Jon’s Guide To Losing What Little Audience You’ve Managed To Attract During The Relatively Brief Period Of Time That Your Blog Has Been Online™

Step One - Fail to post any new content for 17 consecutive days.

That’s pretty much it.

Hello? Anyone there? Mom?

Wow. Looks like I executed Step One masterfully.

Well, in case someone wanders in here, here’s the deal: I’m just coming up for air after hunkering down to finish this:

Yes, I built a website dedicated to the goings on in the dysfunctional world of Van Halen.

The sane among you are most likely wondering, “Why the hell would someone spend so much time and energy building a website about Van Halen?” Fair enough. Allow me to explain.

One of the main reasons why I did such a thing is that I wanted to add to my portfolio another sample of my web-design/programming work. For that reason alone, I think it was a worthwhile endeavor. Also, if a decent number of the unfortunate folks who call themselves Van Halen fans show up and I should happen to pocket an extra .72¢ a month in ad revenue and commissions, all the better.

Now, I could stop there, leave it at that, and we could continue to pretend that I’m not a total freak. But here’s the thing: another reason why I busted my ass building that website is that I am part of that aforementioned group of unfortunate folks who call themselves Van Halen fans. In fact, much to my chagrin, I am a complete Van Halen fanatic.

I don’t exactly know how or why this happened. All I know is that, for the past 20-plus years, Van Halen has meant more to me than any other musical act. Unfortunately, almost half of that time has been spent watching the group find new and exciting ways to destroy itself and its legacy.

My friend Bob introduced me to Van Halen when I was about 12. He would snatch the tapes out of his brother’s 1979 Monte Carlo, and we would crank them on his mother’s stereo. I had never heard anything that moved me the way that Eddie Van Halen’s music and otherworldly guitar playing did, and I still haven’t.

I fell completely in love with the group.

When David Lee Roth jumped ship in 1985, I was bummed, but I only ended up becoming even more hooked when Sammy Hagar replaced him. In every interview that I read, every video I watched, every television appearance the group made, and every live performance I saw, I was blown away by how much fun those four guys had together, and how much they clearly loved being with each other. It was genuine, and it really struck a chord in me.

And the music. Dude, the music.

I was raised a Catholic, but I never bought into that fairytale, and I certainly never experienced anything within organized religion that caused me to believe in a higher power the way that Van Halen’s music did. In essence, Van Halen was my religion. (Hey, it’s certainly no sillier than believing in a four-armed, elephant-headed deity; an evil galactic warlord named Xenu; or a story about a guy who came back from the dead.)

Ed has always said that he doesn’t know where the music he makes comes from, and that he feels like he is simply a conduit that channels it from some other source. I think he’s probably right about that.

When I was 23, I stalked—er, met the band for the first time. It was, quite literally, a dream come true. All of the guys were incredibly cool to me, and I am still riding the high from that encounter.

Several years later, I parlayed my way into a fulltime gig as the managing editor and art director of the band’s official magazine. I got to spend a day with the group at Eddie’s home studio, and had all-access passes for their 1998 world tour.

Now, if I may, please allow me to pause here for a moment so that I can again soak up the fact that the picture directly above this paragraph shows me and Eddie Van Halen hanging out in the lounge at his studio (a.k.a. 5150), and that he is not only seated beside me, but he is seated beside me while playing a guitar. Holy fuck, people.

Also, please allow me to add that I look lobotomized because I had mentioned to Edward earlier in our conversation that I played the drums, and he, just before this picture was snapped, asked me to keep time for him by tapping my foot and slapping out a beat on my thighs. What I actually ended up doing didn’t resemble drumming so much as it did a mild seizure, and I basically embarrassed myself, but, be that as it may, I, for a few brief seconds, was essentially jamming with Eddie Van Halen, and did I mention holy fuck, people?

The bummer was that all of this took place after Sammy and the group had parted on bad terms in 1996. To this day, that split is a bigger heartbreak to me than any I suffered at the hands of a woman—and I had some women who got downright medieval on my ass.

I know, I know. It’s ridiculous. Believe me, I wish I hadn’t become so invested in a band that, over the past 13-or-so years, has gone from being one of the most revered and influential rock bands of all time to, at best, a cautionary tale and, at worst, a punchline. But, through no choice of my own, I believed in that band, in the connection those four guys had to each other, in the music they made, and in the way that the four of them together resulted in a magical fifth element more than I believed in anything else. That’s just the way it worked out. Some people find Jesus. I found Van Halen.

So you can imagine how completely stoked I was a couple of years ago when the band announced that it had reunited and, for the first time since the mid-’90s, was going out on tour with Sammy at the mic. During one of the first concerts on the tour, I was lucky enough to hang out briefly with Michael and Sammy during Alex Van Halen’s drum solo. (And, yes, I know I’m showing off and name-dropping, but seriously—what the hell good is hanging with Van Halen if you can’t brag about it a little bit?) Mike shared his bottle of Jack Daniels with me, Sammy shared his bottle of Cabo Wabo tequila with me, and I got to tell them how much it meant to me that they were back together.

Several months before news of the reunion surfaced, Sammy announced that he and Eddie had mended fences, and that all four guys were on friendly terms again. That would have been enough for me. Listening to Van Halen’s music had once been a surefire way to make me feel nothing but happy and completely juiced about life, but during the years when Sam was gone and the group was floundering, listening to VH just made me bum out that the guys who had made that amazing music together weren’t even on speaking terms. Knowing that they were friends again put that to rest.

Unfortunately, by the end of the 2004 tour, Ed and Sam had again clashed, and the reunion ended on a sour note.

As I understand it, Edward is the one band member most responsible for the group’s return to perpetual limbo. He has, by some accounts, gone a bit loco, and it has left the band in splinters. It’s a shame, and it’s a waste, and when I think about all of the music these guys could have recorded and released over the past 10 years had they been able to work things out, it makes my head pop off and fly around the room like an unknotted balloon.

Be that as it may, the fact remains that Van Halen has had more of an impact on me than most other things in my life, and will always occupy a special and exclusive spot in my heart and soul.

And so I built a Van Halen website.

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