October 6, 2019 – First, I want to congratulate Lana Del Rey for her having the number 1 song on the alternative rock chart, now two weeks in a row. I have much I could say about that, but I’m taking a bit of a break from my normal stuff to indulge in nostalgia.

I have my Van Halen stories, Chapters if you will. I suppose we all have them. For me, they are images too. They are time markers. They are an integral part of my growing up. For me, Van Halen was nothing short of mine.

Van Halen I. I first heard of Van Halen from my high school band friends. High school band was a big deal at Richardson High School in the era I attended high school, and we were the best of the best. I was a star too. My sister’s kids are going to private schools; her daughter is in one of the best private schools in Dallas, but it’s all girls. My sister’s daughter is friends with her old bestie, and that girl is going to the same high school I went to. I keep wondering how their experiences will differ from each other’s given their school choices. Perhaps it’s the conversation I’m hearing about those experiences; perhaps it’s the conflict in my life I’m experiencing now, but that time has played in my memories a lot lately. How does this all relate to Van Halen? Well, in high school there were boys, and the boys discovered Van Halen first. It would be the time of Van Halen II before the news from those older boys would reach the younger grades that I was in. It was tryout time, tryouts for baton twirler, and I was staying after school a lot for tryout practice. The boys hung out in the parking lot, and they wanted to chat up the girls who were trying out because then they’d be friends with the girls after they made the tryouts – a good place to be in for popularity’s sake. I know pathetic, but that’s high school. A couple of those boys played Van Halen II for me. That was the first I heard, and I quickly caught up on Van Halen I. Van Halen II is my favorite; I guess that’s why; it was my introduction. Do you want to know how pathetic I truly am? I have a letter jacket from those days. It’s white, so it doesn’t look so good now, and the vinyl sleeves somehow melted over the years such that they are permanently sticky. The jacket was at my brother’s house, which is my old family’s house. It was in my mother’s closet. On one of the trips, I took it back with me. Lately, I’ve been cleaning out closets and culling things. The jacket ended up on the top of a pile on the chaise in my bedroom, laying with the back face up. Richardson majorette, it says, in all caps. When I came in last week, after having been yelled at for two straight hours at work, and facing a meeting where I would lose all of my work to this other person (nothing like training your replacement), I saw that jacket. I am not sure if it made me happy, or if it was just sad. But that first phase of Van Halen is that era – the era of this hard-rocking music, played in the background of practices where I first became a high school star. A nice memory.

Van Halen II. And I don’t mean the record, I mean the second chapter of my Van Halen saga. This was my first year in college. I lived in a dorm that had four girls to a suite, although mine had three. The girl who lived in the suite next to me was a rabid Van Halen fan. Her sister was too, and her sister was a cheerleader at my same high school I went to. Coincidentally, these sisters lived down the street from me, but the older sister was in college when I was in high school, so I met her only when I went away to college and happened to live next to her. One of suite mates was a groupie. Yes, groupies go to college … until they don’t. But for that year, my groupie friend played nothing but Van Halen. She had a necklace too, a gold VH, and by gold, I mean 14 karat. That’s a serious love if you have someone make a 14 karat gold VH. And you don’t take it off either. She was pretty, sort of, and always trying to get me to be wilder than I was, which was … not. Still, I had a cool car, and it had a cool cassette player, and this collection of girls were my passengers while we drove around listening to Van Halen I and Van Halen II, still our only choices, even though by then there was Van Halen III, aka Women and Children First.

Van Halen III. This was my second and third years of college. As things go after first year, the groupie girl was gone, leaving me to become besties with the girl who had lived next door to me in the dorm. My brother joined us at college that year, so I lived with him in an apartment. My bestie always seemed to know when the concerts were happening, and I went to three Van Halen shows with her, Fair Warning twice, specifically in Houston and in Austin, and whatever 1982 was called for the Diver Down album, in Austin. Mind you, I had knowledge from my groupie friend, and a desire to not be so Little Bo Peep, so the goal was to get to the front row and to get those backstage passes. We managed to get them, front row, passes, everything else I did surrounding Van Halen, but not by doing anything other than my ridiculous talking. I was truly so nuts then, but I suppose that star thing I thought I was played into it. I liked attention. I liked adventure. And I was young and foolish. I’ve told these stories, so I won’t tell them again, but I will say, Van Halen was, for lack of a better word, mine.

I do want to say one thing though, and that’s about the necklace. Of all the memories I have about Van Halen, and they are many, and most I chose to keep to myself now, what strikes me so much is the necklace. That VH necklace was a girl thing, a thing that said I’m holding out for that. And I mean a gold one, not the silver chunky ones the boys had. And I know. I know. I know there are really terrible groupie stories, but not really, mostly those necklaces, and I mean the custom gold ones, were like a jacket that said Richardon majorette in all capital letters, something you wore just to say you’re a star, or is it a star too?

Van Halen IV. After 1982, I put it all away. Sure Van Halen would reach its peak with 1984 (or whatever the Roman numerals are for that year), but they seemed so far away from me then. My family had long since lost its money, my parents were divorced, I wasn’t a star, and I had three jobs at once. Van Halen started being like every other famous band, like Led Zeppelin or something, really super famous and untouchable. They weren’t mine anymore, not like they were once, when I really felt like they were mine. And from then on, and I mean to present-day, I worked; I worked harder than I should have, always living for goals and achievements, some of which might not have been mine, but society’s. But that’s another story, and I digress.

I remember seeing a news report while eating lunch with some friends in 2006 or 2007, in advance of the David Lee Roth reunion with Van Halen. I heard David’s talking voice and looked up. I remember saying to the people at the table how I once loved him, but I could barely look at the TV.

Van Halen V. It would take until 2012, to even think about Van Halen again. My life had become so unbelievably different than those old years. I think it was the new record that hooked me. That was brave, or I thought so. I think rock was a dying thing then, so it was truly brave. And I was revisiting the old days in my mind, with a curiosity about what had become of David Lee Roth. Some people go to college or high school reunions. Some people revisit Van Halen.

In that time period, I talked about Van Halen incessantly. I wrote on the Van Halen News Desk incessantly. I had a then-20-something friend who indulged me. We worked in this office where there were two women who were older than me and who were groupies from the ‘70s. They were incorrigible, and they hated me, made my life miserable. In some of our conversations, I told my young friend about my VH necklace memories. As 20-something’er will do, she was always on the computer. I remember once she came to me to tell me the minute mark of some video where David Lee Roth was his very hottest. She would read the posts on VHND too, check out what I said there. In my stories I had told, I talked about the VH necklace. My friend found them on the VHND store. Mind you, VHND’s necklaces were nowhere near the quality of the necklace my college friend had — the custom-made gold one, and nowhere near the quality of the ones you would see on other groupie girls, but when I saw that necklace, I had to have one, even the tacky one from the Desk. The Desk had a two-necklace special buy, and my young friend suggested we buy them together. I didn’t understand why she wanted one, but … whatever, it was sweet. We got them. And she customized hers too; she had the chain shortened so it would look like what I told her of how they used to look. I went with her on that, a trip to a jeweler I used to know in the Downtown LA jewelry district, to have this costume necklace fixed. Even from a story of a memory, this girl was doing it right. And the really cool part, she actually wore this thing. My favorite time was when she wore it to a particular meeting, as her show of support for me, oh and it was my birthday too. It was somehow so good to see that VH necklace in a room of people, all wearing suits, and all defying me, none of whom had any idea and probably never even noticed the necklace. I’ve never worn mine. I just can’t seem to figure out how.

In this chapter of Van Halen, 2012, I saw the concert, twice. The girl who bought the necklace went with me to the first show. I bought our ticket; if I remember right, we were on about row 19. In the modern era, there was no running up to the stage, no clamoring for a pass, although she asked me to go try about five times. I’m really not that girl anymore. And the world is a different place, for better or for worse. After the show, when we were in the car waiting in a traffic jam that was the parking lot, she told me she had turned around during Ain’t Talking ‘Bout Love and saw all the hands raised, fists pounding to the words hey, hey, …. She described her emotions, but it was her final statement that took my breath away. She said I wished I could have seen it … back then. Then we just sat in silence.

Van Halen VI. And yes, for me, 2015 is not really continuation of 2012. I came to believe 2015 might be it. I was a few years away from my time at the VHND, many years into a phase, much like post-1982 when I didn’t listen at all, and only rarely talked or thought about Van Halen. My friend was the one who pushed me to go. She has since moved on from me, gotten a very good job (as Millennials have now), gotten married, had a baby. I’m proud of her. She bought me two nose-bleed tickets, and I had my then 20-something friend (a different person) go with me. That was a concert. It was more fun walking back to the car afterwards, but then there was this really cute guy…. And again, I digress. But I went again on the last night, the last Van Halen show at the Hollywood Bowl, and this single night is the totality of this chapter.

I had bought one ticket up towards the front. And I decided I’d go to very front. I got away with it, not an easy thing to do in this day and time, but I found some people who let me into their box at the front. I truly was channeling my inner 1982-core. That night, I saw the look on David Lee Roth’s face as he said the best years of his life were spent playing with Eddie. I even yelled out at him once. I thought he heard me, he seemed to look, and in my characteristic way I am now, I just kind of hid. But that look on his face when he seemed to hear me, at that moment and despite the years that have passed, I thought of Van Halen, for the first time since 1982, as … mine. I felt like I was talking to an old friend.

Van Halen VII. I’m not sure if I’ll go see the current incarnation with just David Lee Roth — Vegas baby, as he calls it. I saw him solo in 1988, and even in that show, there was this moment where I thought I was talking to a friend, well actually the reverse, but that sort of freaks me out. Talking from stage is a strange and scary thing for a girl whose biggest stage in life was a high school football field. Or a courtroom, I suppose there’s that.

I will say though that I almost wore my VH necklace on Friday. I had that scary meeting when I was going to be supplanted, replaced, fired, whatever, and thought, just for a second, about wearing the necklace, a necklace that I’ve always believed says I’m holding out for that. It would have been fitting. I didn’t though, and I’m not even sure what would prompt me to wear it if it wasn’t then. Perhaps I never will.

I’m not sure I know what this current version of the Van Halen saga will mean to me. I have read people’s reactions. I have read the articles. That’s more than I thought I would do. Last night, I watched the 1982 Largo show at a decibel level that had my ears ringing afterwards (sorry neighbors). I don’t even know that means. But everything, in every one of these chapters has changed for me from one chapter to the next. Certainly nothing is the same as what it was when I first heard Van Halen. And nothing will ever be my third chapter of Van Halen, the 1982 era, when Van Halen was mine. Do I put it away forever? I just don’t know. But I’m happy for the memories. And to David Lee Roth, in advance of his birthday, you truly were one of the best people who ever came through my life. Happy birthday, and may you have all the happiness you seek with this Van Halen chapter. Thank you for making Van Halen what it was for the world and especially for me.

Also, this article is dedicated to Rev. Your conversation, Van Halen and otherwise, has meant the world to me over these years, and I’m truly sorry I never got to meet your precious wife. She will be missed by all.