Eddie Van Halen recalls the reasons why he decided to build his 5150 Studio ahead of the band recording their classic album 1984.
Part of it was to prevent arguments with then-wife actress Valerie Bertinelli, but another was that he was a self admitted control-freak who had a desire to stop “butting heads” with producer Ted Templeman.
Van Halen admits the resulting premises were far more extensive that he’d originally planned.
He tells Guitar World, “I used to have a back room in my house where I set up a little four-track recorder. I have a tape of me playing at 5am and you can hear Valerie come in and yell that she’s heard enough of that song.”
He continues, “The bottom line is that I wanted more control. I was always butting heads with Ted Templeman about what makes a good record. My philosophy has always been that I would rather bomb with my own music than make it with other people’s music. Ted felt that if you re-do a proven hit, you’re already halfway there. I didn’t want to be halfway there with someone else’s stuff.”
Eddie’s continued debate with Templeman is one of the reasons 5150 didn’t remain simply a demo studio. “I wanted to show Ted we could make a great record without any cover tunes and do it our way,” he says.
“Donn Landee and I proceeded to figure out how to build a recording studio. I didn’t initially set out to build a full-blown studio, I just wanted a better place to put my music together so I could show it to the guys. I never imagined that it would turn into what it did until we started building it.”
1984 – released 30 years ago this week – remains Van Halen’s best-selling album. It spawned the hit singles Jump, Hot For Teacher, Panama and I’ll Wait, and sales hit 12-times platinum in the US alone.
additional source: classicrockmagazine.com
18 Responses
ed vh,uh,get in your studio,n like record a song or two dude,n play like eddie vh,its in your back yard
More or less Eddie’s “musician cave” – that’s funny. Basically a way to get away from that pesky Valerie. Eddie has always exhibited a lot of control apart from the substance issues; he has controlled his own image from day 1 with the effortless look to his playing and the smile. Maybe he learned from KISS. He has lied continually in interviews to make himself sound cooler. Check out the pieces on Jas Obrecht’s (from Guitar Player Magazine) great website. Great story. He interview EVH after a coked out Pat Travers blew him off for some groupies. In the first interview EVH is fairly humble. Of course he learned how to read music – after all he studied classical piano and was trained to be a concert pianist for over a decade. By the next interview he never learned how to read and copped those intricate pieces “…by ear.” And of course “Eruption” was just EVH goofing around. Like that piece wasn’t worked out in advance! Give me a break….
But the proof is in the playing and there’s plenty of it. Will be interesting to see what the next project is like, especially after a lot of the good riffs in the vault are used up. Then we’ll see if the man still has it in him to create.
Close to the fridge for the malt liquors.
“Eruption” was practice scales much like “Radioactive” by The Firm. He hits footlockers of cassettes for old riffs to work around.
Ed looks great in this picture. I am so thankful that he has turned his life around. Ed should be the master of his own sound, but he needs leadership, be it from Hagar, Roth, Valerie, or Janie.
I miss templeman and so does Vh.