Confessions of a Glorified Sideman

Dis­claimer: In the fol­low­ing, I dis­cuss my use of ille­gal drugs. Let me be clear, I no longer do ille­gal drugs or have plans to ever do them again, nor do I wish to con­done or encour­age their use by any­one. Ille­gal drugs were a part of my life in the past and I can’t change that.

Eddie and I first hooked up in the early ‘80s through my band­mates from the Rod Stew­art Group, Jay Davis (bass) and Danny John­son (gui­tar). We all came in at the same time so we will always have the cama­raderie of being called the Sep­tic Tank Yanks (see my post about my days with Rod and the boys).

Back then, Rod wrote songs with the band so we all played on each oth­ers demos. Jay wrote Rod’s hit Baby Jane on which I played the alto sax solo.

They had a side project going at the time — ’82 or 83 -  called Pri­vate Life — There was a female singer, Kelly Breznik, and Jay & Danny were writ­ing and play­ing on it. Eddie Van Halen was involved with the project as co-producer, so con­se­quently we got to know each other in the stu­dio and rehearsals.

We hit it off imme­di­ately. He is such an open and friendly guy — but very intense when it comes to the music. On one song we were rehears­ing I had a harp solo. I tore through it as I would with EVH play­ing along and watch­ing and I did one of my sig­na­ture fast harp licks. He rolls his eyes and smiles yelling, “Whoa!!!!”

So after the song’s done, he comes right up to me with gui­tar on and says, “Do that again. Do that riff!” So I do. He starts try­ing to pick it out on his gui­tar and pretty much almost got it but says, “One more time. Do it again.” To which I reply dead­pan, “Sorry man, one pass is all ya get. After that ya gotta pay.” He looked at me like he was gonna hit me and then we all started laugh­ing and we bonded. He even­tu­ally came up with his ver­sion of the lick which he prob­a­bly never played again… lol…

He was and is a musi­cal freak o’nature and a hel­luva nice guy. He starts telling me how his dad was a sax player when he was a kid, how he loves it, how it really influ­enced him and he still had his Dad’s sax. One thing lead to another and I found myself being EVH’s sax­o­phone teacher…

He was mar­ried to the actress Valerie Bertinelli at the time and she was on his ass about drink­ing and smok­ing. It seemed Eddie always had a cig­a­rette and a Coors in his hand all the time… if not a gui­tar. They had a house at the beach in Mal­ibu and I’d go out there from West Hol­ly­wood to give him lessons.

At the first les­son, I brought a begin­ner sax book so he could learn the fin­ger­ings. He took one look at the book and tossed it down say­ing, “I don’t wanna learn from no fuckin’ book! Just show me some licks!” I tried to rea­son with him but he was hav­ing none of it. So I told him to put his sax on. I pro­ceed to blow a cou­ple of blues licks.

He said, “Ok, cool. What was that?”

- “Hit a Eb to E up to G then A and repeat fast.”

- “How do I hit an Eb?” then looked at me and he knew I had him.

- “Oh what luck. There’s a fin­ger­ing chart in this book I brought!”

- “Mutha­fucker!” and I’m laughing.

He started learn­ing the fin­ger­ing that day.

Dur­ing this time a gig was booked for a Pri­vate Life show­case at the infa­mous Tran­cas Night­club, right down the hill from Eddie’s house in Mal­ibu (see my post about when Eric Bur­don & I played there).

Word had got out that EVH was gonna play a few songs so the place was packed. I’d got­ten to know Valerie a bit dur­ing my les­son vis­its so we said hello backstage.

We’re all back there drink­ing and get­ting psy­ched to go on stage and every­body goes except me because I didn’t play on the first song or two. I find myself alone in the room and pull out a bindle of coke and pro­ceed to do a cou­ple snorts off a key and the door opens and Eddie pops his head in with gui­tar on and says “I knew it!!! Gimme a bump!”

For some rea­son we were right by the door and just as I’m putting a key full of blow up to his nose the door opens and Valerie is look­ing right at Eddie and then at me as he still sniffs it all up his nose. We were lit­er­ally in each oth­ers face and she loses it, yelling over and over “You moth­er­fucker!!!! I can’t believe you!!!…” and on and on… She gave me the stink eye from hell, yelled at Eddie some more then stalked out.

Eddie just shrugged and wanted more blow. I said some­thing like, “Well, so much for the home sax lessons.”

We laughed and then did a hel­luva show. We traded licks all night and just tore the roof off the place. Great fuck­ing night.