Van Halen in Orange County

1.

The first time I ever had a gun pointed at me I was eight years old. I’d run down to the laundry room at the far end of our apartment complex, eager to see if the clothes my mother had tossed in an hour earlier were ready. Up the three steps, in through the closed door, and there stood three men, all in the neighborhood of thirty, and clearly in the middle of some type of handoff. I had a few seconds to absorb what I was seeing—dresses hanging from the rack against the wall; an empty white basket sitting atop one of the washers; a flyer for a local concert stapled to the bulletin board—before one of the men pointed his arm in my direction, and I saw a gun at the end of it.

What type of gun? I have no idea. It had a short barrel, a small handle, and a trigger that stuck out from its back like a dislocated bone.

“Come back later, kid,” the man said.

Neither of the other men looked in my direction, consumed as they were by whatever exchange I’d interrupted.

Too surprised to respond, I swiveled immediately and exited.

I didn’t go home. Instead I ran back through the complex, out the gates at the southern end, and up the block.

Past the video rental shop.

Past the always-empty office whose sign insisted it was an Insurance Business.

And through the double-glass doors of the 7-Eleven.

I don’t know why that’s where I ran to. Possibly it’s because I liked reading the magazines and playing the Pac-Man arcade machine in the store’s furthest corner.

However, on that particular afternoon I headed straight for the candy aisle. And it was then, at almost the exact moment that I’d pulled a Hershey’s Bar from its slot, that whatever Michael Jackson song had been playing on the in-store speakers faded out and was replaced by what sounded like a deliriously happy flying saucer revving its engine as it prepared to sail across the cosmos.

I stayed where I was and pretended to scan the rows of sweets in front of me. As the seconds ticked by and the engine continued to rev, it suddenly felt as if the song had arrived with the sole intention of transporting me out of the fear that had begun to lodge itself inside of me.

I get up

and nothing gets me down…

So here was an extraterrestrial astronaut deciding to be Gandalf to my Frodo. Hop aboard, his voice, more court jester than singer, more stand-up comic than rock-and-roll god, seemed to be saying. There’s plenty of room, and who knows what wonders await?

2.

The song was everywhere in the months that followed. On Top 40 radio and MTV. Blasting from boomboxes at the basketball courts and the beach. In fast-food parking lots and at backyard barbeques.

And every time I heard it, no matter the context, I felt less alone than I had a few moments prior. Less consumed by the dread I’d begun to carry inside of myself like a needy sibling I was responsible for looking after. Less certain that, all other instincts to the contrary, I wouldn’t die young, or even middle-aged, but would instead get to live the life I rarely allowed myself to imagine: a long one, full of good music and great parties and so much joy that I’d want, multiple times a day, to allow my feet to briefly take leave of the earth in celebration of the gifts that life had given me.

3.        

Wisdom is a funny thing. Simpler is usually better. It’s why the ancient Greeks have endured, and why Confucius still matters.

You’ve got to roll with the punches

to get to what’s real…

And it’s why, whatever his limitations as a singer, David Lee Roth was an extraordinarily special artist: he may have strutted around like a long-haired Adonis, but he sang from the perspective of a person who always felt like the odds were long and the time was short.

Jump

go ahead and jump…

Exactly the words that an eight-year-old boy sings to himself when he’s tired of hearing the words, Come back later, kid.

Exactly the words that an eight-year-old boy sings to himself when he doesn’t want to keep replaying the image of a gun being pointed at him just because he’d decided to do something nice for his mother.

Exactly the words that an eight-year-old boy sings to himself when he wants to remember that there’s a larger world beyond the one he currently inhabits, and that it’s waiting for him to join it.

4.

Eight years later.

My friends and I are at the Pacific Amphitheater in Costa Mesa, California. It’s late summer, and we’ve pooled our money to buy tickets to see Van Halen on their current tour. Roth has long left the band, and his replacement, Sammy Hagar, is an altogether different animal. With pipes for days, he can shriek and wail like a rock-and-roll-obsessed Pavarotti, and he’s got the perpetual sunburn of a guy who went to Cancun on Spring Break and never came back.

He doesn’t have Roth’s mischievous spirit, nor does it seem like he’s read anything deeper than the latest Tom Clancy novel. But what he does share with Roth—though both men have gone to absurd lengths over the years in order to insist they have nothing in common—is a belief in the fundamental joy of existence.

It’s why, earlier in the concert, Hagar addresses the crowd between songs and says how much he loves looking out at the crowd and “seeing youth.”

And it’s why, when the band returns for the encore and launches into “Jump,” Hagar brings an enthusiasm to the song’s chorus that makes the performance feel almost religious.

I’m sixteen, which means I’m much too young to say that I’ve been waiting my entire life for a moment like this.

But I am old enough to know that the intensity with which I sing along with Hagar—and the rest of the audience—has more than a little to do with the fact that the song has served as a secular prayer during my childhood.

An “Our Father,” but with less guilt, and Michael Anthony singing harmony like an angel.

5.

When Eddie Van Halen died a few years ago nearly every obituary I read discussed the man’s rare artistry. That he was, so far as rock guitar players went, in a class of two—the other being Jimi Hendrix—who could credibly be called geniuses. And that, when taken together, his musical compositions and his approach to the instrument were as brilliant in their way as Mozart’s was in his.

That’s probably true.

But brilliance—no matter how rare or revolutionary—has little do with why we love the music we love.

In the case of Eddie Van Halen, what I was most drawn to was the fact that, every time you saw him playing the guitar—live or on television—the man never seemed to stop smiling.

And that, if a particular type of guitar tone can be said to sound like the aural equivalent of joy, it was the one he brought to songs like “Hot for Teacher,” “Dance the Night Away,” and, of course, “Jump.”

Existential crises, in other words, don’t exist in a Van Halen song. Nor does post-traumatic stress disorder, clinical depression, obsessive-compulsive tendencies, or generalized neurosis.

And why should they?

There are too many dreams to chase in this world, and all of one’s energy, the band’s music always seems to be saying, should be dedicated to gathering one’s strength for the next leap.

*Title photo by Warner Records

Kareem Tayyar’s most recent collection, Keats in San Francisco & Other Poems, was published in 2022 by Lily Poetry Review Books. His collection The Revolution of Heavenly Bodies & Other Stories was released by J.New Books in May, 2022.His work has appeared in a variety of literary journals, including Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, the Santa Monica Review, and The Writer’s Almanac. His novel, The Prince of Orange County, received the 2020 Eric Hoffer Prize for Young Adult Fiction, and he was a recipient of a 2019 Wurlitzer Poetry Fellowship.