If you are looking for a book that explains how or why Van Halen wrote their songs or goes into great detail about how they found each other, this book isn't it. It mainly focuses on their touring time until David Lee Roth leaves the band. Noel E. Monk first met Van Halen when he acted as their tour manager for their first tour promoting an EP of songs that were playing on the radio, including "Runnin' With the Devil", "Eruption", "Ice Cream Man", "You Really Got Me", and "Jamie's Cryin'" that would eventually become the album Van Halen with other songs added. The year was 1978. Noel will adhere that he knew the band was something special and on the cusp of making it huge.
Their band manager, Marshall Berle had been chosen for them by the record company and he was lousy. He was never there and he charged them for everything. He once put on a lavish party for them and then stuck them with the gigantic check, which also included his flight out there for him and his wife and his hotel stay. Berle also filmed the band constantly whenever he was around doing all sorts of things, including sexual acts. The breaking point between the band and Berle came when he showed these tapes to the brass and the female secretaries back at Warner recording studios.
While on the road for that tour, the guys, especially David Lee Roth, who was the de facto leader of the band and loved to deal with the business end of things spent a great deal of time talking to Noel about things he should have been discussing with his manager, but Noel helped him out and gave him the information he needed. So at the end of the tour, David came to him and said that he and the guys wanted Noel to by their manager. Noel told him that he wanted the job but that first they should go to some of the heavy hitters first and see what they could do for them since he had no experience as a band manager especially for a band that was breaking big.
They did and they still wanted Noel. However, their lawyer would insist that Noel sign a month to month contract instead of a multi-year contract which is standard in the industry. The guys were naturally gunshy after their last manager and Noel felt pressure to do it this way and figured he could always talk them into a real contract later. This would never happen. And in a way, this led to him having an ax to grind with this book because Van Halen did kinda screw him over if his version of events is to be believed. On their first tour, each was paid $175 dollars a concert even though their songs were getting great airplay and people were packing in the concert halls to see them. They were paid a bit more for the next concert tour but the album deal was lousy. Noel manages to get them out of their crappy recording contract with Warner and negotiate a much better one making them lots more money. It was also his idea to do their own merchandising which meant they would make a lot of money off of it rather than if they let someone else handle it and take a small percentage of the profits.
This book is filled with plenty of backstage antics such as trashed hotel rooms beyond the usual trashing, and one night when David went nuts trashing a room and ended up in a straightjacket because the tour manager couldn't get control of David and he happened to have one on hand. The many stunts they pulled on each other that in the beginning caused laughs but by the end of the 1984 tour was causing them to want to kill each other.
There were also plenty of girls backstage and plenty of doctors giving the boys' penicillin shots for STDs. However, during the first tour when they were doing a leg of the tour in England with Black Sabbath, nearly the entire audience was male so there were few groupies to have sex with and they guys went without a lot, which made David unbearable to be around. When they sold more records and became more popular the better class of girls came backstage.
Also, the biggest thing about Van Halen was the drinking and the drugs. Edward and Alex were alcoholics and Edward would become addicted to cocaine. Alex was what you would call a functional alcoholic. He might not remember what he played the night before but he never made a mistake in his playing of the drums. Likewise, Edward's playing was not affected by his abuses but he wasn't functional as Alex. He was pretty much out of it. David knew not to get totally wasted before a concert, though he did on a least one occasion and it was a disaster with him slurring his words and not being able to jump about on stage like he usually does. This was a double disaster as it was the US Festival and it was being filmed. But for the most part, you could count on Van Halen giving you a kickass concert that was worth more than the cost of your ticket, according to Noel.
The person who doesn't get talked about much in this book is the bass player, Michael Anthony, but when he is the author makes a point to put down his playing but says that he sings better than David Lee Roth, only he lacks the front man abilities. Michael is a sweet guy who is dating his high school sweetheart, so he doesn't really get into the groupies. He drinks, but he seems to have a control over it. But his niceness is his downfall as the band will attack him knowing he won't fight back. The one I feel who really get cheated, betrayed, and loses out here in this book is not Noel, but Michael Anthony.
One point that is made about this band often is that they are like children, mostly unruly children. At the beginning of the book, they are innocent of the ways of the music world and the world at large. Months before his wedding to Valerie Bertinelli, Edward gets hit with a paternity suit and Noel needs to find out if there's any truth to it. Ed is freaking out that he might have gotten this woman pregnant because he did spend time with her. But the only sexual acts performed were blow jobs and Ed wants to know if he could have gotten her pregnant. He really has no idea.
This was an interesting book, though I don't know how much of it to believe. The reason it is only coming out now is that Noel sued them after he was fired and part of the deal was that he not write anything about the band for a certain period of time. I guess that time has finally passed. At the same time, some of this stuff is pretty easy to believe knowing what you know about the band. David Lee Roth is an egomaniac and some of the vanity stuff about him is pretty easy to believe. But you do have to keep in mind that Noel has an agenda and a biased point of view. It did make for some interesting reading though.
Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Runnin-Devil-Backstage-Behind-Making-ebook/dp/B01HM27IEO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520255271&sr=8-1&keywords=running+with+the+devil+book
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