a little column for my high
school newspaper where I would I go out to clubs
and review shows. And I love doing that. It was
so freaking cool. I was never a popular kid, so
(05:06):
I write a review. I'd go to Whiskey and see.
I remember, I saw some amazing shows there. I saw
the Almand Brothers and Chicago. I mean this is like
seventy one seventy two, I mean, incredible shows. And then
the next day all these people who would never talked
to me go, oh, I see you wrote a review
for the Scoope paper that was so cool, speaking on
(05:27):
you know, there's something here, there's something here, you know.
So we fast forward a little bit more and I
sort of started sending out live reviews to various magazines
where I could find addresses, you know, even though realizing
that none of these magazines ran live reviews. But it
was my only way of reaching out to them. Obviously,
(05:49):
I couldn't do interviews. I didn't know anybody. So I
get a little thing printed in sort of a little
local publication called the la Are, which was like a
softcore porn kind of a newspaper.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Okay, behind you used.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
To buy in, you know, you put like a quarter
in the vending machine and open it up and you
pull out a copy. I call it softcoreform because you
only bought it because you would turn to the back
page and look at the massage, and you know, you weren't.
You weren't buying it. Wasn't like it was filthy or
anything like this. You weren't buying it to glean any
inside information about music. But that that acted as a springboard.
(06:31):
So from there I wrote a couple of things for
the La three Press, which is a very ship underground
newspaper at the time, and then that leads to me
meeting sort of a publicist for a company called Gibson Stromberg,
who are one of the first rock and role publicists.
They handle everybody from Jeff Back to Toll to the
(06:51):
Stone Steely Dan. They opened these doors. I reached out
to a guitar player magazine in seventy three, right for
a Guitar Player for seven years. That leased to writing
for a Guitar World. And then at the same time,
Cream and Circus did a couple of things for Rolling
Stone and other magazines of the time, A Musician and
(07:12):
Zoo World. There was one called Rock and it just
kind of springboards, you know. And here we are fifty
years later and I never had to take another kid,
you know. I was always this freelance journalist. Along the way,
I wrote some books. My first book was about was
Jeff Beck and the fact it was the first biography
on Beck that ever came out that was available only
(07:35):
in Japan in Japanese. Subsequently would write books on Springsteen,
Prince wrote a book on Sabbath Bandy Rhodes, and my
most recent book, which came out the first edition came
out in twenty twenty two, about my friendship with Edward
(07:59):
van Halen's whom I met in nineteen seventy seven and
who who I hung out with until two thousand and three.
So in a nutshell, that's a little Stevie Rosen's story.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
That's a big that's a big nutshell and an impressive
resume and just somebody who lived that life briefly as
a freelance writer. That's that's a wow. That is quite
the life. You know, you don't know where your next
gig is going to come from, but if you got
the goods, you've obviously you've made a life out of it.
(08:34):
So that's that's It just shows a lot. It shows
that it can be done, and what a career, the
people that you can meet, and that in itself, you know,
I just want to say that's that's something. I'm sure
use it back and just like wow, like you have
any of these moments of just like wow, like what
did I? What did I do? You know, it's not
like I've had a job at a company for X
(08:56):
amount of years. You've been You've been like a pirate.
It's kind of no, no.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
No, And I don't know if you can see any
of the stuff behind me. Every wall on my condo
here is covered with the backstage masses and pictures of
me with these people. Whenever I do an interview, I
tell the photographer take all the pictures. You want some
of the maps, but you better take a picture of
me and whoever I'm talking to. But you know, I
(09:21):
do think about that, Rando. That's a really interesting question,
because I did sort of take the roads less traveled,
and it wasn't a conscious thing, but somehow, you know,
I loved all these different things, writing and music and
magazines and it came together, you know, and when you're
(09:43):
just young, you're dumb and you're stupid, and you don't
worry about, you know, paying your rent or you know,
if you can real my food for me. I've always
been I've never worried about that. I knew early on
I was never going to make a lot of money,
but I understood what it meant to save and how
(10:04):
you save money, And it's pretty simple. You spend the
lesson you earn. Some people have never learned that lesson.
I learned it really early on, you know, so I
always had. You know, I was in a couple of
thousand bucks in the banks. Oh my god, if I
don't work for the next few months, I'm okay, you
know so, but I do look at it and I go, wow, man,
you you were really lucky. You know, you worked hard, man,
(10:27):
but you were lucky. And at the end of the day,
none of it would have happened, as you said, without
having the goods. So at the end of the day,
there was something in me, something about what I was writing,
the way that I wrote that that resonated with editors
at magazines, that the fans like what I was writing,
(10:47):
and maybe they'd reach out to editors. Oh I love
that Steve Rosen's story he did with you, with you
and Guitar Player, with Frank Zapfatt. You know, so at
the end of the day, yeah, you know, you can
you can open those doors. You have to kind of
be ready for that, and not knowing any better, I
believed I was ready. I knew a lot about music.
(11:09):
I was a guitar player. I wasn't a great guitar player,
but I understood enough about music and theory and harmony.
I could talk to anybody about songwriting and you know,
choruses and pre choruses and oh that change, you know,
And so I was able to speak on that level.
So yeah, I was lucky. I worked hard, and I
(11:31):
was there at the point when all these music magazines
were sort of growing up and they needed writers, they
needed freelancers because they couldn't handle all of this stuff
in house. So yeah, you're there and hopefully, you know,
you make your bones and the next time there's a
story to be done, they give you a call. So
it was. It was pretty remarkable, you know, for sure.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
And what I appreciate about I appreciate about that time
is that there was only a finite amount of outlets
and a finite you know, you had to have the goods. Again,
today it's it's a free for all. Everyone's a freelance journalist.
That word is kind of unfortunately lost some meaning, But
I'd like to think that the real readers will know
(12:14):
who the real journalists are. And that's a whole other conversation.
But before I lose it, and to talk about him
before obviously talking about Eddie van Halen because you mentioned
jep Beck and obviously with my guns and Roses theme,
we'll tie that into everything withinto Eddie van Haalen. That's
what I do here. What do you know about when
(12:35):
he was at the Paris pay per view with Guns
and Roses and he got tonightas? Because when I do
you know, I saw an interesting comment saying that that
wasn't he made that up because he got nervous or
did he really have tonightas or I don't know. It
was just an offhand comment I saw on social media,
which obviously has no weight to it. But do you
(12:56):
know anything about.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
The Honestly, I don't. I don't. I don't know a
lot about it. I do believe that he absolutely had
tonight this, okay, you know, Look, I mean I was
lucky enough. I saw Jeff Back with the Jeff Back group,
you know, with throughout Stewart in sixty nine, and I
remember that contract is being so freaking loud. So actually
(13:21):
what shocks me is that more musicians didn't get to
know this. I mean, I mean, my god, you know
the answer right behind him. So I wish I could
tell you more. Okay, I can't, but I know that
he suffered from it.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
A Townshend had it, you know, you'd be surprised. It's
just just the fact that you brought up Jeff Back,
And I think it was recently the anniversary I do
with these on these this day thing. Everyone does those,
but I do it of course guns and roses related
on social media media, and it was just embarrassed one
and everyone talking about how Jeff Back, you know, he
(13:58):
was there for the sound check to play that song Breakdown,
and they didn't even play it live at all without
Jeff Back, and that's a song they don't really play live.
So it's just something that could have happened, but unfortunately,
because of his tonight as didn't. But if I can
use it ginare as it continue to use it as
a pivot. Slash said this about Eddie van Halen, that
(14:21):
all the great ideas he had that were uniquely his own,
and that all these left of field kind of things
underneath all of that was a really tasty blues guitar player,
and he just added all these other ways to branch
out of his expression on top of that. And that's
why nobody could ever touch him. So something that's I'm
(14:43):
stating the obvious that even the top tier guitarist praise
Eddie van Halen. So when you first I guess, if
we can just rewind when you first met him? What
did you first meet him as? Did you know he
would become this this guitar legends or was he your
friend Eddie? How did you first meet Eddie Van Allen?
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Well, that's a great question. Uh, you know, I uh,
I disagree with what Flash said. Okay, all right, you know, uh,
I mean I don't disagree that Edward reinvented guitar. I
mean obviously we all know that. Uh. To call Edward
a blues guitar player, I don't. I don't think that's correct. Look,
(15:27):
Edward Litt was listening to blues guys and that, you know,
did ever listen to I mean, really try to listen
to those guys howling will for bb king of those kinds.
I think Edward might have got his blue secondhand from
listening to Eric Hoaptain. You know, Eric was a blues
guitar player. I mean, there's no denying that. So I
(15:47):
don't I don't agree with calling Edward and blues guitar player.
I mean I believe, don't. I think you'd be hard
put to listen to those excerpts worries. Oh my god,
there's that that blues. There's that pentatonic thing that he's doing.
You know that's me.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Hey, obviously you're the guitar so I appreciate and you
knew that. So maybe he here, I mean, he hears
the blues where he wants to hear it. Maybe he's
hearing something that perhaps isn't wasn't there and his playing,
but no, I appreciate their perspective for you, for yours.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
So that's kind want to toss that out there and
not just the GNR fans out there.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
But it's all perspective here. It's all good, yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Man, So I think that really What was so interesting
about my friendship with Edward is that I did meet
him eight months before the first album ever comes out.
So I meet him at the whiskey of Go Go
one night in July of seventy seven. They had signed
the Warners Steel, and I believe that they had started
(16:50):
working on the record. I don't know, and I don't
know my chronology well enough to know if by July
seventy seven the album was done. I don't think so,
because I can't believe they would have finished an album
that early and waited eight months to release. As possible,
I think it was it was completed a little bit
(17:12):
later in seventy seven. So I meet him one night
at the Whiskey. Cheap Trick is recording a live record.
It's like a like a radio promotion. Oh, we're going
to get Cheat Trick over the Whiskey and we're going
to record a live record. And I was introduced to
him by my friend Michelle Meyer. Michelle booked the Whiskey,
(17:34):
and so I was there with my brother to see
Cheap Trick. I was a Cheap Trick fan. And she says, Hey,
there's someone you need to meet. So she takes us
upstairs to the whiskey dressing room and I see this
guy standing in the corner. So again, this is July
seventy seven. There are no articles on ever van Halen.
There are no stories on you. Right, I'm pretty positive.
(17:55):
I recognized him, you know, from flyers, because they used
to put up flyers up and down Sunset Boulevard, Hay
come see us who were playing the Whiskey Gazaaris whatever
it would have been. But there was no press on him,
you know. And this is the other strange thing. I
had never seen van Halen play before meeting him, which
(18:17):
is sorry about that, which is very strange because I
was at the Whiskey and the star Wood where they
were playing virtually every week, and how I ever missing
them at that point was amazing. So if I just
knew this person as somebody who had a band called
Van Halen, they had scored a huge record deal in
(18:39):
Warner Brothers Records. But I didn't know if he played
like Angus Young or you know, Leslie West. I didn't
know from anything people have said to me, Oh, you
gotta heard this, dude, This Edward van Halen got played.
He's an incredible guitar player, but I didn't know that.
So we meet and we just start talking about Jeff back.
Jeff Beck comes out of Jeff. Jeff Beck was my
(19:03):
favorite guitar player of all time. I think Jeff is
the greatest who ever lived. I think Edward's in the
top five. I think Edward was the most influential guitar
player they ever lived. Some people will say it's Jimmy Hendrix,
and it's impossible for me to argue on it. The
reason I say that about Edward is that part of
(19:24):
his career developed during the digital age, right with computers
and internet. You know, Jimmy was all analog. We found
out about Jimmy Hendrix by reading a magazine or cheering
him on the radio. It was only later that Jimmy
I was on you know, all the podcasts and stuff.
(19:44):
So Edward had the advantage of instead of a thousand
people or one hundred thousand hearing him, you know, fifty
million people good care. So that's my reasoning behind him
being the most influential at TIST. So we talked about
Jeff Beck Richie Blackmore comes up. I was also so
a huge Blackmore fan. Coptain comes up. I love cream
and you know I thought blank Face was good. Honestly,
(20:09):
this is a little off topic. I don't think Eric
really did much from the point his solo career started onwards.
That's me. I was a purist. I loved the cream
stuff but Edward loved cream, and that's kind of how
the friendship started. By the end of the conversation, he
runs out of the room and he comes back and
he's got a pen in his hand. He picks up
a paper from the lettered whiskey floor, you know, and
(20:33):
he's writing something down. He hands it to me and
it's his phone number. Say, man, I really enjoyed talking
to you. We let talking to you. Men call me
and people will ask, well, where do you think the
friendship started? How long were you hanging out with him
before the friendship start? Without romanticizing it, I really think
that the friendship began there that night, and certainly over
(20:55):
the coming months. I don't think it took long that
we became pretty. He didn't live far from me. I
lived in Laurel Canyon in the Hollywood Hills. Edward lived
in Coldwater Canyon. Coldwater was the expensive part, Laurel Canyon
was the funky bohemian part, you know. So we were
very close to each other. So he would pop by
(21:16):
my place and I would drive over there and he
would call. I mean really early on. So I think
the friendship developed pretty quickly and pretty kind of seamlessly.
But I really do believe the seeds were sort of
sewn that first night at the Whiskey. It was pretty amazing.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Then what happened with this guy that you met? You
were just talking about your love of music, and you
didn't know him from any other guitar player to when
he became when he started to become Eddie van Halen,
and you're just like where it's almost like a like
a noun, like it's I mean, obviously it's a nown
and it's a name, but it's more of just like
a it's I guess you're the author. I'm just trying
(21:54):
to think of the right ways a phrase. I guess
that's I'm looking for the word phrase. It's a more
than the name, it's a phrase, Eddie van Halen. So
when did that start to happen? And did that change
your friendship at all? Because that that's kind of a
cautionary tale with a lot of people when when Minkom
was famous and friends and family and their whole inner circle.
(22:16):
So what happened when you started to get famous?
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Right? That's a great question. So yes, yes, my whole
point of telling you that I met him before the
first record comes out. So yeah, the PostScript on that
is February seventy eight, the van Halen record comes out.
I'm on Warder Brothers mailing list, right, I'm on all
(22:40):
these mailing lists. Now it's just rock and roll journalists
as part of the swat. Right. You know, magazine's never
paid any money, so but you got free albums, you
got free concert tickets. So I would get all of
the monthly releases from Warner Brothers Records, and in this
particular release of February seventy eight, I remember it was
(23:01):
the ben Halen record. There was a Manfred Man record.
There was a record by the Ruddles that was like
the take up on the Beatles that Dark Idol did
right from Money Python, and I'm thinking, oh my god,
this is that guy, Edward ben Halen. This is just band.
You know, I got to put this on. I put
it on. You're my little record player, and you know,
(23:24):
dropped the needle and you know it's that that thumb,
the bass thumb from Running with the Devil and unlistening,
going wow, this is this is pretty cool. And I
kind of did a needle drop. I didn't listen to
it all the way through. But I kind of neil
dropped it, and I write about this in Tone Chaser.
(23:47):
I didn't think it was very good. I thought, yeah,
he's he's a good guitar player. But in nineteen seventy eight,
there were a shipload of good guitar players, you know.
I mean, you know, George Lynch was around, Rusty Anderson
was playing in a band Rusty with subsequently go On
(24:08):
and has been Paul McCartney's guitar player, who's an incredible
guitar player.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
I mean, as we're recording this, by the way, happy birthday, Paul. Sorry,
I just needed to say that. Ah, that's right, Happy birthday,
and we're recording this.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Yeah. Man, So there were a lot of good guitar players.
And on top of that, and I write about this
to try to frame where I was coming from, so
people wouldn't go, not very good. Are you out of
your mind? Discuided the great guitar player since Sarah Klepp,
you know, so people would understand Again, you have to
understand I had been going to concerts well before I
(24:46):
started writing, Since God, I probably went to my first
concert when I was fourteen or fifteen, So I had
seen Jeff Beck. I had seen Cream, I had seen Hendrix,
I saw the Who in sixty six. I'd seen Purple,
I'd seen Paul coss Up with Free. I had seen
these amazing guitar players. I was listening to those records,
(25:10):
you know, the first Zeppelin record, the first Jeff Beck record,
truth in beck Ola. I mean I was listening to
those records, and I was transformed by them, you know.
And so I get the first Van Haalen record and
not consciously trying to do it. But it's human nature.
We judge things by what we know, what we're familiar with. Right,
(25:34):
So you're going to hear any new band, as good
or bad as they might be, against guns n' Roses.
I mean, it's just impossible not too or against slash you, Right.
So I judged every guitar player I ever heard against
Jeff Beck and Eric Clapman, you know, dream Era stuff
and Page and Pete Townsend, I mean, my god, David
(25:56):
Gilmore and Robin Trauer and Martin Barr and so I
heard this stuff and I thought, yeah, he's good. You know,
he's kind of like a sort of like a you know,
Richie Blackmore. He's kind of got that fast thing down,
you know, and the band those fast, purple like shuffles,
and you know that that was my first impression. Everybody
(26:16):
was telling me, you don't know what you're saying. You know,
you're you're wrong. So the next day I go back,
I make a big cup of coffee. I'm a huge
caffeine guy, and I sat down and listened carefully, and
I go, oh my god, that's what everybody's talking, you know.
That's the tone, and that's that technique where he he
(26:37):
you know, falls seamlessly between playing the rhythm and then
he goes into a solo thing. But there's no rhythm
on the record, which I loved. I loved that organic approach,
you know, which was all Edward because they initially wanted
him to do overdubs. Put him with the part. He goes,
I don't know how to do it. I don't know
how to overdub, you know, which I thought was amazing.
So again, to get to your point, random, So that
(27:00):
record comes out, they go out on the road, So
he goes away where he opens for Ronnie Montrose and Journey.
By the end of that tour, they're blowing. He's Ben
Halen's blowing those two bands off, he goes and does
a show. They do a show on their own day
at the Green, which is actually the second time I
(27:21):
went into him. This is about a year after the
first time. This is July seventy eight. Ac DC opens
the show Van Halen, Pat Travers, Aerosmith, and Foregner. I'm
there to interview foreigner Mick Jones for a Guitar Player magazine,
but I was also hoping to see Van Halen, which
I don't because I'm sort of dragged into interviewing ac DC,
(27:46):
who I really didn't care for. But that's another story.
But an answer to your question, I can tell you
those first two albums, the first two tours, he was happiest.
You know. So here's this kid from Passing Dia. You know,
got from playing two hundred seed clubs. They're now headlining
right then, they're now going to Europe and opening for
(28:08):
Black Seven. I mean, his his rise was pretty quick.
He was incredible, He was joyful, and he loved every
moment of it. I don't think that the fame side
of it really ever caught up to him until I
want to say, the early nineties. I sensed the change
(28:32):
in him. He was a different person, that person that
I knew was disappearing certainly previous to that, where there's
discussions we had. He was unhappy with the band. He
wanted more from the band, he was unhappy with the label.
There were a lot of drugs happening. He drank a lot.
(28:56):
He smoked more than anyone I ever met. And I
right about this in the book, Not that I was
any prognosticator, but I knew that cigarettes were going to
kill him quicker than the boos of the drugs, which
they did. Right he got cancer, but so all these
things were exacerbated. But for those first ten or eleven
(29:19):
or twelve years I knew him, I don't think it
really affected him. He had this, He had this self
confident thing. He knew he was a very good guitar player,
but he never needed to talk about it. He also
never needed to hear you tell him you're the most
amazing guitar player I've ever heard. But it was a
(29:40):
cautionary tale, you know, And man, that's a that's a
heavy thing. You have people around you telling you exactly
what you want to hear. You have all the money
and fame and gear and houses and cars, and man,
you know, you got to he pretty grounded not to
(30:01):
let it affect you, and I think ultimately you did.
I think there were people around him. We didn't have
his best self interest, you know, in mind, and uh yeah,
that that stuff adds up, and you know, we lose
him at sixty seven. I mean, he should have been
here for another twenty years. I know.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
It's it is tough, and you know, and he was smoking.
You're right, it's it's hard not to predict that. Especially
sometimes I'll look at old pictures of him and it's
like he's like black teeth and it's hard to it's
hard to look at, you know, for obvious reasons, and
for someone who has that goes back so far with them,
(30:45):
you know, with him, knowing him, meeting him before he
even knew the band, knew who he was, and seeing,
you know, experiencing Van Halen live. And now fast forward
now to this book and interviews that I read about
you preparing for this that it was a challenge to
do this book, and there was so what's is it?
(31:07):
Because you know so much and you're you're truthful that
there are certain things that perhaps the family doesn't want
to get out Why was this because this is self published?
Because when I read it, you know, I would kind
of just like you, felt like my guy. Because a
long story short, I worked on a couple of years
(31:28):
with on a book with a former Guns and Roses manager,
Doug Goldstein, and he only wanted to work with one
specific agency for connection reasons in that person, because I
wasn't an established author, didn't want to work with me.
And I said, okay, let's move on, worst case scenario,
self published. We can do this. There's things that in
(31:49):
today's world it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Things can
go viral, the smallest things if the content is there.
But I didn't want to go that round, and that's
on him. But to go the self published route is
I admire that because there are certain people that could
look at that in a certain way. So was it disheartened?
(32:09):
It had to have been disheartening because I that you
went to all these places to put this out. Why
were the challenges? What were the challenges of putting out
this book?
Speaker 2 (32:19):
All of those things you mentioned Rando ran through my head.
It was because I knew him so well. Do I
do I actually write about all of that stuff? You know?
The last thing on this earth I ever would want,
I ever wanted to do was hurt or tarnish his image,
(32:43):
embarrass the family, the absolute last thing I wanted to do.
I mean, really, if you read the book, and it
is an honest book, because at the end of the day,
that's the only kind of book I could I could
write if I'm gonna if I'm gonna sit there and
kill myself day after day writing this book. It has
to be that honest. It has to talk about everything
(33:05):
I do know about him as well as myself. I mean,
I'm out there, you know, I'm on those pages, and
you know I talk about doing drugs with edword and
doing stuff, you know, And am I proud of it?
Not particularly? Is it the truth? Yes, but it's part
of the history. Our relationship ends in two thousand and three,
(33:32):
seventeen years later, is when I first really start giving
serious vine. So during that seventeen year period, I mean,
I'll be honest, the relationship didn't end well. And I
don't want to give the ending away because I think
it's something more interesting if you read about it, you know,
(33:56):
But I was fucking mad, hurt, and it's like you
don't want to be my friend, you know, like shething
like that, Okay, fuck to you. I don't want to
hear about you. I don't want to know about you,
you know. So you know I would hear about the
uh that reunion tour in twenty twelve, you know, or
(34:20):
i'd hear about them putting out a different kind of truth,
or you know. I mean it's impossible not to hear
from about them. You know, I'm online and stuff. But
I just I just I didn't think about it, you know,
in a strange way, you know, those seventeen years ago by,
and sometimes I look back at it and I think,
(34:44):
did that friendship really happened? I mean, I mean, you know,
I'm talking a little existentially here. I mean obviously, you know,
but you think did it happen in that way? Did
I you know, look at it with with with rose
colored glasses on? Was Was he not that person I
(35:06):
thought he was? You know? And so you think about
all those things. So the twenty twenty rolls around and
some friends I said, hey, man, you know you've got
to write that book. I need to back up for
one second. In nineteen eighty six, so this is Sammy
had just joined the band. I think it's right before
(35:27):
fifty one fifty comes out, but the nineteen eighty four
records come out. So Van Halen's arguably one of the
biggest bands in the world. Right he is a god,
he is a king. Everybody knows him. I realized that
writers are going to start approaching him and they're going
to want to write his life story. And so, being
(35:47):
the journalist that I am, you know, I thought I
want to write that book. You know, I think I
can write that book. I approach him. It actually takes
me months to build up the putsvah, the courage to
do that, you know, because I thought one of two
things is going to happen. He's going to say no,
(36:11):
which would be heartbreaking and disheartening, or he's going to
say yes, which is going to be terrifying, because oh
my god, Rosen, now you got to write the fucking thing.
You know what if you're done so But I finally
asked him, you know, and I think, well, he's going
to take some time. He wants to think about it,
you know. He takes a puff up a cigarette and goes, yeah, man,
of course you could write it. I can't think of
(36:31):
anybody else who could write it, you know, And to
me that was like, you know, right, right, what else
do you need in your life? I mean, you know,
it's respect And it was all about respect for him.
He was big unrest disrespect him and he would probably
never let that go. So and in turns he gave
that to me. That change. When I talk about him
(36:54):
changing later, that part of him changed. But that's in
the book. So so so, some some friends said, hey, man,
you got to write that book. You know. You didn't
write it then, it was it wasn't meant to be.
You got to write it now. And I said, man,
I don't know. And all those things you you you
bring up Randall, I think about it. I'm thinking, well,
I haven't spoken to him in seventeen years. Uh, you know,
(37:17):
I don't know what he's told Alex or you know
by twenty twenty he uh you know, a Valerie or
you know what they think of me in the Van
Alien camp. You know, if I start writing a book,
they get wouldn't bit, They're gonna come, They're gonna there's
gonna be lawyers at the door. You can't write, I
don't you know, I do start writing it, you know,
(37:41):
and what we were talking about cats earlier before I
lived in this place. I'm in Orange County right now.
This is like near Disneyland in California. I was up.
I was still up in the Hollywood Hills, and I
had a cat called Arpeggio, and Arpeggio had this incredibly
annoying habit of waking up at three in the morning
wanting to be fed. I lived in like this little up.
(38:04):
It was enough stairs that downstairs it's at They get
out of bed and walk down the stairs and I
give him acount of food, and you know, then I
tried to go back to bed and go to sleep.
Well I kept happening, and I thought, I don't know
what I thought. I just went into my little computer room,
and I think in the back of my head there
was probably some thought about writing, you know, a book thing,
(38:25):
but I didn't really know. So I sit down, I
start typing, you know, and I look at it and
I go, that's not bad. And what it turned out
to be was the first paragraph of the book with me,
who who has always been his own worst critic. I
come back the next morning with my cup of coffee in,
I read it and I go that's good, you know,
that's that's pretty good. So so I keep writing. I
(38:48):
keep writing. Fourteen months later I finished the book. But
all those things that you brought up, I thought about constantly.
Are people going to look at this and go, oh, yeah,
you're a friend? You know, You're going to say, is
this great guy? Oh? You know? Ever been? And he
never could have done or said any listenings that you said,
any of the darker stuff, you know, so it was
(39:08):
like a no win, which to my mind said, hey man,
you just got to be honest and and and follow
what your heart tells you, you know. But as I'm
writing it, Matt, I honestly, there are parts I thought, God,
do I really include this stuff? I mean, it was
really it was very personal stuff. But it was those
(39:29):
little moments that I felt really revealed who he was,
and they tended to come out in these interviews that
I later called the Twilight tapes, because she would call
me at four in the morning and he wanted to talk,
you know, and it might have been about music, but
usually it was about family or the band or how
(39:49):
he was feeling. And it was just those little moments
when he revealed those things for me, that revealed who
he was. Look, we can look at him on stage
and can listen to the music, and we all know
about that site. But this other side, you know, maybe
some of the failties, or the insecurities, or his own
(40:11):
sense of self worth, you know, maybe we don't know
about that so much. And those are those elements that
I felt came out in these conversations. I finished the
book in twenty twenty one. I'm thinking I am sitting
on the biggest rock and roll.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Right.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
No one else has this right. Edward has been a
lot of interviews. You know, there are other books out there.
No one has had a friendship. No one hung out
with them, no one jammed with him. I introduced him
to Ritchie Blethmore, unless Paul and Billy Gibbons, and I
sat in a limo with him, and I smoked the
(40:57):
joint with him, and we went through a stop side
at four o'clock in the morning. Because you were booked
so over, I had those experiences. No, a publisher is
gonna They're gonna flip out. I reached out to some publishers.
They didn't even respond. One publisher, Omnibus, who was a
very cool English publisher and I had their books. I
(41:19):
had books from Omnibus and he writ written back who said, hey, man,
you were really close. She almost made it, you know
the cut, but we just can't do it, you know.
Had a couple other responses, the book is too long,
it would have to be cut in half. No one's
going to care to read about you. All of that
(41:39):
stuff has to go. So I thought, I thought, okay,
rather than me approached the publisher directly, let me go
find an agent. Certainly an agent is going to see
the value. I reached out to a person who had
a list of really heavy agents. You know. I sent
out that, you know, my farm letter to these agents,
thinking they're going to bust down doors. One agent responded said, yeah,
(42:03):
you know, send me a parent, send me a chapter.
I sent him a chapter and never heard that. I
reach out to my friend Neil's lows Hour. Neil was
van Halen's official photographer. Neil had put out several photography
books on Van Halen. So you heard Matt, he probably
knows a cool agent or a cool publisher. He could
(42:24):
give me a name, you know, and if you know Neil,
Neil is loud, confrontational and abrasive, but if he's not
those things, that means he's not your friend. So I've
known her for fifty years and he's never not yelled
at me, you know, in love, you know. So I said, Neil,
(42:45):
hey man, you know, look, I wrote the book and
I was wondering, you know, man, you know a publisher
or an agent. And he goes, don't be a fucking idiot.
You don't even an agent. Don't get a publisher. They're
not going to give you any advance. There's no money
to be made. Do it yourself, you know. Don't be
an idiot, you know. And he had done his last
book self published, and I never even thought about it.
(43:08):
I didn't even know self published. What do you do?
I mean, you know, so so that, okay, make a
long story short. I go out there, started looking for printers. Okay,
I got I got to get the book printed. You know,
you go through printers and you know what to some
printers over here and they want yeah, you know, unless
(43:29):
you order you know, twelve thousand copies, it's gonna cost
you know, twenty nine dollars a book or something. So,
I mean it would have cost you like eighty or
ninety grand for a marginal first run. It's like that,
that's insane, you know. Keep looking around. I find a
guy who is a big Van Halen fan. He wants
to do it. We're talking, we're talking. He gives me
(43:52):
a great price. This guy flips out. He ends up
in some exotic island with the police running after him.
He's in a boat and he's arrested for drugs.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
I mean, the story, it sounds like a book in itself.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Exactly exactly. I meet somebody who actually worked for this printer,
who had a connection with a Chinese printer. I said, okay, sure, man,
I'm open to anything. Anyway. I talk to these Chinese printers.
These people are unbelievable. They do an extraordinary job. Their
prices is like, were like twenty percent of what any
(44:35):
American publisher wanted to do. The detail, I mean, the
book is beautiful, the last thing I wanted to do.
And no offense to anybody who's self published. Self published
books tend to look like self published books. The quality
of the paper isn't as good, the font is usually
a more generic looking fond.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
Well, yeah, that's we don't have. That's the resources and
why it's self published. But when you're when you're getting
jerked around like you were when you would think I
was flabbergasted when I read that you would think that
you were like I said on a gold Mine and
about Eddie van Halen and somebody who has a unique
perspective with him is a story that you want. You
(45:19):
always find that was kind of like, you know, the
neighbor of somebody and through their eyes. And so I
all silly and I'm not having to get all these
PTSD flashbacks of just all the BS that I was
given about. You know about the the GNR book, but
I do have a many years ago, a self published
book about a Cape Cod family when I did my
(45:41):
first radio jib. I don't know, I haven't mentioned this
in a while. My first radio job in Cape Cod.
I had to get other jobs to support myself because
you don't make money in radio, either as a freelance
DJ or whatever.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
So uh.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
The one that was working in this at the time
was a sandwich ice cream show, but one hundred years
ago it was like a post office and a medicine. Upstairs.
He had a museum with all these old documents about signing,
you know, peers on the decks of all these things.
So he's like and he was dyslexic and knew I
(46:18):
had writing at that you know, he knew I was.
I liked writing and at that time some experience, you know,
in high school because I was still young. So over
the summer I helped him put together this self published book,
The Hallett Family of Cape Cod. So just a but
I'm still proud of it though, So there is still
something not something she'd be still I'm sure very proud
(46:41):
of this book because it's just it's a journey. It's
not the journey, not just the journey about your friendship
with Eddie van Haalen. It's your journey as an author,
as a journalist to be able to get to this
point in your career and to get this story off
your chest and to do it your way. You know,
it wouldn't probably would not have been the same if
(47:04):
somebody else got their hands on it, they would have
changed it. They would not have made it the book
that it is today. So I don't want to spoil
anything more than I could talk to you for hours
about all the pictures on your wall and you know cats,
so we're talking about off the air and then all
these fun things. But before we wrap up, I do,
of course, I gotta ask, as it's appetite for distortion
(47:24):
of a six degrees of g n R bacon throughout
the whether it's your through your friendship with EVH or
just your your music loving You ever see guns of
roses in concert cross paths with any of the guys.
Do you have any six degrees of guns of roses
bacon as I like to call it, and the.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
Yeah, I actually interviewed Slash. I think the first record
had just come out. This is a phone interview, and
they were playing, actually they were playing at a place
not far from where'moing now. It was I mean it
was a club, but it was a club, and I
(48:04):
remember talking to him and he was exceedingly cool. I mean,
he was very cool. I would go on to I
bet I probably interviewed Slash, I don't know, man, probably
six or seven or eight times. Invariably. He is always cool,
he's open. She's a monster. Jeff that guy, So we
(48:28):
always have that in coming, you know, you know, he
loves Edwards. Yeah, he's great. I mean, this might get
me in trouble with you, and I hope not or
your fans I was never a huge gun.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
Stand That's okay. You know, it's not a prerequisite to
be on the show. We all come in piece, okay.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Well yeah, I thought, you know, you know, see I
gotta go now.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
Well, it's funny. A few episodes ago I had another author,
Martin pop Off on who dared call them hair metal,
and that got a lot of see Harrison, I think Harrison,
I don't know if you hear him now. He is
really upset that you don't like gn R. You know,
on Father's Day, I thought I would have a moment
and play sweet Child of Mine and he starts going no, no, no, no,
(49:16):
he's not ready for rock and roll yet. He's not
ready for rocking. But that's okay. Are your interviews because
I don't think he's gonna give me much more time here,
but I think he's given me the rap sign. But
are your interviews with Slash online? Are these things that
we could find out of curiosity if you're like your
old interviews online?
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Actually yeah, go to my YouTube page and I think
you just typed in Steve Roseen YouTube or tone Chaser
Steve rose In YouTube. You'll find it. And I know
that I just put up A. I did an interview
with Steve Adler, I'm sorry, a video interview that was
really good. So that's up there. I think there might
(49:57):
be a Slash interview up there. Uh, there might be
a Duff. I've interviewed Duff, I interviewed Matt Sum, I've
never interviewed Axel, interviewed Bill by Clarke. I think some
of those are up on my YouTube page.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
Okay, so I'll put that in the show notes.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
As they say, definitely and and and but for me,
uh uh you could I just tell people if you're
interested and get into book, you can find it at
tone chaser book dot com one word tone chaser book
dot com and I will happily sign it for you
if you like. So you should go read the book.
If you're a Van Halen fan, I think you guys
(50:40):
would dig it right on.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
And I'll also put that in the show notes as well,
a link to you your book. Yeah, Van Halen fan
music fan. I mean, Steve, just this conversation, it just
shows you know where you're coming from and where it
all started. So I always like getting the history of
the person writing about the history and in your another
reason why so uh, It was a pleasure and I
(51:03):
hope we get to do this again.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
Yeah, man, any time. You got it.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
So that does it for this episode.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
You got it.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
That does it for this episode of Appetite for Distortion.
When we see the next one. In the words of
Axl Rose concerning Chinese democracy, I don't know as soon
as the word, but you'll see it. Thanks to the
lame ass security, I'm going home.
You know what this is Appetite for Distortion. Welcome to
(00:31):
the podcast Appetite for Distortion, Episode number five hundred and thirteen.
I don't know why I said that so dramatically, Brando.
Here and today we are joined by the author of
Tone Chaser, Understanding Edward My twenty six year journey with
Edward van Halen. Welcome to the podcast, mister Steve Rosen.
How are you, sir, Brando?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I'm doing great, buddy. Thanks so much for having me,
and thanks for your patience. There are all the people
out there I made this very sweet person wait on me.
I never do that, so I have some patience with us.
So thanks man.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
It's it's a good segue because I actually have patience.
In Hebrew tattooed on my arm Southly you really? Yeah?
Which is I asked the kind of an oxy uh
moron having you know, somebody who's Jewish having tattoos or whatever.
But obviously I'm not that religious, and uh.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
It's funny and because we could certainly go up on
this patent as well, but I know that Jews aren't
to have tattoos. But I think at a point in
time it it got past what it kind of used
to me, you know, and I I see Jews the tattoos.
I think it's a good thing.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
So yeah, thank you good. The tattoo culture certainly has
a has changed a lot in my lifetime. And if
you're watching this on zoom, not only I don't know
what it's like show and tell all of a sudden,
speaking of which you may hear my son in the
background playing, so that's part of the show and tell
here on appetite for this so he may join us.
We'll see, you know, showing off tattoos. But I'm also
(02:04):
wearing my Van Halen shirt from the twenty twelve tour.
Unfortunately for me, the one and only time see I'm
frustrated too. I don't know if you've heard again Harrison
Harrison Rex screaming back there. The one only time I
saw Van Halen was in twenty twelve because they and
that was kind of on the Guns and Roases podcast.
(02:24):
I had never seen gn R until two thousand and two,
and now I was with Bucketheads, so I hadn't seen
Axel and Slash, you know, until they got reunited. So
that's all I'm excited to talk to you. And the
kind of well, you knew Edward Eddie van Halen for
quite some time. But before we get to that moment,
we learn more about you. How you got to be
(02:46):
this person who spent such a long time with Edward
van Halen and all other musicians, and just being a journalist.
Headed A had a young Steve start out Moses path
to get where we are today.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Little Stevie Roseman, that was like a friend of mine exactly.
I grew up in Saint Louis and moved out here.
My family moved out here to California in fifty nine,
so I grew up in Culver City, California. I was
I was listening to music, you know, had a little
(03:21):
transistor radio. It's funny Brian Wilson just passed away. Culver
City was about a half hour from where the Beach
Boys were from Formosa Beach, and you know, the beach
cities were very close. So I mean, I love the
Beach Boys. I loved listening to those songs, all that
(03:43):
surf music. You know. I can remember hearing like Pipeline
and all of those surf instrumentals, and I can remember
that there was something about the the reverb. I didn't
know what it was I didn't know it was reverb.
It was just something about the sound of the reverb,
you know on these guitars. You know that somehow resonated
(04:03):
with me, you know, pun intended. Uh So. I love music.
I love to read. Uh And from early on I
was writing. I mean, I can remember the point in
time when you're in I don't know it was it
second or third grade where you actually learned to write,
you know, and you're learning those little letters, and you
got that little paper with the there's like a little
(04:25):
serrated line in the middle. You got to come up
and over. I can remember the process. I loved that.
I can remember the point where it's like, oh, if
you put the you know, c at together, that makes it.
I remember that clearly somehow. Uh So, I loved all
those things. I get a little bit older, and you know,
(04:45):
I get a guitar, and I start playing guitar, and
I have bands with friends, and I get a little
bit older. I'm in high school. I'm a senior in
high school. I wrote a little column for my high
school newspaper where I would I go out to clubs
and review shows. And I love doing that. It was
so freaking cool. I was never a popular kid, so
(05:06):
I write a review. I'd go to Whiskey and see.
I remember, I saw some amazing shows there. I saw
the Almand Brothers and Chicago. I mean this is like
seventy one seventy two, I mean, incredible shows. And then
the next day all these people who would never talked
to me go, oh, I see you wrote a review
for the Scoope paper that was so cool, speaking on
(05:27):
you know, there's something here, there's something here, you know.
So we fast forward a little bit more and I
sort of started sending out live reviews to various magazines
where I could find addresses, you know, even though realizing
that none of these magazines ran live reviews. But it
was my only way of reaching out to them. Obviously,
(05:49):
I couldn't do interviews. I didn't know anybody. So I
get a little thing printed in sort of a little
local publication called the la Are, which was like a
softcore porn kind of a newspaper.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Okay, behind you used.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
To buy in, you know, you put like a quarter
in the vending machine and open it up and you
pull out a copy. I call it softcoreform because you
only bought it because you would turn to the back
page and look at the massage, and you know, you weren't.
You weren't buying it. Wasn't like it was filthy or
anything like this. You weren't buying it to glean any
inside information about music. But that that acted as a springboard.
(06:31):
So from there I wrote a couple of things for
the La three Press, which is a very ship underground
newspaper at the time, and then that leads to me
meeting sort of a publicist for a company called Gibson Stromberg,
who are one of the first rock and role publicists.
They handle everybody from Jeff Back to Toll to the
(06:51):
Stone Steely Dan. They opened these doors. I reached out
to a guitar player magazine in seventy three, right for
a Guitar Player for seven years. That leased to writing
for a Guitar World. And then at the same time,
Cream and Circus did a couple of things for Rolling
Stone and other magazines of the time, A Musician and
(07:12):
Zoo World. There was one called Rock and it just
kind of springboards, you know. And here we are fifty
years later and I never had to take another kid,
you know. I was always this freelance journalist. Along the way,
I wrote some books. My first book was about was
Jeff Beck and the fact it was the first biography
on Beck that ever came out that was available only
(07:35):
in Japan in Japanese. Subsequently would write books on Springsteen,
Prince wrote a book on Sabbath Bandy Rhodes, and my
most recent book, which came out the first edition came
out in twenty twenty two, about my friendship with Edward
(07:59):
van Halen's whom I met in nineteen seventy seven and
who who I hung out with until two thousand and three.
So in a nutshell, that's a little Stevie Rosen's story.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
That's a big that's a big nutshell and an impressive
resume and just somebody who lived that life briefly as
a freelance writer. That's that's a wow. That is quite
the life. You know, you don't know where your next
gig is going to come from, but if you got
the goods, you've obviously you've made a life out of it.
(08:34):
So that's that's It just shows a lot. It shows
that it can be done, and what a career, the
people that you can meet, and that in itself, you know,
I just want to say that's that's something. I'm sure
use it back and just like wow, like you have
any of these moments of just like wow, like what
did I? What did I do? You know, it's not
like I've had a job at a company for X
(08:56):
amount of years. You've been You've been like a pirate.
It's kind of no, no.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
No, And I don't know if you can see any
of the stuff behind me. Every wall on my condo
here is covered with the backstage masses and pictures of
me with these people. Whenever I do an interview, I
tell the photographer take all the pictures. You want some
of the maps, but you better take a picture of
me and whoever I'm talking to. But you know, I
(09:21):
do think about that, Rando. That's a really interesting question,
because I did sort of take the roads less traveled,
and it wasn't a conscious thing, but somehow, you know,
I loved all these different things, writing and music and
magazines and it came together, you know, and when you're
(09:43):
just young, you're dumb and you're stupid, and you don't
worry about, you know, paying your rent or you know,
if you can real my food for me. I've always
been I've never worried about that. I knew early on
I was never going to make a lot of money,
but I understood what it meant to save and how
(10:04):
you save money, And it's pretty simple. You spend the
lesson you earn. Some people have never learned that lesson.
I learned it really early on, you know, so I
always had. You know, I was in a couple of
thousand bucks in the banks. Oh my god, if I
don't work for the next few months, I'm okay, you
know so, but I do look at it and I go, wow, man,
you you were really lucky. You know, you worked hard, man,
(10:27):
but you were lucky. And at the end of the day,
none of it would have happened, as you said, without
having the goods. So at the end of the day,
there was something in me, something about what I was writing,
the way that I wrote that that resonated with editors
at magazines, that the fans like what I was writing,
(10:47):
and maybe they'd reach out to editors. Oh I love
that Steve Rosen's story he did with you, with you
and Guitar Player, with Frank Zapfatt. You know, so at
the end of the day, yeah, you know, you can
you can open those doors. You have to kind of
be ready for that, and not knowing any better, I
believed I was ready. I knew a lot about music.
(11:09):
I was a guitar player. I wasn't a great guitar player,
but I understood enough about music and theory and harmony.
I could talk to anybody about songwriting and you know,
choruses and pre choruses and oh that change, you know,
And so I was able to speak on that level.
So yeah, I was lucky. I worked hard, and I
(11:31):
was there at the point when all these music magazines
were sort of growing up and they needed writers, they
needed freelancers because they couldn't handle all of this stuff
in house. So yeah, you're there and hopefully, you know,
you make your bones and the next time there's a
story to be done, they give you a call. So
it was. It was pretty remarkable, you know, for sure.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
And what I appreciate about I appreciate about that time
is that there was only a finite amount of outlets
and a finite you know, you had to have the goods. Again,
today it's it's a free for all. Everyone's a freelance journalist.
That word is kind of unfortunately lost some meaning, But
I'd like to think that the real readers will know
(12:14):
who the real journalists are. And that's a whole other conversation.
But before I lose it, and to talk about him
before obviously talking about Eddie van Halen because you mentioned
jep Beck and obviously with my guns and Roses theme,
we'll tie that into everything withinto Eddie van Haalen. That's
what I do here. What do you know about when
(12:35):
he was at the Paris pay per view with Guns
and Roses and he got tonightas? Because when I do
you know, I saw an interesting comment saying that that
wasn't he made that up because he got nervous or
did he really have tonightas or I don't know. It
was just an offhand comment I saw on social media,
which obviously has no weight to it. But do you
(12:56):
know anything about.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
The Honestly, I don't. I don't. I don't know a
lot about it. I do believe that he absolutely had
tonight this, okay, you know, Look, I mean I was
lucky enough. I saw Jeff Back with the Jeff Back group,
you know, with throughout Stewart in sixty nine, and I
remember that contract is being so freaking loud. So actually
(13:21):
what shocks me is that more musicians didn't get to
know this. I mean, I mean, my god, you know
the answer right behind him. So I wish I could
tell you more. Okay, I can't, but I know that
he suffered from it.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
A Townshend had it, you know, you'd be surprised. It's
just just the fact that you brought up Jeff Back,
And I think it was recently the anniversary I do
with these on these this day thing. Everyone does those,
but I do it of course guns and roses related
on social media media, and it was just embarrassed one
and everyone talking about how Jeff Back, you know, he
(13:58):
was there for the sound check to play that song Breakdown,
and they didn't even play it live at all without
Jeff Back, and that's a song they don't really play live.
So it's just something that could have happened, but unfortunately,
because of his tonight as didn't. But if I can
use it ginare as it continue to use it as
a pivot. Slash said this about Eddie van Halen, that
(14:21):
all the great ideas he had that were uniquely his own,
and that all these left of field kind of things
underneath all of that was a really tasty blues guitar player,
and he just added all these other ways to branch
out of his expression on top of that. And that's
why nobody could ever touch him. So something that's I'm
(14:43):
stating the obvious that even the top tier guitarist praise
Eddie van Halen. So when you first I guess, if
we can just rewind when you first met him? What
did you first meet him as? Did you know he
would become this this guitar legends or was he your
friend Eddie? How did you first meet Eddie Van Allen?
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Well, that's a great question. Uh, you know, I uh,
I disagree with what Flash said. Okay, all right, you know, uh,
I mean I don't disagree that Edward reinvented guitar. I
mean obviously we all know that. Uh. To call Edward
a blues guitar player, I don't. I don't think that's correct. Look,
(15:27):
Edward Litt was listening to blues guys and that, you know,
did ever listen to I mean, really try to listen
to those guys howling will for bb king of those kinds.
I think Edward might have got his blue secondhand from
listening to Eric Hoaptain. You know, Eric was a blues
guitar player. I mean, there's no denying that. So I
(15:47):
don't I don't agree with calling Edward and blues guitar player.
I mean I believe, don't. I think you'd be hard
put to listen to those excerpts worries. Oh my god,
there's that that blues. There's that pentatonic thing that he's doing.
You know that's me.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Hey, obviously you're the guitar so I appreciate and you
knew that. So maybe he here, I mean, he hears
the blues where he wants to hear it. Maybe he's
hearing something that perhaps isn't wasn't there and his playing,
but no, I appreciate their perspective for you, for yours.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
So that's kind want to toss that out there and
not just the GNR fans out there.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
But it's all perspective here. It's all good, yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Man, So I think that really What was so interesting
about my friendship with Edward is that I did meet
him eight months before the first album ever comes out.
So I meet him at the whiskey of Go Go
one night in July of seventy seven. They had signed
the Warners Steel, and I believe that they had started
(16:50):
working on the record. I don't know, and I don't
know my chronology well enough to know if by July
seventy seven the album was done. I don't think so,
because I can't believe they would have finished an album
that early and waited eight months to release. As possible,
I think it was it was completed a little bit
(17:12):
later in seventy seven. So I meet him one night
at the Whiskey. Cheap Trick is recording a live record.
It's like a like a radio promotion. Oh, we're going
to get Cheat Trick over the Whiskey and we're going
to record a live record. And I was introduced to
him by my friend Michelle Meyer. Michelle booked the Whiskey,
(17:34):
and so I was there with my brother to see
Cheap Trick. I was a Cheap Trick fan. And she says, Hey,
there's someone you need to meet. So she takes us
upstairs to the whiskey dressing room and I see this
guy standing in the corner. So again, this is July
seventy seven. There are no articles on ever van Halen.
There are no stories on you. Right, I'm pretty positive.
(17:55):
I recognized him, you know, from flyers, because they used
to put up flyers up and down Sunset Boulevard, Hay
come see us who were playing the Whiskey Gazaaris whatever
it would have been. But there was no press on him,
you know. And this is the other strange thing. I
had never seen van Halen play before meeting him, which
(18:17):
is sorry about that, which is very strange because I
was at the Whiskey and the star Wood where they
were playing virtually every week, and how I ever missing
them at that point was amazing. So if I just
knew this person as somebody who had a band called
Van Halen, they had scored a huge record deal in
(18:39):
Warner Brothers Records. But I didn't know if he played
like Angus Young or you know, Leslie West. I didn't
know from anything people have said to me, Oh, you
gotta heard this, dude, This Edward van Halen got played.
He's an incredible guitar player, but I didn't know that.
So we meet and we just start talking about Jeff back.
Jeff Beck comes out of Jeff. Jeff Beck was my
(19:03):
favorite guitar player of all time. I think Jeff is
the greatest who ever lived. I think Edward's in the
top five. I think Edward was the most influential guitar
player they ever lived. Some people will say it's Jimmy Hendrix,
and it's impossible for me to argue on it. The
reason I say that about Edward is that part of
(19:24):
his career developed during the digital age, right with computers
and internet. You know, Jimmy was all analog. We found
out about Jimmy Hendrix by reading a magazine or cheering
him on the radio. It was only later that Jimmy
I was on you know, all the podcasts and stuff.
(19:44):
So Edward had the advantage of instead of a thousand
people or one hundred thousand hearing him, you know, fifty
million people good care. So that's my reasoning behind him
being the most influential at TIST. So we talked about
Jeff Beck Richie Blackmore comes up. I was also so
a huge Blackmore fan. Coptain comes up. I love cream
and you know I thought blank Face was good. Honestly,
(20:09):
this is a little off topic. I don't think Eric
really did much from the point his solo career started onwards.
That's me. I was a purist. I loved the cream
stuff but Edward loved cream, and that's kind of how
the friendship started. By the end of the conversation, he
runs out of the room and he comes back and
he's got a pen in his hand. He picks up
a paper from the lettered whiskey floor, you know, and
(20:33):
he's writing something down. He hands it to me and
it's his phone number. Say, man, I really enjoyed talking
to you. We let talking to you. Men call me
and people will ask, well, where do you think the
friendship started? How long were you hanging out with him
before the friendship start? Without romanticizing it, I really think
that the friendship began there that night, and certainly over
(20:55):
the coming months. I don't think it took long that
we became pretty. He didn't live far from me. I
lived in Laurel Canyon in the Hollywood Hills. Edward lived
in Coldwater Canyon. Coldwater was the expensive part, Laurel Canyon
was the funky bohemian part, you know. So we were
very close to each other. So he would pop by
(21:16):
my place and I would drive over there and he
would call. I mean really early on. So I think
the friendship developed pretty quickly and pretty kind of seamlessly.
But I really do believe the seeds were sort of
sewn that first night at the Whiskey. It was pretty amazing.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Then what happened with this guy that you met? You
were just talking about your love of music, and you
didn't know him from any other guitar player to when
he became when he started to become Eddie van Halen,
and you're just like where it's almost like a like
a noun, like it's I mean, obviously it's a nown
and it's a name, but it's more of just like
a it's I guess you're the author. I'm just trying
(21:54):
to think of the right ways a phrase. I guess
that's I'm looking for the word phrase. It's a more
than the name, it's a phrase, Eddie van Halen. So
when did that start to happen? And did that change
your friendship at all? Because that that's kind of a
cautionary tale with a lot of people when when Minkom
was famous and friends and family and their whole inner circle.
(22:16):
So what happened when you started to get famous?
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Right? That's a great question. So yes, yes, my whole
point of telling you that I met him before the
first record comes out. So yeah, the PostScript on that
is February seventy eight, the van Halen record comes out.
I'm on Warder Brothers mailing list, right, I'm on all
(22:40):
these mailing lists. Now it's just rock and roll journalists
as part of the swat. Right. You know, magazine's never
paid any money, so but you got free albums, you
got free concert tickets. So I would get all of
the monthly releases from Warner Brothers Records, and in this
particular release of February seventy eight, I remember it was
(23:01):
the ben Halen record. There was a Manfred Man record.
There was a record by the Ruddles that was like
the take up on the Beatles that Dark Idol did
right from Money Python, and I'm thinking, oh my god,
this is that guy, Edward ben Halen. This is just band.
You know, I got to put this on. I put
it on. You're my little record player, and you know,
(23:24):
dropped the needle and you know it's that that thumb,
the bass thumb from Running with the Devil and unlistening,
going wow, this is this is pretty cool. And I
kind of did a needle drop. I didn't listen to
it all the way through. But I kind of neil
dropped it, and I write about this in Tone Chaser.
(23:47):
I didn't think it was very good. I thought, yeah,
he's he's a good guitar player. But in nineteen seventy eight,
there were a shipload of good guitar players, you know.
I mean, you know, George Lynch was around, Rusty Anderson
was playing in a band Rusty with subsequently go On
(24:08):
and has been Paul McCartney's guitar player, who's an incredible
guitar player.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
I mean, as we're recording this, by the way, happy birthday, Paul. Sorry,
I just needed to say that. Ah, that's right, Happy birthday,
and we're recording this.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Yeah. Man, So there were a lot of good guitar players.
And on top of that, and I write about this
to try to frame where I was coming from, so
people wouldn't go, not very good. Are you out of
your mind? Discuided the great guitar player since Sarah Klepp,
you know, so people would understand Again, you have to
understand I had been going to concerts well before I
(24:46):
started writing, Since God, I probably went to my first
concert when I was fourteen or fifteen, So I had
seen Jeff Beck. I had seen Cream, I had seen Hendrix,
I saw the Who in sixty six. I'd seen Purple,
I'd seen Paul coss Up with Free. I had seen
these amazing guitar players. I was listening to those records,
(25:10):
you know, the first Zeppelin record, the first Jeff Beck record,
truth in beck Ola. I mean I was listening to
those records, and I was transformed by them, you know.
And so I get the first Van Haalen record and
not consciously trying to do it. But it's human nature.
We judge things by what we know, what we're familiar with. Right,
(25:34):
So you're going to hear any new band, as good
or bad as they might be, against guns n' Roses.
I mean, it's just impossible not too or against slash you, Right.
So I judged every guitar player I ever heard against
Jeff Beck and Eric Clapman, you know, dream Era stuff
and Page and Pete Townsend, I mean, my god, David
(25:56):
Gilmore and Robin Trauer and Martin Barr and so I
heard this stuff and I thought, yeah, he's good. You know,
he's kind of like a sort of like a you know,
Richie Blackmore. He's kind of got that fast thing down,
you know, and the band those fast, purple like shuffles,
and you know that that was my first impression. Everybody
(26:16):
was telling me, you don't know what you're saying. You know,
you're you're wrong. So the next day I go back,
I make a big cup of coffee. I'm a huge
caffeine guy, and I sat down and listened carefully, and
I go, oh my god, that's what everybody's talking, you know.
That's the tone, and that's that technique where he he
(26:37):
you know, falls seamlessly between playing the rhythm and then
he goes into a solo thing. But there's no rhythm
on the record, which I loved. I loved that organic approach,
you know, which was all Edward because they initially wanted
him to do overdubs. Put him with the part. He goes,
I don't know how to do it. I don't know
how to overdub, you know, which I thought was amazing.
So again, to get to your point, random, So that
(27:00):
record comes out, they go out on the road, So
he goes away where he opens for Ronnie Montrose and Journey.
By the end of that tour, they're blowing. He's Ben
Halen's blowing those two bands off, he goes and does
a show. They do a show on their own day
at the Green, which is actually the second time I
(27:21):
went into him. This is about a year after the
first time. This is July seventy eight. Ac DC opens
the show Van Halen, Pat Travers, Aerosmith, and Foregner. I'm
there to interview foreigner Mick Jones for a Guitar Player magazine,
but I was also hoping to see Van Halen, which
I don't because I'm sort of dragged into interviewing ac DC,
(27:46):
who I really didn't care for. But that's another story.
But an answer to your question, I can tell you
those first two albums, the first two tours, he was happiest.
You know. So here's this kid from Passing Dia. You know,
got from playing two hundred seed clubs. They're now headlining
right then, they're now going to Europe and opening for
(28:08):
Black Seven. I mean, his his rise was pretty quick.
He was incredible, He was joyful, and he loved every
moment of it. I don't think that the fame side
of it really ever caught up to him until I
want to say, the early nineties. I sensed the change
(28:32):
in him. He was a different person, that person that
I knew was disappearing certainly previous to that, where there's
discussions we had. He was unhappy with the band. He
wanted more from the band, he was unhappy with the label.
There were a lot of drugs happening. He drank a lot.
(28:56):
He smoked more than anyone I ever met. And I
right about this in the book, Not that I was
any prognosticator, but I knew that cigarettes were going to
kill him quicker than the boos of the drugs, which
they did. Right he got cancer, but so all these
things were exacerbated. But for those first ten or eleven
(29:19):
or twelve years I knew him, I don't think it
really affected him. He had this, He had this self
confident thing. He knew he was a very good guitar player,
but he never needed to talk about it. He also
never needed to hear you tell him you're the most
amazing guitar player I've ever heard. But it was a
(29:40):
cautionary tale, you know, And man, that's a that's a
heavy thing. You have people around you telling you exactly
what you want to hear. You have all the money
and fame and gear and houses and cars, and man,
you know, you got to he pretty grounded not to
(30:01):
let it affect you, and I think ultimately you did.
I think there were people around him. We didn't have
his best self interest, you know, in mind, and uh yeah,
that that stuff adds up, and you know, we lose
him at sixty seven. I mean, he should have been
here for another twenty years. I know.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
It's it is tough, and you know, and he was smoking.
You're right, it's it's hard not to predict that. Especially
sometimes I'll look at old pictures of him and it's
like he's like black teeth and it's hard to it's
hard to look at, you know, for obvious reasons, and
for someone who has that goes back so far with them,
(30:45):
you know, with him, knowing him, meeting him before he
even knew the band, knew who he was, and seeing,
you know, experiencing Van Halen live. And now fast forward
now to this book and interviews that I read about
you preparing for this that it was a challenge to
do this book, and there was so what's is it?
(31:07):
Because you know so much and you're you're truthful that
there are certain things that perhaps the family doesn't want
to get out Why was this because this is self published?
Because when I read it, you know, I would kind
of just like you, felt like my guy. Because a
long story short, I worked on a couple of years
(31:28):
with on a book with a former Guns and Roses manager,
Doug Goldstein, and he only wanted to work with one
specific agency for connection reasons in that person, because I
wasn't an established author, didn't want to work with me.
And I said, okay, let's move on, worst case scenario,
self published. We can do this. There's things that in
(31:49):
today's world it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Things can
go viral, the smallest things if the content is there.
But I didn't want to go that round, and that's
on him. But to go the self published route is
I admire that because there are certain people that could
look at that in a certain way. So was it disheartened?
(32:09):
It had to have been disheartening because I that you
went to all these places to put this out. Why
were the challenges? What were the challenges of putting out
this book?
Speaker 2 (32:19):
All of those things you mentioned Rando ran through my head.
It was because I knew him so well. Do I
do I actually write about all of that stuff? You know?
The last thing on this earth I ever would want,
I ever wanted to do was hurt or tarnish his image,
(32:43):
embarrass the family, the absolute last thing I wanted to do.
I mean, really, if you read the book, and it
is an honest book, because at the end of the day,
that's the only kind of book I could I could
write if I'm gonna if I'm gonna sit there and
kill myself day after day writing this book. It has
to be that honest. It has to talk about everything
(33:05):
I do know about him as well as myself. I mean,
I'm out there, you know, I'm on those pages, and
you know I talk about doing drugs with edword and
doing stuff, you know, And am I proud of it?
Not particularly? Is it the truth? Yes, but it's part
of the history. Our relationship ends in two thousand and three,
(33:32):
seventeen years later, is when I first really start giving
serious vine. So during that seventeen year period, I mean,
I'll be honest, the relationship didn't end well. And I
don't want to give the ending away because I think
it's something more interesting if you read about it, you know,
(33:56):
But I was fucking mad, hurt, and it's like you
don't want to be my friend, you know, like shething
like that, Okay, fuck to you. I don't want to
hear about you. I don't want to know about you,
you know. So you know I would hear about the
uh that reunion tour in twenty twelve, you know, or
(34:20):
i'd hear about them putting out a different kind of truth,
or you know. I mean it's impossible not to hear
from about them. You know, I'm online and stuff. But
I just I just I didn't think about it, you know,
in a strange way, you know, those seventeen years ago by,
and sometimes I look back at it and I think,
(34:44):
did that friendship really happened? I mean, I mean, you know,
I'm talking a little existentially here. I mean obviously, you know,
but you think did it happen in that way? Did
I you know, look at it with with with rose
colored glasses on? Was Was he not that person I
(35:06):
thought he was? You know? And so you think about
all those things. So the twenty twenty rolls around and
some friends I said, hey, man, you know you've got
to write that book. I need to back up for
one second. In nineteen eighty six, so this is Sammy
had just joined the band. I think it's right before
(35:27):
fifty one fifty comes out, but the nineteen eighty four
records come out. So Van Halen's arguably one of the
biggest bands in the world. Right he is a god,
he is a king. Everybody knows him. I realized that
writers are going to start approaching him and they're going
to want to write his life story. And so, being
(35:47):
the journalist that I am, you know, I thought I
want to write that book. You know, I think I
can write that book. I approach him. It actually takes
me months to build up the putsvah, the courage to
do that, you know, because I thought one of two
things is going to happen. He's going to say no,
(36:11):
which would be heartbreaking and disheartening, or he's going to
say yes, which is going to be terrifying, because oh
my god, Rosen, now you got to write the fucking thing.
You know what if you're done so But I finally
asked him, you know, and I think, well, he's going
to take some time. He wants to think about it,
you know. He takes a puff up a cigarette and goes, yeah, man,
of course you could write it. I can't think of
(36:31):
anybody else who could write it, you know, And to
me that was like, you know, right, right, what else
do you need in your life? I mean, you know,
it's respect And it was all about respect for him.
He was big unrest disrespect him and he would probably
never let that go. So and in turns he gave
that to me. That change. When I talk about him
(36:54):
changing later, that part of him changed. But that's in
the book. So so so, some some friends said, hey, man,
you got to write that book. You know. You didn't
write it then, it was it wasn't meant to be.
You got to write it now. And I said, man,
I don't know. And all those things you you you
bring up Randall, I think about it. I'm thinking, well,
I haven't spoken to him in seventeen years. Uh, you know,
(37:17):
I don't know what he's told Alex or you know
by twenty twenty he uh you know, a Valerie or
you know what they think of me in the Van
Alien camp. You know, if I start writing a book,
they get wouldn't bit, They're gonna come, They're gonna there's
gonna be lawyers at the door. You can't write, I
don't you know, I do start writing it, you know,
(37:41):
and what we were talking about cats earlier before I
lived in this place. I'm in Orange County right now.
This is like near Disneyland in California. I was up.
I was still up in the Hollywood Hills, and I
had a cat called Arpeggio, and Arpeggio had this incredibly
annoying habit of waking up at three in the morning
wanting to be fed. I lived in like this little up.
(38:04):
It was enough stairs that downstairs it's at They get
out of bed and walk down the stairs and I
give him acount of food, and you know, then I
tried to go back to bed and go to sleep.
Well I kept happening, and I thought, I don't know
what I thought. I just went into my little computer room,
and I think in the back of my head there
was probably some thought about writing, you know, a book thing,
(38:25):
but I didn't really know. So I sit down, I
start typing, you know, and I look at it and
I go, that's not bad. And what it turned out
to be was the first paragraph of the book with me,
who who has always been his own worst critic. I
come back the next morning with my cup of coffee in,
I read it and I go that's good, you know,
that's that's pretty good. So so I keep writing. I
(38:48):
keep writing. Fourteen months later I finished the book. But
all those things that you brought up, I thought about constantly.
Are people going to look at this and go, oh, yeah,
you're a friend? You know, You're going to say, is
this great guy? Oh? You know? Ever been? And he
never could have done or said any listenings that you said,
any of the darker stuff, you know, so it was
(39:08):
like a no win, which to my mind said, hey man,
you just got to be honest and and and follow
what your heart tells you, you know. But as I'm
writing it, Matt, I honestly, there are parts I thought, God,
do I really include this stuff? I mean, it was
really it was very personal stuff. But it was those
(39:29):
little moments that I felt really revealed who he was,
and they tended to come out in these interviews that
I later called the Twilight tapes, because she would call
me at four in the morning and he wanted to talk,
you know, and it might have been about music, but
usually it was about family or the band or how
(39:49):
he was feeling. And it was just those little moments
when he revealed those things for me, that revealed who
he was. Look, we can look at him on stage
and can listen to the music, and we all know
about that site. But this other side, you know, maybe
some of the failties, or the insecurities, or his own
(40:11):
sense of self worth, you know, maybe we don't know
about that so much. And those are those elements that
I felt came out in these conversations. I finished the
book in twenty twenty one. I'm thinking I am sitting
on the biggest rock and roll.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Right.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
No one else has this right. Edward has been a
lot of interviews. You know, there are other books out there.
No one has had a friendship. No one hung out
with them, no one jammed with him. I introduced him
to Ritchie Blethmore, unless Paul and Billy Gibbons, and I
sat in a limo with him, and I smoked the
(40:57):
joint with him, and we went through a stop side
at four o'clock in the morning. Because you were booked
so over, I had those experiences. No, a publisher is
gonna They're gonna flip out. I reached out to some publishers.
They didn't even respond. One publisher, Omnibus, who was a
very cool English publisher and I had their books. I
(41:19):
had books from Omnibus and he writ written back who said, hey, man,
you were really close. She almost made it, you know
the cut, but we just can't do it, you know.
Had a couple other responses, the book is too long,
it would have to be cut in half. No one's
going to care to read about you. All of that
(41:39):
stuff has to go. So I thought, I thought, okay,
rather than me approached the publisher directly, let me go
find an agent. Certainly an agent is going to see
the value. I reached out to a person who had
a list of really heavy agents. You know. I sent
out that, you know, my farm letter to these agents,
thinking they're going to bust down doors. One agent responded said, yeah,
(42:03):
you know, send me a parent, send me a chapter.
I sent him a chapter and never heard that. I
reach out to my friend Neil's lows Hour. Neil was
van Halen's official photographer. Neil had put out several photography
books on Van Halen. So you heard Matt, he probably
knows a cool agent or a cool publisher. He could
(42:24):
give me a name, you know, and if you know Neil,
Neil is loud, confrontational and abrasive, but if he's not
those things, that means he's not your friend. So I've
known her for fifty years and he's never not yelled
at me, you know, in love, you know. So I said, Neil,
(42:45):
hey man, you know, look, I wrote the book and
I was wondering, you know, man, you know a publisher
or an agent. And he goes, don't be a fucking idiot.
You don't even an agent. Don't get a publisher. They're
not going to give you any advance. There's no money
to be made. Do it yourself, you know. Don't be
an idiot, you know. And he had done his last
book self published, and I never even thought about it.
(43:08):
I didn't even know self published. What do you do?
I mean, you know, so so that, okay, make a
long story short. I go out there, started looking for printers. Okay,
I got I got to get the book printed. You know,
you go through printers and you know what to some
printers over here and they want yeah, you know, unless
(43:29):
you order you know, twelve thousand copies, it's gonna cost
you know, twenty nine dollars a book or something. So,
I mean it would have cost you like eighty or
ninety grand for a marginal first run. It's like that,
that's insane, you know. Keep looking around. I find a
guy who is a big Van Halen fan. He wants
to do it. We're talking, we're talking. He gives me
(43:52):
a great price. This guy flips out. He ends up
in some exotic island with the police running after him.
He's in a boat and he's arrested for drugs.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
I mean, the story, it sounds like a book in itself.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Exactly exactly. I meet somebody who actually worked for this printer,
who had a connection with a Chinese printer. I said, okay, sure, man,
I'm open to anything. Anyway. I talk to these Chinese printers.
These people are unbelievable. They do an extraordinary job. Their
prices is like, were like twenty percent of what any
(44:35):
American publisher wanted to do. The detail, I mean, the
book is beautiful, the last thing I wanted to do.
And no offense to anybody who's self published. Self published
books tend to look like self published books. The quality
of the paper isn't as good, the font is usually
a more generic looking fond.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
Well, yeah, that's we don't have. That's the resources and
why it's self published. But when you're when you're getting
jerked around like you were when you would think I
was flabbergasted when I read that you would think that
you were like I said on a gold Mine and
about Eddie van Halen and somebody who has a unique
perspective with him is a story that you want. You
(45:19):
always find that was kind of like, you know, the
neighbor of somebody and through their eyes. And so I
all silly and I'm not having to get all these
PTSD flashbacks of just all the BS that I was
given about. You know about the the GNR book, but
I do have a many years ago, a self published
book about a Cape Cod family when I did my
(45:41):
first radio jib. I don't know, I haven't mentioned this
in a while. My first radio job in Cape Cod.
I had to get other jobs to support myself because
you don't make money in radio, either as a freelance
DJ or whatever.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
So uh.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
The one that was working in this at the time
was a sandwich ice cream show, but one hundred years
ago it was like a post office and a medicine. Upstairs.
He had a museum with all these old documents about signing,
you know, peers on the decks of all these things.
So he's like and he was dyslexic and knew I
(46:18):
had writing at that you know, he knew I was.
I liked writing and at that time some experience, you know,
in high school because I was still young. So over
the summer I helped him put together this self published book,
The Hallett Family of Cape Cod. So just a but
I'm still proud of it though, So there is still
something not something she'd be still I'm sure very proud
(46:41):
of this book because it's just it's a journey. It's
not the journey, not just the journey about your friendship
with Eddie van Haalen. It's your journey as an author,
as a journalist to be able to get to this
point in your career and to get this story off
your chest and to do it your way. You know,
it wouldn't probably would not have been the same if
(47:04):
somebody else got their hands on it, they would have
changed it. They would not have made it the book
that it is today. So I don't want to spoil
anything more than I could talk to you for hours
about all the pictures on your wall and you know cats,
so we're talking about off the air and then all
these fun things. But before we wrap up, I do,
of course, I gotta ask, as it's appetite for distortion
(47:24):
of a six degrees of g n R bacon throughout
the whether it's your through your friendship with EVH or
just your your music loving You ever see guns of
roses in concert cross paths with any of the guys.
Do you have any six degrees of guns of roses
bacon as I like to call it, and the.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
Yeah, I actually interviewed Slash. I think the first record
had just come out. This is a phone interview, and
they were playing, actually they were playing at a place
not far from where'moing now. It was I mean it
was a club, but it was a club, and I
(48:04):
remember talking to him and he was exceedingly cool. I mean,
he was very cool. I would go on to I
bet I probably interviewed Slash, I don't know, man, probably
six or seven or eight times. Invariably. He is always cool,
he's open. She's a monster. Jeff that guy, So we
(48:28):
always have that in coming, you know, you know, he
loves Edwards. Yeah, he's great. I mean, this might get
me in trouble with you, and I hope not or
your fans I was never a huge gun.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
Stand That's okay. You know, it's not a prerequisite to
be on the show. We all come in piece, okay.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Well yeah, I thought, you know, you know, see I
gotta go now.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
Well, it's funny. A few episodes ago I had another author,
Martin pop Off on who dared call them hair metal,
and that got a lot of see Harrison, I think Harrison,
I don't know if you hear him now. He is
really upset that you don't like gn R. You know,
on Father's Day, I thought I would have a moment
and play sweet Child of Mine and he starts going no, no, no, no,
(49:16):
he's not ready for rock and roll yet. He's not
ready for rocking. But that's okay. Are your interviews because
I don't think he's gonna give me much more time here,
but I think he's given me the rap sign. But
are your interviews with Slash online? Are these things that
we could find out of curiosity if you're like your
old interviews online?
Speaker 2 (49:36):
Actually yeah, go to my YouTube page and I think
you just typed in Steve Roseen YouTube or tone Chaser
Steve rose In YouTube. You'll find it. And I know
that I just put up A. I did an interview
with Steve Adler, I'm sorry, a video interview that was
really good. So that's up there. I think there might
(49:57):
be a Slash interview up there. Uh, there might be
a Duff. I've interviewed Duff, I interviewed Matt Sum, I've
never interviewed Axel, interviewed Bill by Clarke. I think some
of those are up on my YouTube page.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
Okay, so I'll put that in the show notes.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
As they say, definitely and and and but for me,
uh uh you could I just tell people if you're
interested and get into book, you can find it at
tone chaser book dot com one word tone chaser book
dot com and I will happily sign it for you
if you like. So you should go read the book.
If you're a Van Halen fan, I think you guys
(50:40):
would dig it right on.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
And I'll also put that in the show notes as well,
a link to you your book. Yeah, Van Halen fan
music fan. I mean, Steve, just this conversation, it just
shows you know where you're coming from and where it
all started. So I always like getting the history of
the person writing about the history and in your another
reason why so uh, It was a pleasure and I
(51:03):
hope we get to do this again.
Speaker 2 (51:04):
Yeah, man, any time. You got it.
Speaker 1 (51:06):
So that does it for this episode.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
You got it.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
That does it for this episode of Appetite for Distortion.
When we see the next one. In the words of
Axl Rose concerning Chinese democracy, I don't know as soon
as the word, but you'll see it. Thanks to the
lame ass security, I'm going home.
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