article: why I love eddie van halen

Years ago, a friend of mine had a 13-year old son who was wild for Van Halen. As it happened, Van Halen was doing a concert in a city about sixty miles away later that summer and her son and his best friend begged to go.

Tickets were wildly expensive so all the parents said, "Try to earn the money for tickets first." They assumed this could not be done.

The two boys worked all summer mowing lawns, doing odd-jobs and even babysitting. And they bought the tickets.

The parents finally gave in but there were no more tickets to be had to accompany these kids. So the parents arranged for a hotel room and some very strict rules.

They would take the boys to the city and pick them up the next day. They employed the owner of the hotel to help watch out for the kids, to get them to the concert and back to the hotel where they would spend the night, to make sure they called home and to keep them safe.

The concert was a blast. The boys still speak of it, but not compared to what happened later.

After the concert, the two boys were shuttled back to the hotel where the owner found them to be safe, not stoned and quite normal. The hotel owner had them call their parents and settled them in their room with room service and a Nintendo game. The boys were ecstatic when they called home. Van Halen had been so awesome! Eddie Van Halen was the best guitarist ever, man!

An hour later, a very tired Eddie Van Halen came to the hotel. He had missed his flight since he was going home while the rest of the band had taken other flights to their own homes. He wondered if he could have a room for just five hours until the next flight left?

The owner excused himself briefly and called the parents of the two 13-year old boys. It was late and they were alarmed until they heard what was happening. And when the hotel owner made a suggestion, they all agreed.

The owner then told Eddie Van Halen about two kids who'd worked all summer and spent every cent they had to see him in concert. Would Eddie be willing to just hang with the boys until his flight left?

Eddie Van Halen was delighted. But that is no comparison to the two boys being awakened by the thumping at their door and the assurance from the hotel owner that it was indeed him and they should let him in. When the boys saw Eddie Van Halen at the door, they fell right down on their knees.

The hotel owner sent up pizza and Eddie Van Halen spent four hours with those kids. He played Nintendo, he told them about touring and showed them his method of lyric writing. He told them to stay in school and go to college. He sang with them. He let them prank-call their own parents (who were of course already wise to Eddie being with them) and when it was time to go, he regretted that he didn't have anything to give them except two of the guitar picks he'd used in last night's concert.

He gave them the guitar picks, told them again to stay in school, stay out of drugs and keep in touch. And he was gone.

Eddie Van Halen still calls those boys a couple of times a year to say hello and to make sure they followed his advice. Both have graduated from college now. One is happily married, the other is engaged.

And that, my friends, says a helluva lot more about Eddie Van Halen than any ten articles in People Magazine, The Rolling Stone or any other publication. I realize he went into rehab in March of 2007 and I wish him the best.

But his intrinsic goodness, his act of kindness despite horrible exhaustion, says exactly who and what Eddie Van Halen is, and I love him for it.