Red - My Uncensored Life In Rock Part 7

The first trip we took on the new plane to Mexico, Betsy kind of freaked out. We arrived and she was all nervous. She couldn't sleep and started shaking, getting really bad anxiety and panic attacks. With us was Bucky's ex-wife, Joelle-they were divorced by then. Bucky had been living with their son, Benny, and Joelle was working for us as a nanny. We had to leave Mexico, because Betsy was feeling terrible. We got on the airplane. We were cruising at twenty-six thousand feet, halfway up the middle of Baja, when she started screaming and pulling her hair out. She tried to open the door and jump out of the plane.

Aaron wasn't with us. Andrew was. He was a baby, about two years old, sleeping. Joelle had me hold Betsy down, and I yelled at the pilot to land. He told me I did not want to land in the middle of nowhere in Mexico with a crazy woman on the plane. "You've got to let me try to get to San Diego," he said.

I had some booze on the plane, and Betsy was willing to drink it at this stage. She never drank, did drugs, or anything, but she was freaking out so badly she couldn't breathe. I poured tequila down her throat, while Joelle held the baby's ears.

Betsy finally calmed down. She pa.s.sed out. She was drunk. When we got to San Diego, I hired a car to drive her to Malibu. We were originally on our way home to San Francisco, but we had our house in Malibu. I took Andrew with me on the plane and she and Joelle went by limo to Malibu. Joelle was her good friend. She really took care of her. By the time she got home to Malibu, Betsy was in bad shape.

I called the doctor and he came straight over. He gave her shots that calmed her down. He told me she was having a panic attack. I had never even heard of a panic attack. There was a psychiatrist who lived across the street. He started coming over to our house for an hour or two every day. He put her on Prozac, Xanax, every kind of antidepressant, mood-enhancing drug you can take. Betsy had never taken drugs in her life.

I had twenty-four-hour nurses. I couldn't leave her. I couldn't even go to the grocery store. If I told her I was going to the store, she would fall on the floor and curl up in a little ball. I was the only one who could bring her out of these trances. We'd try to pry her open, get her to get off the floor, put her on the couch. Her pupils would dilate and she stared straight ahead at nothing. n.o.body else could talk her down. I had to be around.

I held a meeting with the guys in Van Halen. I told them I cannot go in the studio. I cannot go on tour. I've got to get my wife healed.

WE TOOK A year off in between the OU812 Tour and year off in between the OU812 Tour and For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. Ed Leffler and I both believed that time off was good for a band who had been in everybody's face so hard for so long. Promoters, record companies, everybody involved with making money off you will tell you to stay out there while you're on top. They tell you the public forgets real fast.

They don't. The Stones prove it every time they go out. Pink Floyd waited as long as they wanted to go back out. It's the bands that tour, tour, tour that go down. Pretty soon n.o.body wants to see them anymore after they've seen them twenty times the last two years.

Eddie didn't like being home, not doing anything. I was watching over Betsy every night, every day. Ed and Al were really putting pressure on me. They would be writing and come up with something cool, like "Poundcake." I would hear what they were doing and really wanted to be working on it. I'd go in for a day or two.

We finally went in the studio to make the next alb.u.m, For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. We wanted that Led Zeppelin sound, so we went to Andy Johns, the British engineer who worked on the original Led Zeppelin alb.u.ms. Too bad he was so trashed. He and Eddie were f.u.c.ked up most of the time. We would start around noon, because I wanted to be home by dinnertime to help Betsy.

Making that alb.u.m was kind of like pulling teeth. Betsy was under twenty-four-hour care and the situation at home was tense. I was trying to stretch out the process, not because I was being lazy. I wanted the alb.u.m to be great and I wanted to be there as much as possible, but with all the problems at home, there were days I couldn't go to the studio. Eddie and Al were there night and day, every day. They started hammering me a little bit about not being there. Eddie would call up and say, "We need you-when are you going to be able to come in?" I'd go in for a couple of days, sometimes a week straight, and sometimes I couldn't come at all. I'd bring music home and listen. But it's really hard to concentrate when your wife is curled up in a ball on the floor, crying.

Andy Johns was a disaster, but Eddie protected him. With Al sober, Eddie needed a new partner in crime and that was Andy. He was bombed a lot of the time. He crashed his car into the studio wall. I was not happy with the situation. There started to be a little tension. Then Andy erased one of my vocals. That was it. I wasn't working with the guy anymore. I stormed out of the studio.

"Samster, come on, mate," Andy said. "Just one more time."

"f.u.c.k you, Andy, that's it," I told him. "I'm done with your a.s.s."

It was hard enough getting a vocal with him because he was so disruptive and didn't pay attention. I threw Andy Johns out and I brought back Ted Templeman, who not only produced Montrose and my VOA VOA alb.u.m, but handled the early alb.u.ms with Van Halen when Roth was still in the band. Eddie and Ted didn't get along, and Ted had bad-mouthed us when we'd originally formed before alb.u.m, but handled the early alb.u.ms with Van Halen when Roth was still in the band. Eddie and Ted didn't get along, and Ted had bad-mouthed us when we'd originally formed before 5150 5150. Still Ted came in and did all the vocals with me on For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge and helped with the mix. He saved the day for me. and helped with the mix. He saved the day for me.

The t.i.tle was my idea. Around this time, the Florida rap group 2 Live Crew raised the issue of censors.h.i.+p in the record business. People kept asking us to take a stand. I thought, not to get all political, that we should call the next record f.u.c.k Censors.h.i.+p f.u.c.k Censors.h.i.+p. Leffler thought chain stores would refuse to carry a record with that t.i.tle. Van Halen, the biggest band in the world? Every alb.u.m number one? They're going to do something, stuff the thing in a brown paper bag, something, anything. They're going to figure out some way to sell the record, those greedy b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.

At the time, Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini, the former lightweight champ, had been training me. He came over a couple of times a week and put a hundred-pound bag of sand on my back and made me run up and down the seventy-seven steps that went down to the beach from my house. I was playing him some of the stuff, and he asked what we were going to call the alb.u.m. "f.u.c.k Censors.h.i.+p," I said.

"Oh, wow, man," he said. "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge."

I'd never heard that before, so he told me that in medieval days, when a woman was caught cheating, they'd lock her up in the town square, and hang a sign around her neck that said "F.U.C.K."-"For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge."

"My mom told me that when I was in school," he said. "First time I said 'f.u.c.k.'"

"Poundcake," the first single from the alb.u.m, was a great video, number one on MTV, Rock Video of the Year in 1991 from Playboy Playboy magazine. We spent around $400,000 on that video, which had a ton of hot babes in it. That was the peak of MTV and the music video form and people spending money on them. magazine. We spent around $400,000 on that video, which had a ton of hot babes in it. That was the peak of MTV and the music video form and people spending money on them.

When I first saw the treatment to the video for "Right Now," the next single from the alb.u.m, I thought it looked like a terrible idea. That was the first serious lyric I had written for Van Halen, a big statement. All I could see was some of the director's lines, like "I'll wrestle you for food" or "Right now someone's walking on a nude beach for the first time." I read his treatment and, without seeing the video, thought he was nuts. This song was my baby. I went around in circles with Eddie and Al for six months on this. It was the last song we recorded for the alb.u.m.

I had these lyrics, but Eddie couldn't relate to what I was trying to say and he didn't have any music that worked. I had been pumping these guys for months while we were playing video games or eating-"Right now, it's your tomorrow...Right now, it's everything"-but n.o.body was getting it. One day during a break, I heard Eddie fooling around on the piano in the other room. I went running in.

"That's it, that's it," I said.

"I played this for you on the last alb.u.m and you didn't dig it," said Eddie.

It fit like a glove. He didn't have to rewrite anything. If Eddie had gone off and played video games instead, or if I'd sat down and started making phone calls like I usually did on breaks, it would have never happened.

I felt protective of the song. I did not want to do the dumb video. The Warner Bros. bra.s.s tracked me down in Hawaii. They were trying hard to convince me. I told them okay, but let me and Al come up with the script. This director had scenes in his treatment like me looking in a mirror with a poster of the old Van Halen in it, while it says, "Right now, Dave wishes he was Sammy." We started writing together and began coming up with some pretty good lines. I still wasn't convinced, but I started to feel enthusiasm stirring.

When it came time to shoot, however, we were in Chicago in the dead of winter, stuck inside a blizzard. I had been ill with pneumonia and forced to cancel two shows. I had been trapped in a hotel room for days, sick, in a bad mood and p.i.s.sed off. The director was so vague with us-"Just stand over here"-and I couldn't see the point of anything he was doing. At the end, there's a shot in there where I'm folding my arms, standing there looking disgusted. And that's exactly what I was doing. I wouldn't even sing. I was just throwing my arms in the air and he shot it and put it in the video. At the end of the day, I had a 102 temperature and was dying. I walked out of the warehouse where we were shooting into the bathroom we used as a dressing room. The guy with the camera followed me all the way. When I reached the door, I turned around and gave the cameraman a dirty look and slammed the door in his face and it goes MEN MEN on the door. That's the way the video ends. on the door. That's the way the video ends.

Mark Fenske, the director, what a great artist. It was the biggest video of our career, one of the biggest MTV videos of all time, and Crystal Pepsi paid us 2 million bucks to use it as a soda pop commercial. I can't believe all those people had to beat me up so bad before I caved in, but the treatment really was bad. The video was brilliant.

MEANWHILE, BETSY WAS back home, giddy happy. She was getting better. They put her on drugs and she snapped out of it, started doing real good. She had lost a lot of weight-Betsy wasn't hugely overweight, but, like any woman who's had a couple of kids, she had to struggle with her weight. The drugs slimmed her down. I was ready to start taking them. I was running every day on the beach or riding my bicycle into Santa Monica and back. She had her roses and her horses. Betsy was a Beatrix Potter kind of girl. She started taking tennis lessons. I should have been happy, but, instead, I was going, in my head, "I am d.a.m.n near over this." back home, giddy happy. She was getting better. They put her on drugs and she snapped out of it, started doing real good. She had lost a lot of weight-Betsy wasn't hugely overweight, but, like any woman who's had a couple of kids, she had to struggle with her weight. The drugs slimmed her down. I was ready to start taking them. I was running every day on the beach or riding my bicycle into Santa Monica and back. She had her roses and her horses. Betsy was a Beatrix Potter kind of girl. She started taking tennis lessons. I should have been happy, but, instead, I was going, in my head, "I am d.a.m.n near over this."

She had worn me out. I was done with that marriage. I wasn't going to leave her, I was going to make sure that she was okay, but I was over it. In that one year, she'd worn me out. Every night I had to hold her and rock her to sleep in bed. I had to feed her. I had to make sure she ate. To me, it was like having an invalid child. When she was on her medication, she was doing great, riding her horses, playing tennis, walking on the beach, and just being a normal person, like she had never been since I met her. I was glad for her, but she had been holding me down so hard for so long.

She didn't remember who she was. During that year, she was all broken down, really in trouble, in and out of mental hospitals. She forgot who she was. When she started taking Prozac and came out of her trance, she came back and was this happy person living in this beautiful house in Malibu with nice cars, horses, and money to burn. She flat didn't remember anything. She became like a shopaholic. She had clothes in the closet, expensive designer sweaters and gowns, things that she wouldn't wear in a million years, things that she just bought and shelved. She put something like a million dollars on her credit card that year. It didn't even register.

Once she'd leveled out, Betsy went back to wanting me to quit the business, especially since my other businesses were continuing to do well. She needed something to distract her. I told her to go find a realtor and look at property. She had a $2 million budget. I knew that would keep her busy.

She ended up buying a house in Carmel by Big Sur. All Betsy ever had wanted in life was to live in Big Sur. One time, maybe ten years earlier, we were at the Highlands Inn in Carmel and I was jogging through the neighborhood. I ran past the coolest house I'd ever seen. Right on the cliff, waves splas.h.i.+ng into the windows, it was a Frank Lloyd Wrighttype house that looked like an upside-down boat. It had this big copper roof with this big spine on the top, like the keel of a boat. I took Betsy to see it and she didn't even notice it, because of some storybook castle across the street. It was just as well. I had never dug it there-too big-s.p.a.cey-heavy-lonely for me. We'd go down there from time to time and spend a week hiking and sitting there looking at the ocean, but it never felt like a place I could be in regularly.

Anyway, ten years later, Betsy was on her house search, when she called to say she found a place. We drove down and it was the same house I tried to show her ten years before. We bought it and Betsy threw a fortune in the place, totally doing it up.

Unfortunately, it didn't change things much. She was busy, sure, but the situation between us was as strained as ever. Our relations.h.i.+p was over, but I didn't feel I could leave her, because of the history. I'd been in this position before and wanted to leave Betsy a couple of times-not out of cruelty, out of necessity. It was like, "I can't live like this anymore." So many people go through that and stay together. They just learn to live separately for the rest of their lives, in separate bedrooms or whatever. We were still s.e.xually active, so we weren't sleeping in separate bedrooms. But the only thing that was left in our relations.h.i.+p was s.e.x, our kids, and an empire. We had houses, businesses, and cars. The thought of divorce was ugly. I'd never have gone through it if I'd known how ugly it really was. It wasn't just the unpleasantness of divorce, though; I just didn't want to leave her. I still cared about her.

I'm the kind of person who can put my head in the sand pretty good, as well as put my head in the clouds as good as anyone, too. I'm really optimistic about everything I do in life. I don't believe there's a downside to anything when I go into things. I've been let down a few times, believe me, but it doesn't destroy my optimism. I figured things were just going to get better. I was so busy all the time in my brain, it barely mattered.

Once I knew that she was okay and that she could be by herself, I decided I was willing to stick it out. I'd go back out on tour as much as I could and just keep f.u.c.king around and get out of the house whenever possible. I envisioned her getting better, maybe, but not our relations.h.i.+p. I didn't think that was ever going to come back around. It wasn't even on the top of my list. I was worn out from that year of taking care of her. I wasn't going to put more effort into it now, or try to make this relations.h.i.+p happen, like I'd done a year earlier when I'd told the guys I wasn't going to tour. I wasn't going to do that no more. I was optimistic that she would get better, but meanwhile I was just going to do my thing. I accepted that this was going to be kind of f.u.c.ked up.

I went out on the For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge Tour, and I really really started to mess around. I wasn't off the leash completely, and I was very careful not to get caught, very careful not to bring home some infection. I wasn't reckless. I was very, very cautious. I cared about my wife. It wasn't like I didn't love her. It's just that we'd grown apart. Everything else was the same. I still loved her family. I still loved our family. I even loved our lifestyle. She just couldn't stand my career and I loved it. She was in love with horses and I couldn't have cared less. We had become entirely different people. started to mess around. I wasn't off the leash completely, and I was very careful not to get caught, very careful not to bring home some infection. I wasn't reckless. I was very, very cautious. I cared about my wife. It wasn't like I didn't love her. It's just that we'd grown apart. Everything else was the same. I still loved her family. I still loved our family. I even loved our lifestyle. She just couldn't stand my career and I loved it. She was in love with horses and I couldn't have cared less. We had become entirely different people.

Once I got out there on that tour, I was partying a lot more than I ever had. I had always been pretty conservative with the partying, but once Betsy was getting better, all that changed. I'd call home at night after she was dialed in on Prozac. I'd say I was going to dinner and might not call later. "Okay," she'd say, "then call me in the morning." Free pa.s.s.

I started having as much fun as a rock star could have on that tour. I had all the money in the world, all the babes a guy could want. I was having a really good time. Lead singer in the biggest rock band in the world and I took full advantage of it. I was eating in the greatest restaurants, drinking the finest wine, flying on private jets, walking onstage to sold-out audiences going crazy for us. The only thing missing was...I don't think anything was missing.

I f.u.c.ked everything that walked. I had my own little tent underneath the stage. Eddie had his tent. Al had one, Mike had one. We all had our little tents. Mike and Al were on the other side. Eddie and I were on the same side, because Eddie was a dirty dog, like me. I sent roadies into the crowd to bring back girls I pointed out. During Eddie's guitar solo, which was always about twenty minutes, I'd have five or six girls in my tent, naked, all of us, having brutal s.e.x while Eddie was out there doing his thing. When I went back out, I had to stuff my hard-on back in those tight pants. I'd wear my robe for the next couple of songs. That was every night.

That way I could sort out the good ones. After the show, we'd carry on. I had so much s.e.x that it got to where I couldn't come. I'd go for two or three weeks without coming. It was like I was empty. I could f.u.c.k five girls all night. Some of the best s.e.x I ever had in my life. John Kalodner loved this. He'd come out on the road with us and he'd line them up in his room. I'd go up there like a machine. "I've just never seen anything like this," he said.

And then Kari entered the picture. I met her at the end of the For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge Tour in October 1991. Every night I had been with a different woman. Our tour manager Scotty Ross was celebrating his birthday in Richmond, Virginia. Leffler liked him a lot and threw Scotty a party in his hotel suite.

Kari and two of her girlfriends came to the party. They were invited because her boyfriend was Buffalo Bills quarterback Jim Kelly, who knew the concert promoter. I was trying to pick up one of her girlfriends, because she seemed a little more available. Kari looked like a fun girl, really cool, good-looking, but I was chasing p.u.s.s.y.

Betsy was home, on medication. She was fixing up the house in Carmel, her dream home practically on the cliffs of Big Sur. I didn't even want to come home.

When Kari said she had to leave to go judge a beauty contest at some nightclub, Eddie and I, both trashed, volunteered to go with her. We went back later to Ed Leffler's party. I was good and hammered, still trying to pick up on Kari's girlfriend, when something we were eating fell on the floor. I looked down and saw Kari's feet. They're like fingers-really bony and, I was thinking, gorgeous, the most long, beautiful toes I'd ever seen.

I looked back up. I couldn't help myself. "You really have beautiful feet," I said.

When I looked up and saw her face and her eyes, I realized how beautiful she was. "You like those cheetos?" her girlfriend said.

She called her toes "cheetos." "Yes, I do," I said. "I'd eat them f.u.c.kers right now."

I started trying to hit on Kari. Everything was cool. We were having a good time just talking. At the end of the evening, around two o'clock in the morning, I invited her to come to my room.

"Oh, no," she said. "We'll walk you to your room. You're trashed. You need to get some rest. You have a show tomorrow."

She and her two girlfriends walked me to my room. I opened the door and she gave me a little hug. "d.a.m.n," I thought, "I've wasted all this time and I'm going to bed by myself?" I asked her if she wanted to go to the show the next night.

"I can't," she said. "I've got to take my grandmother to a wedding."

The lead singer of Van Halen, headlining the Richmond Coliseum, inviting her to the show and she's not going? She's going to take her grandmother to a wedding? I dug it. She got me, right then and there.

"What time are you leaving?" she said. "I'll try to make it back."

I gave her my hotel alias. She called the next night. "We're hauling a.s.s in the car," she said. "We're going to try to make it. If we don't, put our name down on the list. We're coming."

They arrived just in time and Kari was wearing a bridesmaid's dress. They went into the other room and started ripping off their clothes. I peeked. They weren't getting naked, but stripping down to bra and underpants and throwing on some jeans. Kari, to me, looked like one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen in my entire life. And, I'm thinking, tonight's the night.

We were backstage at the gig. Scotty Ross pushed open the dressing-room door, still feeling the effects of his birthday party. "Scotty, this is Kari," I said.

"Nice to meet you," he said and puked all over the floor. Here I was, on my best rock-star behavior, and this guy comes in and blows it all over my dressing-room floor.

She was okay with it. On the way back from the show in the back of the limo, I tried to kiss her. She gave me little pecks. I had my arm around her and, for a second, I looked at her knees. Kari has these long, beautiful legs, skinny fingers and arms and toes. She's a slim, beautiful, smooth-skinned woman. Her knees looked like they were made out of porcelain. I leaned down and kissed her knee.

I put the goose b.u.mps on her. She got them and I saw them. "That was sweet," she said.

Again, I asked her back to my room. "No, I can't stay over," she said, "but I'd love to see you again."

Whoa. Tonight's not the night? I planted a big lip-lock on her. We exchanged phone numbers, and, the next day, I left town with the band. About four days later, I called her. "If I send a plane for you, will you come and see me on my birthday?" I said.

"Are you kidding me?" she said. "Of course I would." She's got to give me some p.u.s.s.y now. She ain't got nowhere to go. I sent a jet to pick her up. It was kind of a last-minute deal. By the time she was delivered to the gig, I was already on the stage. I saw her on the side of the stage and my f.u.c.king heart just started flipping and fluttering. Pow Pow. I f.u.c.king fell in love. I saw her and it was just like, shazam, there she is, my dream woman.

I am f.u.c.king anything and everything, four or five times a night, and, all of a sudden, I bit the bait. I swallowed it. I'm in the boat now, floundering around. I came off the stage while Eddie did his solo and, instead of having four or five chicks waiting for me, I'm sitting there holding hands with Kari like some schoolboy.

After the show, in the dressing room, the promoter and Leffler had a giant cake for my birthday, and a stripper came bursting out of it naked. Not just any stripper, either, but the fattest, ugliest, most cellulite-ridden babe they could find. There's no explaining how a girl that looked like that could do this for a living. I sat there, looking at Kari, trying to be this high-cla.s.s guy, and thinking this was blowing it. But she cracked up. I thought, "I love this girl."

I told her she was not going home and she agreed to stay a few days. I had my Red Rocker tandem bicycle s.h.i.+pped out. I couldn't be away from her.

When she went back, I tried to spend a week without her, to test myself. I never f.u.c.ked another girl. I didn't get a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b. I didn't do anything, because all I wanted was her. I couldn't take it. And we were about to go home for the holidays after almost four months out. That was really rough.

She came and spent another week on the road. I was beat up. I did not want to go home. After she spent the week with me, that was it. I was done. I was in love. I was going to go home and give it one more shot with my wife. I arrived home about two weeks before Christmas 1991. Betsy had the house in Carmel all fixed up. I stayed three or four days, woke up in the middle of the night, and told Betsy I had to leave. She was on medication. She told me it was okay, to do whatever I wanted to do-this from Betsy, the most jealous woman in the world. This was when I wrote "Amnesty Is Granted."

I thought I could finally leave Betsy, because she was on so much medication that she was able, at last, to handle it. I was never sure before. One of the reasons why I never left her earlier was that I worried she was suicidal. I didn't want her to commit suicide because of me. I couldn't live with that. Betsy is not like other women. She does not fully belong in this world. She is harmless, vulnerable, and sensitive, but it is difficult for her to function. She can't be around pesticides. She can't eat certain foods. She is very intelligent and talented, but she is not strong in any way.

Finally, one night in Carmel, I confronted Betsy. I broke down. I started crying. I told her I was going up to Mill Valley to get my head straight and figure out some stuff. She was so zonked on her tranquilizers and mood elevators that she treated it as an unremarkable event.

"It's okay, honey. You just need some time. Whenever you're ready, come on back. If you have a girlfriend and you want to move back in the house with her, I'm okay with it. I don't care what you've done. It's okay."

I didn't tell her I had a girlfriend, that I'd fallen in love, that I'd been with seventy-five girls a week, practically, and suddenly I fell in love. I didn't know how to deal with it. I hadn't been in love in a long time.

I got in my car and drove home to Mill Valley. I called Kari and told her to come out and see me. "I just left my wife," I said.

"Oh, my G.o.d, that's terrible," she said, "but I'm with my grandma and my mom and dad. We're starting our Christmas ritual. I don't really think I can do this."

She finally agreed and I sent her a plane ticket. I picked her up at the airport and we went up to the house in Mill Valley. I felt so f.u.c.king uncomfortable. It was right before Christmas, and leaving five-year-old Andrew was breaking my heart. Then Betsy called. She had decided we needed to spend Christmas together.

"We've got a Christmas tree in the back of the truck," she said. "Andrew and I are going to come up. We've got a Christmas tree and a turkey and we're driving up to Mill Valley."

Betsy had this truck that I had made for her, an old '53 Chevy pickup on top of a brand-new Chevy drive train. Betsy, the horse girl, loved the truck. It was about a two-hour drive for her. She had not understood a word I said about leaving her.

I couldn't be there when Betsy and Andrew arrived. Kari and I jumped in the car and headed straight for the airport. First, we flew back to see her parents, where she had to apologize to her grandparents for missing Christmas. "If I'm going to do this, you're going to meet my parents," she said. "You're going to look my grandmother in the eye and say, 'I want your girl to come with me. I'm sorry. This is the first Christmas in her life she's not going to spend with you.'"

We flew back to Richmond, Virginia, and I met her parents. Her stepdad was p.i.s.sed off ("That son of a b.i.t.c.h," I heard him say from the other room, "who does he think he is?"). We became best buddies later, but he didn't like me running away with his daughter. We took off for the Virgin Islands, a French resort called La Samanna. I was hiding out. Only Leffler knew where I was.

We fell in love. We stayed a month. I kept calling Betsy every few days. She did not understand that I was gone for good. She would tell me to take my time and come home when I was ready. As far as I could tell, Betsy never got her mind back together. She's very bright and sensitive, really human, and a great mother. But I sensed there was a screw loose that just wouldn't tighten back down.

When I finally told her brother, Bucky, his first words were, "I don't know how you did it that long."

9.

RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.

The For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge Tour had been our biggest ever. We sold out so fast. We were doing two and three nights in the amphitheaters, a growing end of the rock concert field in the eighties, these huge holes scooped out of suburban earth that held twice as many people as the indoor arenas (universally known in the business as "sheds").

At the end of the For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge Tour, we'd decided to do the live alb.u.m, Right Here, Right Now, Right Here, Right Now, if only to get a record out quick. We recorded and videoed if only to get a record out quick. We recorded and videoed Right Here, Right Now Right Here, Right Now in Fresno as the tour was ending. After that Christmas with Kari, she and I had taken off on a rocket s.h.i.+p. We flew to Maui and stayed there for three months, and while Kari and I were off on our rocket s.h.i.+p, the Van Halen brothers were supposed to be in the studio mixing the live record. It should have been simple, but the dumb-a.s.s brothers decided to take the live alb.u.m, because they were so bored, back in the studio. in Fresno as the tour was ending. After that Christmas with Kari, she and I had taken off on a rocket s.h.i.+p. We flew to Maui and stayed there for three months, and while Kari and I were off on our rocket s.h.i.+p, the Van Halen brothers were supposed to be in the studio mixing the live record. It should have been simple, but the dumb-a.s.s brothers decided to take the live alb.u.m, because they were so bored, back in the studio.

That's when we started b.u.mping heads. Looking back, I can see what happened. Al's marriage was washed up. Eddie's marriage had been on the rocks for some time, or at least that's how Valerie tells it. It got to the point where Eddie was pretty wasted much of the time. Eddie went to the Betty Ford Clinic. He did rehab a few times. It never lasted more than a couple of weeks. When Al quit drinking, n.o.body changed. Eddie was drinking in front of him. But when Eddie came out of rehab, suddenly the rule was no booze in the studio, not that I ever sat around drinking beers. Sometimes after we'd finish recording, I'd bring in a bottle of tequila and Mike and I would do a couple shots, laugh, and have a good time. And, of course, Ed would do them, too. He wasn't sober. He would keep everything stashed in the studio, with Valerie at the house next door.

He never wanted me to go home. "Why do you have to go home now?" he would say. "Wait a minute, I got one more thing. I don't like that part. We've got to recut that. You've got to re-sing this thing here." He wanted to keep me as late as he possibly could, because he didn't want to go home. Because once he went home, he couldn't get back out and get to his stash. And once my car left their driveway and Valerie saw the lights and heard the engine and the gate open and close, then she knew I was gone. It got to the point where he was getting all f.u.c.ked up late at night and making stupid remarks, because he wasn't on top of it. There was always some reason. He would never cop to that he wanted me to stay because he didn't want to go home. Valerie's home, he's in the studio. Valerie leaves, he's in the house, drinking.

As the mess got bigger, our conflicts grew. Eddie Van Halen, who had been the humble guy under his big brother's thumb, wanted to take over his band. He'd always been kind of pa.s.sive-aggressive, but it got difficult to deal with. He would be humble and back down from confrontations, but then he would go behind my back and complain to Leffler that I wasn't working hard enough.

And that was what happened when Kari and I went to Hawaii. The Van Halen brothers started freaking out, getting down on me big-time because I wasn't around to rehea.r.s.e the new studio sessions with them. I'd left my wife and now I didn't want to go and rehea.r.s.e. f.u.c.k that.

The problem was they'd rerecorded almost the entire live alb.u.m. Because Eddie was out of tune, or Al had sped up or slowed down, they're fixing things. They fixed everything. Only now that Eddie was playing in tune, my singing's off-key. And where Al sped up in "Runaround," now I'm singing ahead of the beat. Now I had to go back in the studio and redo all my vocals. I wanted to kill those guys.