Empty. It's a good word, and an interesting choice for a musical theme, for these strange times. I've often felt empty, bereft and without optimism or hope for the future these past months. I'm not alone in that feeling. Not unique in my suffering. There's no such thing as martyrs right now--we all suffer together, only the degree and the wellspring of it might change from person to person, given how 2020 has treated them. I would venture that there's not been a sustained period of despair, fear, and unknowing like this in at least a hundred years. Maybe that's not really true, I don't know: I've only read history. Until now, I don't feel that I've ever lived it.
But this, our strange days, is history, indeed. And the history we study, that we remember best, isn't usually the kind and gentle eras. I'm sure people around the world, at certain times and in certain circumstances--chosen or forced upon them--might feel like the world at this or that given moment has never been worse, and pray that it doesn't get worse from there on. This is a dark, scary and uncertain time we are living in. There is a dread that hangs over us, a dull unease that this might never end. I will. We have to believe that, and we have to remember, given the past atrocities that have been visited upon us, we can survive this. I live in relative peace, comfort and luxury--writing a music blog is evidence enough that my life, despite the recent upheaval, is pretty easy. But, we all suffer, as I said, despite the form it may take and the effect it has.
The cure might be different, too, and vary in method and curative properties. I drink--drank--a lot during those first few months of lock down. Something about the buoyancy of a whiskey buzz helped make fear a little more like flying than falling. Booze. And music. Music was a lifeline. Sweet, sweet music. While I didn't read nearly as much as I had planned during the strict lockdown days, I did listen to music. I don't know that I've ever had that much time, sustained and uninterrupted time, to listen to music. I made a long list of bands to explore or revisit, and started ticking them off once I'd made it through their full, respective discographies. Some were relistens, revisiting old favorites, whose studio efforts I hadn't made time for in years (Pearl Jam, Oasis). But, other discography projects were bands I'd never been able to dive all the way into, given whatever reason there always is for me to switch the dial, or pull out the next disc and dig on the new buzz. It was illuminating to go through full careers, highs and lows, without interruption, to track the kind of progress and development that only exists in a band. Especially when a band has been around for a sustained amount of time and weathered the extremes of tastes, trends and technology. The Kinks were a fun listen. The Rolling Stones were an education, a long one. The Beatles, a reiteration of what I already knew to be greatness. The Who had more low, wtf moments than I remembered, but they still exist at both ends of the spectrum, flying from great to blah. I listened to a lot more than the classics, catching up on modern bands I'd missed out on (LCD Soundsystem, Nada Surf, Soul Coughing), bands I’d never given enough time to (Fugazi, Teenage Fanclub, Blur, Brian Jonestown Massacre ) and bands I wished I hadn't listened to because the full discographies ruined the mystique of loving a few choice singles (Beck, Talking Heads) to bands that I'd been told I was missing out on (Superdrag, Supersuckers, Pavement,) and realized, I hadn't, not really. But, good or bad, confirming or disappointing, music--long sustained loud music--filled an emptiness in a way that little else could. There's a void that opens wide in our psyches during bad times, and closes, leaving a scar that is nonetheless easy to ignore when things get better. And even then, there are scars that don’t heal. Music is a way to scream into that void and fill it, overfill it, cover the scars and find light in the dark.
The news about Eddie Van Halen's passing was a fresh hurt, a mean pain that felt new and cruel and like a scab being pulled too soon. There’s been enough bad news and when your heroes die, it’s hard not to linger. But, I went back today to the eponymous 1978 debut, and listened all the way through the discography, fully to the present. It was a long day of listening, and I'm still going as I write this, but I felt I had to get this out, to listen and to write while I'm in the present of this awful news. And, somehow being awash in the phased out, squealing guitar of Eddie Van Halen helped. It felt good to go back, and there was a certainty that it wasn't ‘just awesome' because, I mean, he’s one of the greatest guitar players ever. Period. It was awesome to hear him again, my original guitar hero, the reason I picked up the guitar to begin with. This wasn't bandwagoning, or getting caught up in the nostalgia that plays out so well to make gods of our once mortal heros. Listening to that guitar, to that pounding, revved out engine and horse-powered screaming, out of this world sound, was a revelatory now as it was when I first heard Van Halen in all their dirty, blazing glory. There are definitely some better than others when it comes to their catalog. Yet, despite the changeovers in stylistics, line ups and interpersonal drama, Van Halen, the band and the man, remained an otherworldly force of great music. Eddie Van Halen's guitar was a signal from another world, and it caught me, transported me, to great places. That's what rock does: moves you, takes you places.
I'm feeling a little more empty than normal today knowing the EVH is gone. The world feels a little more real, a little less magical, knowing that he was really just one of us, sadly, fraily human, and that the transformative laser beam and lightning sorcery of his fret work is over. Don’t meet your heroes, they say, but that’s silly--most of us never will. But, watch your heroes die? That seems exceptionally cruel, especially now.
Like some many teenage boys, when I heard “Eruption”, I wanted to play like that, wicked fast fingers sliding over the frets with extraterrestrial finesse. Rock music is magic. EVH was powerful in a way that is incomparable to what almost anyone else did on the guitar. Songs like “Cathedral”, “Panama”, “Everybody Wants Some”--I could listen to that work over and over again and still feel like I was hearing something miraculous. It never felt like a repeat--hearing EVH shred was revelatory and it hit as hard the 1000th time as it did the first time you heard it. EVH made you feel powerful just by listening. You'd never be as good as he was, but listening to him shred, literally, the fabric that separates reality from fantasy, made you grateful to go along for the tripped out ride.
The world is emptier today than it was yesterday. My heroes are falling, fading and I find myself cursed with an old man's cynicism and certainty that music won't ever sound that way again. There will never be music like that again. Like who? Like any of it, any of those first albums I heard that seduced me and made me fall truly in love with rock and roll. As a sound, as a lifestyle, and way to make sense of a world I know, no matter how old I get, will never really make sense. A world that would be a lot emptier without the sound of these drums and these guitars.
It helped to sit with EVH's guitar today. His music was a signal from a different place. The spectrum echos, sadness seems to be on a repeating loop, and the world is a darker place lately than it's been in a long time. And, today, it's even worse. But, music abides. It lasts. It has to. Music sustains, both of its own power and in what it can do for the soul in need of something better than itself to carry it through these rough days.
I know this post is a stretch on our usual editorial principles here at SMM, but I woke up and felt empty. Going back all the way to that 1978 eruption of rock n roll madness helped fill the void. I stretched our theme to include the word "empty" from the lyrics to Van Halen's "Dreams", from 1986's 5150. It's still a controversial album, even today. It was their first outing post-David Lee Roth, and purists think nothing VH did after 1984 was worth listening to. Van Hagar ruined the band for a lot of fans. And “Dreams”, despite the stellar EVH soloing and the instrumentation, is a decidedly 80s power-pop ballad. But, for me, it fits in a great album. The album was my first foray into rock n roll, and appeared in my life right about the time that I was starting to discover what music meant to me. The tour for 5150 was the second show I ever saw, the summer right before I started high school, and I often wish I could go back to what that felt like, hearing that music for the very first time. It was a blissful time--not at all empty--full of possibility, of exuberance, of curiosity. I may have moved on from VH, but the bliss, pure joyous bliss, that music first created in me, the spark it set off, has never been far from my mind. And EVH played an outsized role in that earthquake-sized shift in me. In fact, I think I keep listening in hopes of getting back to that inception. Today took me back, even if it was painful. And to EVH, I say, thank you for what you, and your preternatural, singularly mystical guitar playing, sparked in me.
The house band in heaven is going electric tonight, and they're gonna play something like you've never heard before.
