Red - My Uncensored Life In Rock Part 8

Kari and I flew back to Los Angeles from Hawaii. I told Eddie to stay the h.e.l.l out of there. They put me in a room with the video of the concert, gave me my microphone, and I stood there and sang the whole f.u.c.king concert one time through. Just like it was a live performance. I barely went back to fix anything. It took me three hours and then I went to dinner.

The brothers were p.i.s.sed. They took out the microscope, trying to find places that weren't reasonable, that I needed to fix again. When they found something, I went out and fixed it. f.u.c.k you.

Meanwhile, as Kari and I had been grooving in foreign ports of call, Betsy had filed for divorce. I hadn't gone home since I left at Christmas. It broke my heart to leave five-year-old Andrew behind, and it was going to be a few years before I saw him at all. The split was not going to be amicable. It was going to be difficult and expensive. Betsy hired a lawyer who was picking over everything. He wanted to pay a recording engineer to go through and catalog all the unrecorded music and song ideas on ca.s.settes I had at home, in case I wrote any songs in the future based on material I started when we were still married. I tried to head off everything with a settlement offer that would have actually given her more money than she got three years and millions of dollars in attorneys' fees later.

Leffler figured out a way I could pay for the entire settlement in one swoop. He told me Geffen would pay huge money for a greatest-hits alb.u.m-I'd never done one-and if I came up with a couple of new songs, there would be generous publis.h.i.+ng advances for each of those. He worked it out so that the one alb.u.m with the two new songs would pay for the entire divorce.

I went to see my attorney, who had drawn up the deal, and sitting in his office, next to each other, like they do when they're insecure, were Eddie and Al. They didn't want me to do the alb.u.m. I told them I was going to do it and that it was going to pay for my divorce. They argued and argued. They said it would be bad for the band. It wasn't like they said anything before to my face. They were real behind-the-back guys. They had a couple of conversations, worked each other up, started freaking out, and began to look into ways to keep me from doing something I wanted to do. Eddie didn't know anything about his business. He probably didn't even know where his money was. When my lawyer mentioned something about my getting paid on a publis.h.i.+ng deal, Eddie wanted to know how he could get one. I told him he already had a publis.h.i.+ng deal. They just didn't want me to do anything they couldn't control. It wasn't long before they started seeing attorneys of their own about possibly suing me or throwing me out of the band.

SINCE RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW was going to be a double-record alb.u.m, Warner Bros. raised the price. That hurt sales. It went to number five on the charts, our first alb.u.m not to go number one. In the summer of 1993, we went out on another huge tour to promote the live alb.u.m, and we made tons of money on it. was going to be a double-record alb.u.m, Warner Bros. raised the price. That hurt sales. It went to number five on the charts, our first alb.u.m not to go number one. In the summer of 1993, we went out on another huge tour to promote the live alb.u.m, and we made tons of money on it.

Even though the tour was big, the Van Halen brothers were still working that att.i.tude on me that I wasn't doing enough. "If you could sing five nights a week, think how much money we'd make." They didn't care about my voice. "If you can't sing, just dance," they'd say.

We started getting into it more often, and things weren't as friendly. Eventually, I started flying on my own. I'd fly home by myself, and I'd come back. I'd stay in different hotels. By the end of the tour, Eddie and I weren't getting along.

What complicated things was the fact that Ed Leffler got really sick in the middle of that tour. At the start of the tour, he'd found a lump in his throat and it was cancer. He had it taken out and came right back out on the road. He even stopped smoking for a while, although that didn't last. But you could tell he wasn't doing so well. He was always sweating, kind of pale, and losing weight.

The cancer came back. He hit it with chemotherapy and radiation, and it spread. He was done. It was only a few weeks. He went from a guy out on tour with us, getting p.u.s.s.y, doing blow, drinking, having a good time, in his mid-fifties, and now he was going to die. He was weak and sickly, but stayed on the road with us.

On the last two nights of the tour in August 1993, we were playing at an amphitheater in Costa Mesa, outside Los Angeles. I was feeling blue about Leffler, so I decided to switch the acoustic number I usually did, "Eagles Fly," to "Amnesty." Since we were back in town, all Eddie's bad-news friends showed up with the drugs and the women, and he was wasted. In the middle of my song, he decided he needed to change the tubes in his amplifier. I'm out there doing this song and Eddie's over there panicking, taking his equipment down behind me. I'm trying to do this sensitive song, and it was really p.i.s.sing me off. I'm playing acoustic and singing "Amnesty Is Granted" and Eddie's checking his tone out to see if the tubes were working, f.u.c.ked up out of his mind.

I came off the stage and grabbed him. We got into it, but Leffler pulled us apart. I came out for the encore, waiting for Eddie. I was going to kick his a.s.s right here, right now. Leffler shoved me in the back of a car and off it went. Later I got a call from Al telling me that not only was that the first time we didn't do an encore, but Ed Leffler had collapsed. His legs went numb on him and he fell down and couldn't stand. They had him lying down.

Eddie apologized and I came back the next night. He was like that. He would do the worst s.h.i.+t you could ever imagine, and the next day he'd be humble and whiny, crying and hugging you. It was easy to forgive this guy, because he went all the way to the ground with his humility. Next day? Whole different guy.

The next night, the final show on the tour and our second night at Costa Mesa, we did one of the greatest shows we'd ever done. We were worn out, beyond tired. It was the end of the tour. We went out there and played from a whole other place for the first time in a long time. We played a real emotional show. Every song felt like everybody meant it. We weren't just doing a regular show. We burned our encores and everything down to the ground. The next day, Ed Leffler went into the hospital.

We did all this crazy s.h.i.+t to try and help Leffler stay alive. I found a lady who took urine specimens to Mexico, where they took the neurotransmitters out of your pee and returned it in little vials. You shot it up every day, in the muscle, not intravenously. I made Ed do it. I did it with him. And then there was this purple goo, slime that dyed your skin violet. We put his feet in it, supposedly to suck all the toxins out. We tried everything. He was walking around, breathing oxygen out of a tank.

We kept him alive for a month, maybe, with all these different things. He didn't have any hope. Leffler would just look at you and say, "Sure, okay, I'll try it." He was a real smart guy, but he didn't believe in hocus-pocus.

By October, I was getting ready to go to Mexico with Michael Anthony for my birthday. I went to see Leffler in the hospital the day before. He was in bad shape. They were taking a liter of fluid a day out of his lungs. He was on morphine. He asked me to ma.s.sage his hands. He couldn't feel anything. I'm ma.s.saging Leffler's hands. I ask him who should we get to manage the band. "Just stay away from Howard Kaufman," he said.

I couldn't believe it. Howard Kaufman managed the Seattle rock band with the two Wilson sisters, Heart, and Leffler was holding a grudge from a while back when Kaufman had pulled Heart and all the other bands he managed out of my travel agency because he thought Leffler owned it. Leffler didn't care who managed us after he died, but he took his enemies to the grave.

A couple of days later, Eddie and Al called me in Mexico to say that if I want to see Leffler alive again, I'd better get right back. I had a big celebration planned for my birthday and didn't want to leave. I called the hospital and talked to Leffler, who told me everything was fine, to stay where I was.

The next night, I was going with my brother to play at the cantina, and I felt a cold wind blow through me. I looked at my brother.

"Wow, I just got the loneliest feeling-I feel lonelier than I've ever felt in my life," I said.

I didn't think Leffler had died. I wasn't even thinking about Ed Leffler. Honestly, I was thinking about the gig. I walked out in this beautiful, warm Cabo night, and something walked right through me. I felt like the only person on the planet.

I got the call at the club. Leffler had died. Just like with my dad. My brother was there-he saw it happen. I did the show and got on a plane the next morning. I went to the funeral, and did a little speech for Leffler. When he died, they put a gram of blow and a bottle of J&B Scotch in his coffin. His friends were characters. They didn't take it lightly or unlovingly, but they did this crazy stuff. That was the end of Ed Leffler.

10.

CABO WABO.

In December 1983, I saw a photograph in People People magazine from the wedding of Keith Richards and Patti Hansen. They were standing poolside at the Twin Dolphin, the only real hotel in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, at the time, and I thought it looked cool. He has always been one of my heroes, and I told Betsy we should go down, check the place out. magazine from the wedding of Keith Richards and Patti Hansen. They were standing poolside at the Twin Dolphin, the only real hotel in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, at the time, and I thought it looked cool. He has always been one of my heroes, and I told Betsy we should go down, check the place out.

There was only one flight a week-one flight in, one flight out-and two places to stay with dirt roads from the airport all the way to the Twin Dolphin. There were no telephones, no newspapers, no televisions, and no air-conditioning. To make a phone call, you had to go to the phone company downtown and pay by the minute after they placed the call for you.

When Keith came down for his wedding, he'd planned to stay for a week, but didn't leave for three months. His family went back after a couple of weeks, but he stayed, sleeping on people's floors. Jorge Viana, the bellman at the Twin Dolphin who eventually became the manager of the Cabo Wabo, took Keith everywhere. Keith liked to sit in with the mariachi bands. They didn't know who he was, this crazy gringo in the rock-and-roll clothes, but he was drinking tequila straight from the bottle and handing out $100 bills, so they loved him.

Keith borrowed Jorge's car to run into town and make a phone call, about seven miles into town from the Twin Dolphin. He never came back. n.o.body had cars down there, but Jorge finally talked the manager into driving him downtown after midnight to look for Keith and his car. He saw his car parked in the service station, long-closed. He looked inside and there was Keith, pa.s.sed out on the floor next to the service station guy, a couple of empty tequila bottles beside them. He probably just stopped to get some gas, and maybe some directions.

Betsy and I went down there shortly after I read about Keith's wedding, and I fell in love. It was such a pristine, beautiful place. You would be walking on the beach and a wave would crash on the sh.o.r.e and blast a five-pound red snapper up on the sand. All you had to do was reach down and pick it up. You could snorkel anywhere in the rocks and pull up oysters. You could d.a.m.n near catch fish with your hands. There was n.o.body around for miles.

The place was pretty much closed up during the summer, and if you didn't want to eat the mediocre food at one of the hotels, your best bet was a local taco stand or somebody's house. Latinos are very hospitable about inviting strangers to eat at their homes, even people they meet on the street. I used to go to people's houses and eat, all the time, in Cabo.

While I was down there, I'd run across this place outside of town, called Guadalajara, a little palapa palapa shack, no windows, no doors. Chickens were running around. I sat down and, in my little bulls.h.i.+t Spanish-Betsy could speak Spanish pretty well but I was lost-I asked, "What do you have?" shack, no windows, no doors. Chickens were running around. I sat down and, in my little bulls.h.i.+t Spanish-Betsy could speak Spanish pretty well but I was lost-I asked, "What do you have?"

"Pollo, frijoles, arroz, and and cerveza, cerveza, chips, salsa," the man said. Outside, walking across the street from the marina, he saw two kids, not more than eight years old, carrying a big swordfish on a stick poked through its eyeb.a.l.l.s. Each kid had an end of the stick and they were dragging the giant fish. The guy turned around. chips, salsa," the man said. Outside, walking across the street from the marina, he saw two kids, not more than eight years old, carrying a big swordfish on a stick poked through its eyeb.a.l.l.s. Each kid had an end of the stick and they were dragging the giant fish. The guy turned around. "Y pescado fresco," "Y pescado fresco," he said. he said.

He goes over to the kids, gives them some money, takes a knife, and, whap, whap, whap, whap, cuts a couple of big steaks off the d.a.m.n thing. They go off down the road to the next restaurant with the fish their pop had just caught. I ordered the fish. I thought I'd died and went to heaven. This was the coolest thing I'd ever done in my life-sitting there, having a brew, not a car anywhere, chickens running around. You're throwing crumbs down, the chickens eat them. You see a chicken on the grill, you know where that sucker came from. cuts a couple of big steaks off the d.a.m.n thing. They go off down the road to the next restaurant with the fish their pop had just caught. I ordered the fish. I thought I'd died and went to heaven. This was the coolest thing I'd ever done in my life-sitting there, having a brew, not a car anywhere, chickens running around. You're throwing crumbs down, the chickens eat them. You see a chicken on the grill, you know where that sucker came from.

About the third time I went, still before I joined Van Halen in 1985, Jorge took me to town. It was all dirt roads. You couldn't drive down there. You'd run out of gas in between gas stations. The first time I drove there, we had to sleep on the side of the road at a gas station, waiting for it to open. There was nothing there but little shacks for restaurants, but you could see the marina from anywhere downtown. I decided I wanted to build a bar. I had already tasted real tequila and fallen in love with the stuff. I told Jorge to find me a piece of property. I had a phone put in Jorge's house, so we could stay in touch. They ran the wire from the phone company office, wrapped it around stop signs, and took it to his place. Fortunately, he lived right downtown.

There was a new development, called Terraso, going up on the most beautiful stretch of beach around. They only had one condo finished when I first saw it, but I bought a place on the spot and moved in for the whole summer. That time of year, Cabo was a ghost town. Everything was closed. You couldn't even find a restaurant open half the time. The condo units were all empty. I had a couple acres on the beach and a giant swimming pool to myself.

I also started going down every October, because my brother's birthday is October 8, my sister's is October 11, and mine is October 13. I took my mom, my brother and sisters and their families to the Twin Dolphin, and celebrated our birthdays for two weeks. Bucky s.h.i.+pped down one of my hot-rod mountain bikes and I was biking the dirt roads around Cabo every day.

One year, Jorge told me about a triathlon that was being held by the local military base but was open to outsiders. I signed up. The city offered a $1,000 cash prize, so the race attracted a lot of interest. Pretty much the whole town turned out at the marina to watch, as maybe 150 contestants crowded the dock where they were to swim the first lap, a quarter-mile across the bay. I was wearing a regulation banana hammock, a pair of Speedos, but everybody else simply stripped to their underwear there on the spot and jumped in. I held back. A lot of these people didn't know how to swim and they were splas.h.i.+ng and floundering.

I dove in and swam across. When I got out, there was a short, stocky guy who started running down the beach, leaving me in the dust, but I was up there with the top four or five guys. We reached the third leg, the bicycle part, and Jorge was waiting, holding my bike. Only about half of the people still in the race, running down the beach behind us, had bikes. I didn't know what the others were going to do. The bikes they did have were trashed, big, heavy clunkers, some even missing tires, and I had this lightweight, ten-speed mountain bike. They had never even seen anything like it down there. I was beginning to feel like the biggest a.s.shole in the world. The short, stocky guy was chugging up ahead of me on his junky piece of steel. He was dying going up the hill when I went flying by him in my mid-gears.

I finished so far in front, I was barely breathing hard when he finally made it across the finish line. I looked at Jorge and handed the heavyset dude the trophy and the cash. He took them both, turned around and raised his hands above his head like he won the race. He never even said thank-you. Jorge and I laughed at that for days.

The more time I spent down there, the better it got, and once I was in Van Halen, Cabo became an important part of how I wrote songs. I would jam new tunes with Ed, Al, and Mike and make up lyrics by scatting along. Then I'd go to Cabo. I'd relax on the beach, finish my lyrics, come back and do my vocals.

A couple of songs from OU812 OU812 had actually come from my writing down there. "Sucker in a 3 Piece" came from Cabo. I saw this gorgeous chick poolside at the Twin Dolphin, who was married to this old dude, and this chick's giving me some vibes even though I was married and she was with this rich guy, the "Sucker in a 3 Piece." had actually come from my writing down there. "Sucker in a 3 Piece" came from Cabo. I saw this gorgeous chick poolside at the Twin Dolphin, who was married to this old dude, and this chick's giving me some vibes even though I was married and she was with this rich guy, the "Sucker in a 3 Piece."

One Sunday, about nine-thirty in the morning, I was driving to my favorite taco stand for breakfast, down a dirt road with a barbed-wire fence. Some guy was wobbling down the road in front of me. I couldn't get around him. He bounced, first, off the fence into the road in front of me, and then back into the barbed wire. He had blood running down his leg and was missing a shoe. He was some local who'd been up all night drinking mescal. I watched him make his way down the road like that, and it occurs to me-this guy is doing the Cabo Wabo. I went back to my pad and wrote the lyrics. "Been to Rome, Dallas, Texas, man, I thought I'd seen it all-round the world, every corner, man, I thought I'd hit the wall." The whole song spilled out of me, "Cabo Wabo."

Since I had one of the only telephones in Cabo, I called up Eddie and said, "Eddie, listen to this." I wrote the song, in my head, to the music from "Make It Last," one of the first songs I wrote in Montrose. I sang it to him over the phone.

"Oh, man, listen to this," he said. "Al and I worked this up last night." He played some music that sounded very much like "Make It Last."

On the phone, it worked. I flew back to L.A. early so I could sing that song. They had recorded the music while I was gone. I walked in. I took a handheld microphone. I was just going to scat, but I read the lyrics off my paper from beginning to end, and that song was done. On OU812, OU812, my vocals have a funny sound because of that bulls.h.i.+t little handheld mike, but it was such a perfect vocal take, we all decided to keep it. my vocals have a funny sound because of that bulls.h.i.+t little handheld mike, but it was such a perfect vocal take, we all decided to keep it.

IT TOOK HIM nearly four years, but Jorge finally found a piece of property for the bar I'd wanted to build, but it was going to be expensive. Even though I was in Van Halen, I didn't have the money for a million-dollar project, more like a half-million-dollar project. But still, that was a lot of money to be putting into a town with dirt roads and no telephones. nearly four years, but Jorge finally found a piece of property for the bar I'd wanted to build, but it was going to be expensive. Even though I was in Van Halen, I didn't have the money for a million-dollar project, more like a half-million-dollar project. But still, that was a lot of money to be putting into a town with dirt roads and no telephones.

The town had been building up a little bit though. None of the side streets were paved, but they'd paved the road to town and partway through town. The swinging set in Hollywood began to discover the town. The hipsters were coming down. It wasn't just a little fis.h.i.+ng village any longer. Boat-owners and private-plane pilots found the place. Private planes would land on this dirt strip. Walking around, you could sense the potential, it just wasn't there yet.

I knew I was going to call the cantina Cabo Wabo. I had already written the song. It was going to be a tequila bar, a small place with a stage. I told Jorge to find an architect, and he found Marco Monroy Jr., son of the developer of Terrasol, who I had met. His father had showed me a smelly, old sardine factory earlier, when I was looking for locations. His son had recently graduated college and was starting to work for his dad. He had built a couple of houses that were the coolest houses down there. I hired him.

Marco did the plans. It looked fantastic. I thought the building was three thousand square feet, but Marco and Jorge were talking three thousand meters. I thought there would be plenty of room for a big parking lot. When they laid the foundation, it was three times larger than I figured. I was thinking of a nice, small room that would hold 50 or 60 people, 150 tops.

With everything going on, the plans for my cantina had begun to get a lot of my enthusiasm and Eddie and Al couldn't help but notice. Finally, Ed Leffler had told me the other guys in Van Halen were beginning to feel like they were being left out. He'd taken me aside and gently suggested that I make the other guys my partners in the cantina.

"You want MTV to really support it, you want the press, you want the publicity," he'd said. "Bring these guys in on it."

We held a meeting and all of them, including Leffler, decided to join up as equal partners. They each gave me some $70,000 to repay the money I'd put up.

It worked. Van Halen played the gala grand opening weekend in April 1990. MTV spent millions of dollars on a big promotion. They filmed commercials and held contests. They flew a whole airplane full of people down there. Raquel Welch was there. Brad Delp from Boston, Steve Lukather from Toto. The whole town was excited.

Betsy's freak-out on the plane had been the year before and she hadn't been on a plane since. By the grand opening of the cantina, she was beginning to come around and the medication was starting to work, but she wouldn't get on a plane. I still had my plane, but I couldn't fly down there without her. I bought a motor home to drive us all down for the grand opening. I got my brother-in-law and my sister to come with me, Betsy, the nanny, and the kids. It took three days to drive down. It was my second time driving down and it was rough going. By the time I got there, I wanted to kill Betsy. In the middle of the drive, I sent my plane down to Cabo with her psychiatrist, our doctor, and their families, and a couple of friends of mine. I put eight people on that sucker and flew them down in my plane while I'm driving a f.u.c.king thirty-two-foot motor home for three days.

Betsy loved Cabo, but she was afraid of everything. She was afraid that she was going to have another panic attack. She hadn't been back since she flipped out the last time. She was nervous about going back to the same condo in Terrasol. She was in kind of bad shape. We were on the outskirts of town, twenty minutes from the condo, showing our guests one of her favorite beaches, and she was getting disturbed. The psychiatrist suggested they go for a walk on the beach.

She was shaking and he was trying to calm her down. While they walked down the beach, we sat around, trying to give them some s.p.a.ce. I snapped. I cracked. The pressure of the grand opening, and the Van Halen guys coming down for the first time. They were all freaked out, too-What, no telephones in the room? What do you mean, no room service? I stormed over to where Betsy and her psychiatrist were talking.

"f.u.c.k this," I told the psychiatrist. "I've got s.h.i.+t to do. We're getting out of here." She actually snapped out of it. It woke her up. We got back to the condo, and I knew I couldn't be too heavy with her.

We left to do the sound check. Betsy's doctor came. The guy had never seen me play before. He was just a psychiatrist who knew Eddie. The doctor was blown away by the sound check. "I've never seen anything like that in my life," he said.

The grand opening weekend went great. Van Halen played a couple of nights. We had MTV and Mexican TV. It was a really big deal that went sour almost immediately.

The first week, everything went great. As soon as we left and the town emptied out, n.o.body came to the cantina. The locals didn't go to Cabo Wabo. We didn't have much of a restaurant, only a big taco bar. We served drinks. There really wasn't much to do there. We didn't have a live band. We played music over speakers. It was a fourteen-thousand-square-foot echo chamber. It was dark. We had a lot of low lights and everything was black. It really didn't have any charm yet. We built this place and opened it. Marco wasn't involved. Jorge, who never did anything like this before, was running the business. Once a week a plane would come in, and there would be people in town. Once or twice a week, the place would do well, but not that well. The rest of the week, it was empty.

T-s.h.i.+rts were selling well when we first opened. We could never get Jorge to send the T-s.h.i.+rt money. Jorge stopped because he didn't have any money to buy more T-s.h.i.+rts. He didn't have money to buy more booze, more food, pay the employees. The place was dying. It was losing about ten grand a month, which is plenty of money. Jorge didn't know what he was doing.

Leffler was still alive and healthy when all this was going down. He'd flown down to sort things out and on the plane he met the Deadhead son of the man who owned another hotel in another town. I knew him from the hotel. He sat at the bar, drinking all day. Leffler fired Jorge and put the Deadhead in charge. Didn't do a d.a.m.n bit of good. He had more business sense, but the guy was doing drugs and drinking and the Federales were shaking him down because they knew he was dealing.

Van Halen only played Cabo one more time, after a Mexico City concert in 1992 on the cantina's second anniversary, but Mikey and I used to take David Lauser down to play my birthday bash in October every year. Eddie and Al weren't happy about the place. Every time they turned around, we were asking everybody for money. They each put in another ten grand a couple of times. That would support the place for six months or so. It was losing more than a hundred grand a year. After a couple of times, they said they weren't going to put any more money in the cantina.

Finally, Mike and I decided that every time the cantina needed money, we'd go down and play. We'd do two or three nights, the place would be packed. We'd charge five bucks at the door. That way we kept it going. We played the cantina five times that year and never had to put money in it again.

One night, our Deadhead manager asked if he could introduce me. He seemed so c.o.ked up, his jaw was going from left to right, grinding his teeth. He got up there and started telling jokes and stories. People were throwing stuff at him and yelling. We had to drag him off.

In the office, I told him to open the safe and he was so addled he couldn't work the combination. He finally opened up the safe and the only thing in there was a bag of c.o.ke. I fired him. I went back and told Leffler. The band was all p.i.s.sed off. It was a mess.

He later cleaned up and told everybody he was sorry. He had a family and lived down there. He was trying to get it back together. Leffler cut him some slack, because we didn't have any choice, but the whole situation had made all of us-especially the Van Halen brothers-anxious about Cabo and where it was headed. They refused to sink any more money into it and seemed like they were done with the whole idea of the place. I thought we could keep it going, but I knew it needed help. What I didn't know was that after Leffler's death, things would only get worse.

11.

FATHER'S DAY When Leffler died, we auditioned managers. I wanted Shep Gordon and Johnny Barbis-Shep was Alice Cooper's brilliant manager and Barbis was one of the best-liked people in the business, ran labels, was pals with U2, Elton John, everybody. The bra.s.s at Warner Bros. liked the idea. We met with them. The brothers didn't like them. I called David Geffen and he suggested his old partner, Elliot Roberts, Neil Young's manager. We met with him, too, and the Van Halens blew him out in about five seconds.

Ed and Al wound me up for two months auditioning people before they told me they wanted Ray Danniels. He was married to Al's wife's sister and managed Rush. They told me I got my man the last time and they wanted their guy this time. Ray Danniels had been lurking in the background the whole time.

Before he was even our manager, Ray Danniels had told the Van Halen brothers about a publis.h.i.+ng deal Leffler made on the live alb.u.m that I didn't know anything about. It was no big deal, but Ray Danniels made the brothers think they'd been screwed. They made me pay them back a substantial sum. Alex Van Halen never wrote a song in his life and he was taking the same amount of publis.h.i.+ng money as me. Danniels gained the confidence of the brothers that he was going to be on their side, not mine. Ed and Al were really going against me at this stage. They thought Leffler and I f.u.c.ked them. We didn't f.u.c.k those guys. We saved them. They made ten times more money in one year than they'd ever made in any year before we came into the band. n.o.body f.u.c.ked anybody.

I told Ray to his face, "They're going to sign with you. I'm not. You get zero of my money." The deal I made was they paid management. I didn't pay management. He didn't do s.h.i.+t for me. He wasn't my manager. I would find my own manager. I did not like the guy. I wanted to bite his face off. And he was scared of me. He didn't want to come into a room with me. He stayed away from me, always holding meetings with Eddie.

Ray Danniels went to Warner Bros. and renewed our contract. He negotiated a few extra points for the band's early alb.u.ms-the ones I wasn't on-other than that, nothing changed. He renegotiated the same deal we had to begin with. Except for one thing. When I joined Van Halen, Ed Leffler had put in the contract that after every Van Halen record, I had the right to do a Sammy Hagar solo record for big money. I only did the one. Ed Leffler called it my golden parachute. Somehow they took that out.

I walked into a dressing room backstage in Toronto, Ray Danniels was there with his briefcase. Ed and Al were signing papers with a notary. They were signing the record deal and they didn't even want my signature on it. "Don't worry about it," Ray Danniels said. "Ed and Al are all that matters in this band."

A FEW MONTHS after Leffler died, the c.o.kehead manager down in Cabo called in early 1994 to tell me he gave the keys to the employees and that the government had wrapped a yellow ribbon around the place and closed it down. I couldn't think what else to do, so I called Marco Monroy. after Leffler died, the c.o.kehead manager down in Cabo called in early 1994 to tell me he gave the keys to the employees and that the government had wrapped a yellow ribbon around the place and closed it down. I couldn't think what else to do, so I called Marco Monroy.

Marco discovered the manager didn't pay any bills for the whole year. He spent all the money. Marco said the cantina owed around $300,000. The place was trashed. The furniture was shot, the equipment broken. He wanted to be my partner. He offered to pay the debts and invest another hundred grand into fixing the place up.

Jorge, by now, was long gone. He hooked up with an American "actress" with some bad habits. The problem was that everything was in Jorge's name. He was gone. We didn't know where the h.e.l.l he was. It wasn't pretty.

I needed to take complete control of the cantina. The Van Halens had already told me to shove the place up my a.s.s, and after Leffler died, our relations.h.i.+p got even worse. I went to Ray Danniels and asked him if I could buy out the other partners. He was trying to get on my good side. He cooked up a plan with our accountant where they could get their money back by taking the loss. They wrote it off on their taxes. They gave it back to me after I agreed that if I ever built another one, they would have the first right of refusal to invest. If I sold it within five years, they would get their investment back, although that would be a little tricky after they already took it off their taxes. I had to indemnify them against the debts and any other legal problems. It was a little complex, but I went for it.

Marco wanted to bring in someone he knew to manage the cantina. t.i.to was a tough hombre, hombre, married to a wealthy Mexican heiress. They lived in a mansion Marco built. t.i.to cleaned house. He not only tightened up the staff, he got rid of the drug dealers and lowlife's who were hanging out at the place. Marco and I decided to get the t.i.tle to the property back and get the business into shape. When we couldn't find Jorge, we went to his ex-wife, who still lived with her kids in Cabo. We offered her $25,000. She didn't speak English, but we brought an interpreter. She got up and walked out. I have no idea why, because she ended up with nothing. married to a wealthy Mexican heiress. They lived in a mansion Marco built. t.i.to cleaned house. He not only tightened up the staff, he got rid of the drug dealers and lowlife's who were hanging out at the place. Marco and I decided to get the t.i.tle to the property back and get the business into shape. When we couldn't find Jorge, we went to his ex-wife, who still lived with her kids in Cabo. We offered her $25,000. She didn't speak English, but we brought an interpreter. She got up and walked out. I have no idea why, because she ended up with nothing.

We finally dug up Jorge and he hard-nosed us. He wanted 10 percent. Marco and I each gave up 5 percent to get him to sign off on everything. Before long, he came crawling back asking for his job. He left the chick. He was straightened out. He moved back to Cabo, and we let him come in. He's been there ever since and he's been, as much as Marco, a savior of the place.

The town was all starting to come together. The big dream was really happening in Cabo. The road was paved now. There were more hotels. Three or four planes were coming in a day. The town was packed. From the first day, Marco and t.i.to really turned Cabo Wabo around. They cleaned the place up, made it nice. Boom, within the first month, we started making money.

The place looked fantastic. We were putting money back into it and taking money out without any out of our pockets. The first year we made around two hundred grand in profit.

The brothers weren't happy. They started accusing me of running the place into the ground so that they'd give it back to me. I wish I were that smart. Scotty Ross, our tour manager, sort of a big-mouth guy, came back from Cabo and walked into a Van Halen rehearsal and slapped my hand. "Cabo Wabo was packed, dude," he said. "You're making tons of money. The place looks great." The Van Halens weren't smiling.

Mikey and I were still going down almost every other month. Mike was willing to roll with me. He was planning to go down with me for my birthday that year, but they wouldn't let Mike ever go again. Mike wasn't allowed to go to Cabo. They really thought I f.u.c.ked them.

AS CABO WAS coming together, I was spending as much time as I could with Kari. She and I just wanted to go do things. We spent every night together. We lived in Hawaii, Mexico, Mill Valley. We'd go to New York. We'd go to Malta. We went to Italy. We went anywhere we wanted to go. coming together, I was spending as much time as I could with Kari. She and I just wanted to go do things. We spent every night together. We lived in Hawaii, Mexico, Mill Valley. We'd go to New York. We'd go to Malta. We went to Italy. We went anywhere we wanted to go.