Earlier this week during a show in Glenside, Pennsylvania, original Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth got emotional while telling a heartfelt story about the late, great Edward Van Halen. While strumming a classical guitar, Roth began saying: “Most of these songs that I wrote with Ed, we wrote in a very, very tiny little space, I myself started off in the exact same space. My dad was just starting in school on the GI Bill when I happened. Back in 1954, the Fender Stratocaster was released, and so was I.”
He continued: “And we lived in student housing for about the first 10, 12 years of my life. It was very tight, about the size of the drum riser here. And I had a little space that was for the washer and the dryer, and just enough for me on some cinder blocks with a foam rubber cushion. When I met Ed — now Van Halen — I went over to their house over in Pasadena, California. When I first walked into Ed’s room, it wasn’t even a room. It was identical to the way I grew up. You had to go from the backyard to the kitchen, and you moved through what they called his room, but it was just a little alcove for a washer and a dryer — and then, ultimately, me.”
Roth began to fight back tears before continuing: “The beginnings of every song we sing to you tonight, I started with Ed. He had an electric guitar, and his mom wouldn’t let him plug into the amp. So I would have to listen to the electric guitar without an amp, and it’d be so close that our knees would touch.”
“And those first couple of years, God, how many hours did I spend leaning over like this?” Roth said, leaning forward and pretending to watch EVH’s fingers. “Tape recorded on a Sony little thing with the push buttons and the cassette player. Take it home, write the lyrics and bring it back and go, ‘I think it’s a song about runnin’ with the devil or something. What do you got next?’ It would be so quiet that our knees would touch the whole time. We never noticed.”
“And these were the days when I’d say, ‘Hey, you wanna have a cigarette?’ He’d go, ‘Yeah,’ and that’s what we would have. The two of us, one cigarette. ‘Don’t f*ckin’ hotbox it. You’re lipping it. No, f*ck you, too. Oh, f*ck you twice. He f*ckin’ runs with the devil, what’s that f*ckin’ mean?’ There was friction early and we loved it.”
Check out the full clip of Roth’s tribute to EVH below.
