IN THIS ISSUE:
(32 pages)

This is a special issue entirely dedicated to covering the band's first world tour. This issue is packed with many live and candid photos, all of which are from 1978!

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR (2 pages)
Band photos, letter from the editor

MAILBAG (2 pages)
Letters from fans

RUNNIN' WITH THE DEVIL (16 pages)
An in-depth, behind the scenes look at Van Halen in 1978.

GO AHEAD AND JUMP! (2 pages)
On September 23, 1978, VH played a famous outdoor concert at California's Anaheim Stadium. It was the show that Van Halen supposedly parachuted into, and it is also the day that Eddie first met Sammy Hagar. Read all about it here!

GOING MAD IN WISCONSIN (2 pages)
In 1978, a lucky, young journalist had the unique opportunity to party with Van Halen during their first world tour. Twenty-one years later, she tells her story of the fun and chaos that defined life on the road with the fledging rock band.

EDDIE INTERVIEW FROM THE '78 JAPAN TOUR (3 pages)
Never before published in English!

MERCHANDISE (1 page)

CENTERFOLD
A killer photo of VH playing the "Day On The Green" at the Oakland Coliseum on 7/23/78.

BACK COVER
Band hanging out outside Dave's house.

FIRST WORLD TOUR
By Geoff Bell and Jeff Hausman

Imagine attending a bachelor party that lasts for nine months, travels to different cities and countries, includes eager women who shed their clothing and scruples for free, and has a fresh rock and roll soundtrack underneath it all! Sound fun and entertaining? Unbelievable is more like it. Such was the excess that accompanied the young Van Halen on their first world tour in 1978. For each of the four members of the original lineup of the band, it was a time to celebrate their sudden success and the hint of even bigger successes to come. The Inside is proud to bring you just a few of the details and stories that surrounded Van Halen's first assault on our minds and ears. This is the tour that started it all, and will forever be remembered as a time to live loud, rock hard and take absolutely no prisoners. If you couldn't run with the devil, you had no business being there in the first place.

From roughly 1974 to early 1978, Van Halen probed their way through the local rock scene in Southern California, stopping only long enough to pour themselves another round of drinks. In the context of today's music world, four years of club dates is nearly a lifetime for most eager young bands. Few have the fortitude and dedication to stick it out, choosing instead to join different groups or give up on the dream altogether. Eddie and Alex Van Halen, Michael Anthony and David Lee Roth looked at it differently. They weren't worried that they wouldn't be discovered. They simply wondered when it would happen. In 1977, the band finally got a series of breaks and quickly found themselves in the studio slamming together what would become one of the most dynamic debut albums in rock history. The tracks that eventually comprised Van Halen I were the fuel that kept those early club shows alive. Nearly all the album's material had been tested hundreds of times live on stage. As a result, the project was quickly completed and Van Halen found themselves smack dab in the center of an upcoming World Tour, courtesy of Warner Bros. records.

In February, 1978, Van Halen's first album was released, while the band continued to play shows around Hollywood and Pasadena. Their final club show was, fittingly, at the Whisky-A-GoGo on Hollywood's Sunset Strip. Only one week later, they were playing the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, IL-the heart of the Midwest. As the opening act for Journey and Montrose, Van Halen was afforded few luxuries. The Aragon was a small theater with an extremely tiny backstage area. Once the other bands had loaded their equipment inside, there was no room for anything else, much less VH's gear. Van Halen's completely inexperienced road crew had to load all their gear through the main entrance, walking each item through the venue and over the stage. The half-hour show they performed was easily the worst set of the entire tour, mostly due to logistical problems. Plus, the entire band was wearing three inch clogs, making even the easiest stage moves nearly impossible. Taking cues from rock gods KISS, the band began their tour wearing three inch platform shoes, costing up to $300 a pair. As much as they loved the shoes, it was impossible to walk, so they were quickly scrapped. Dave began wearing Capezio shoes while the rest of the band wore sneakers.

The Aragon's stage was far too small for the movement they were used to, and it showed. After it was all said and done, the lighting director's headset malfunctioned for the entire show, and the band left the headlights on in the equipment truck, which resulted in a dead battery by the time they finished the load-out. As first tours go, this wasn't the ideal way to start. Fortunately, this would be the only tour where Van Halen would find themselves as an opening act.

After opening for Journey and Montrose for several months, they finished the tour supporting a weary Black Sabbath. Once the band found their rhythm, word quickly spread that Van Halen was tearing it up across the United States with an explosive show that was the exact opposite of the droll, drugged-out performances of many of the day’s top rock bands. Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath’s singer at the time, remarked many years later that Van Halen had a profound effect on him. "One of the reasons I left Sabbath was because Van Halen was blowing us off the stage every night," he said. "It was embarrassing."

The members of Van Halen were thrilled to be opening for the legendary Sabbath. "The Sabs," as they called them, were part of their musical youth. To share the stage with them was like a dream come true. The only downfall, as it happened, was that Sabbath’s audience in England was ninety-eight percent male. After years of dominating the Los Angeles club scene, the band was used to a certain female element during backstage gatherings. Backstage at the Sabbath shows, the band was disappointed to find nothing but guys looking for autographs. By the time they hit England as Sabbath’s opener, it was apparent that there was a noticeable lack of quality female companionship. Rumor had it that only one member of the road crew got laid during the entire European leg. The lucky winner was greeted by the band and crew the next morning with a standing ovation and applause. Ultimately, Dave took their sexual sabbatical the hardest. He became increasingly more difficult to deal with until the drought finally ended in Paris.

You can’t even get a beer at today’s concerts for what it cost to get in to an early Van Halen show. Tickets for shows during the band’s first tour were a mere $7.00. Clearly, you weren’t getting the visuals that would later become a part of their subsequent six tours, but that’s still a lot of rock for under ten dollars.

The show was ballsy, relying on energy and a tight set-list that nearly flattened every audience in its path. Opening bands were supposed to suck, weren’t they? Not in this case. Set against a simple banner with the original VH logo, the band worked these early shows with a fervor that remains the definitive template for how a band should make their mark on an otherwise indifferent audience.

Energy was never a problem for Van Halen. When they launched the first tour, Eddie and Michael were only twenty-three years old. Dave and Alex were nearly twenty-five, although early press reports leaked by the band indicated each member’s age to be two years younger. During the club days, Dave was the constant voice of reason, saying, "Someday, we’re gonna be on the radio." His early visions of the band’s breakout success quickly became a reality. Almost instantly, album-rock radio was buzzing with VH’s razor-sharp. Van Halen’s music was the anti-disco, anti-everything antidote to what was wrong with music at the time. Everywhere the band traveled, their songs began popping up on the radio. When the tour finally ground to a halt in early December, 1978, Van Halen I had already reached double-platinum status in the United States and had nearly gone platinum in Canada. Warner Brothers threw a platinum party for the group at the Body Shop, a strip-club in Hollywood. Numerous celebrities were on hand, including Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks, who admitted to being a huge fan of the band. The whole scene was insane, and included an appearance by Milton Berle, who presented the band with individual platinum albums. Fittingly, the band was entertained by some of the club’s finest female dancers.

Several strategic waves of shows in Europe and Japan solidified gold records overseas, as well. As it turned out, the Japanese were huge fans of the band. They played seven Japanese dates, with hundreds of people showing up at the airport for the band’s arrival, mostly girls. Throughout the leg, the Japanese girls were crazier than anyone had expected. They were found hiding in hallways, elevator shafts and bathrooms just to get near the unsuspecting band. As the Japan leg raged on, one crew member remarked that it was literally like Beatlemania. It was one of the most successful debuts in the history of rock. Van Halen’s live show was even better than their album—almost unheard of in those days. Throughout the seventies, bands would release critically acclaimed albums only to destroy their reputation with a poor road show. VH was the exact opposite. A loyal following quickly developed as they stormed from venue to venue, surprising unsuspecting Journey fans with energy Steve Perry couldn’t coax from himself with five pots of coffee and an eight-ball of blow.

This first tour was the only one in Van Halen’s history that didn’t have an official name. It was a bare-bones operation, relying on a meager eight-man team to take care of every production detail. Marshall Berle was the band‘s manager at the time, while Noel Monk, who was hired by Warner Bros., served as the production coordinator. Edward nicknamed Noel "Little Caesar," a name that stuck with him for the next eight years as he eventually became the band’s full-time manager. Teddy Cohen took care of artist development, while Pete Angelus handled all lighting duties. Angelus would later become one of David Lee Roth’s primary partners-in-crime, continuing with DLR through the Eat ’Em And Smile sessions and tour. Van Halen’s first tour featured five different soundmen, although Tom Broderick is the only one we know of for sure. Greg Emerson was Alex’s drum technician, Gary "Red" Geller was the bass technician, and Rudy Leiren was Eddie’s guitar tech. Leiren would remain with Eddie until 1986 and return for a stint on the Balance tour. Although not on the road with them, a man named Carl Scott at Warner Bros. wielded a key behind-the-scenes influence. His continued support of the band was considered to be an important ingredient in their early successes.

As the band continued to trek around the globe, Edward Van Halen quickly began gathering up a tidy collection of press clips focusing on his innovative, flashy guitar techniques. Guitar Player magazine voted him "Best New Talent," which instantly turned the ears of thousands of guitarists in his direction. For this first tour, Eddie played his white and black striped Charvel almost exclusively. His rig consisted of sixteen Marshall heads (six for backup) running through ten Marshall cabinets. The sonic collection of Marshall amp-ware relied on Mach II’s and also included Eddie’s famous 100-watt Super Lead. The sound was so hot, Rudy Leiren was replacing transformers at an average of two per week. A gnarly slab of unfinished plywood formed the base of a simplistic pedalboard consisting of a Univox echo unit, two Echoplexes, MXR Phaser and an MXR Flanger. An Echoplex housed inside an old World War II practice bomb rounded out the motley gathering of effects, which produced a tone that astounded every guitarist who heard Eddie play. This tour was also a chance for Eddie to showcase his talents to audiences without fear that his unique style would be ripped off by someone before the band got a record deal. Little did he know that record companies would eventually sign dozens of Van Halen clones over the next ten years. His was the style that started it all.

This is an excerpt from The Inside’s full-length article on Van Halen’s 1978 World Tour. The article appears in its entirety in issue 14 of The Inside.