History Trivia / VanHalen

** "Right Now" has nothing to do with the Music/{{Korn}} song of the same name. Ditto "Dreams" for the songs by Music/FleetwoodMac, Music/TheCranberries, Music/{{Beck}}, etc.

* WrittenForMyKids: "316", named after Wolfgang's birthday March 16. Tellingly, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvVk5y957Vw his first performances with the band]] were in that song.

* CreatorBreakdown: Eddie Van Halen had struggled with addiction issues for years, but was mostly able to perform regardless. That changed on an infamous 2004 Van Halen tour. Video clips of Eddie’s sloppy playing began circulating. Reviews were savage. Both Hagar and Anthony reported Eddie was often angry and incoherent backstage. It wasn’t until 2012 that the above mentioned CareerResurrection happened, thanks to Eddie’s continued rehab work and a hefty assist from Eddie’s son Wolfgang.

* NamesTheSame: This trope is part of the reason why the band has its current name; originally, the guys wanted to call their band Genesis. When they learned that [[Music/{{Genesis|Band}} another band]] was using that name, they started calling themselves Mammoth instead until they changed it to Van Halen some time later.

* SimilarlyNamedWorks: "Right Now" has nothing to do with the Music/{{Korn}} song of the same name. Ditto "Dreams" for the songs by Music/FleetwoodMac, Music/TheCranberries, Music/{{Beck}}, etc.

** Three times between 1981 and 1984, Eddie and Alex tried to bring in Billy Sheehan (LeadBassist for Talas, a band that opened for VH) to replace Michael Anthony. Billy turned down the offer each time, feeling Mike was the right guy for the band, and respected him too much to steal his gig. He would later accept an offer to join Dave's solo band in 1986.

* TestingTheEditors: A variant: they famously included a stipulation, buried halfway through their impressively long contract, requiring the band to be provided with a bowl of M&Ms, from which all the brown ones had been removed. This served as a quick way to determine whether the host had actually read the contract. Since the contract was mostly about technical issues to ensure Van Halen's epic concerts could be performed correctly, lack of M&Ms, or the presence of brown M&Ms, suggested neglect on the part of whoever was responsible for fulfilling their end of the contract and, therefore, potential safety issues.

** The video for "Jump" was badly affected by David Lee Roth's ego and his clash with the rest of the band. The other 3 members didn't want to be around him and asked director Robert Lombard if they could be filmed separately. Lombard hated the idea but buckled down with the exception of a few shots. Cameraman Pete Angelus didn't know how to operate a 16 mm camera properly, resulting in all footage he shot being unusable. Roth demanded that he be filmed doing a bunch of crazy stunts. Lombard wanted to cut out Roth's stunts and make the video a performance video to keep it personal, claiming it would make the video more successful. The other 3 members agreed to this, resulting in Lombard changing the video's format. Roth got word of this and demanded Lombard be fired. Lombard never again worked with Van Halen, Roth's stunt footage would surface in a future video, and "Jump" won the award for Best Performance Video at the first MTV Video Music Awards. It's also seen as one of the most memorable music videos ever made and helped cement the band's already monumental popularity even further.
** The sheer personal tension surrounding "Humans Being", from the soundtrack to ''Film/{{Twister}}'', nearly destroyed the band. The first half of 1996 was meant to put the band on a break, with the Van Halen brothers Eddie and Alex needing surgery and Sammy Hagar about to have his third child. However, manager Ray Danniels convinced them that contributing to the ''Twister'' soundtrack would make them enough money to get them through the rest of that year. Originally, Sammy and Eddie wrote two songs, "The Silent Extreme" and "Between Us Two". According to Hagar, the two songs were recorded, and he was about to head back home in Maui to his wife until Eddie informed him that "Between Us Two" wasn’t going to be used. Hagar and the Van Halen brothers clashed over lyrics, with Alex renaming "The Silent Extreme" to "Humans Being", Sammy flying back and forth between home and work so much that he moved to San Francisco and had to have the baby there (against his wife's wishes). At one point, the lack of compromise angered Sammy so badly he and producer Bruce Fairbairn rewrote their lyrics in 15 minutes ''on the hood of a car'', recorded his vocals in less than 2 hours, and stormed out. Hagar would not respond to calls about reworking "Between Us Two" (the second song was the Eddie instrumental "Respect the Wind"), and ultimately left the band as he got tired of the Van Halens' prima-donna tendencies. All of this is detailed in a particularly ugly interview from the [[http://www.vhlinks.com/pages/interviews/sh/gw0497.php April 1997 edition of Guitar World]], which suggests the issues went as far back as 1994 with problems rising up from a greatest hits package of Sammy's solo work.

(Clarinet Solo)

* NoPronunciationGuide: The English-speaking world refers to them as Van HAY-len. And yet as discussed [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg9WFskPV4Y here]], in Dutch the pronunciation is Van HAH-len.

([[Main/{{UpToEleven}} Clarinet Solo]])

* CareerResurrection: Many fans had written Van Halen off at the start of the second decade of the 21st century. After a messy divorce with Sammy Hagar, an album with Gary Cherone which flopped, Michael Anthony's forced departure from the band and Eddie's bouts with alcoholism and cancer. But once Eddie came out of rehab, the band mended fences with Roth and hit the studio to record ''A Different Kind of Truth'' the band's first album of new material in 14 years. The album charted all the way up to #2 (same spot as ''1984''), spawned a hit single and returned them to the limelight, featuring some of Eddie's best playing in decades.

* TestingTheEditors: A variant: they famously included a stipulation, buried halfway through their impressively long contract, requiring the band to be provided with a bowl of M&Ms, from which all the brown ones had been removed. This served as a quick way to determine whether the host had actually read the contract. Since the contract was mostly about technical issues to ensure Van Halen's epic concerts could be performed correctly, lack of M&Ms, or the presence of brown M&Ms, inevitably meant there were serious safety hazards.

** Both Hagar and Anthony expressed hopes that the band could reunite with them in a May 2020 [[https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/sammy-hagar-van-halen-tour-1001675/ interview]], which had it happened, would've marked the first time in which all five members of the classic era would've performed together but Eddie's death sadly ended any potential from happening and Wolfgang said in a November 2020 [[https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/eddie-van-halen-vault-wolfgang-interview-1090873/ interview]] that there were even plans to have Gary Cherone return to the fold for the reunion tour (dubbed the Kitchen Sink tour), which would've led the band becoming an seven-piece band.

* NamesTheSame: This trope is part of the reason why the band has its current name; originally, the guys wanted to call their band Genesis. When they learned that [[Music/{{Genesis}} another band]] was using that name, they started calling themselves Mammoth instead until they changed it to Van Halen some time later.

** Dealing with Eddie Van Halen was apparently not easy. He trashed Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony publically for over a decade while not speaking a word to the guys themselves, trashed Music/DavidLeeRoth ''while he's in the band'', and generally had a bad attitude about any-and-everybody that doesn't have "Van Halen" as their last name. Things eventually got so fiery with both singers that they wanted to take a rest, and Michael Anthony also didn't like being sidelined (to the point he only joined the 2004 reunion because Sammy wanted him there) and he wasn't even ''notified'' of the band coming out of hiatus with Wolfgang van Halen, Eddie's son, in his place. And sadly, when Eddie was trying to bury the hatchet with Hagar and Anthony so all six[[note]]well, seven; but not only [[Music/{{Extreme}} Gary Cherone]] is the only singer that seemingly never clashed with Eddie, [[FanonDiscontinuity everyone prefers to forget his tenure in the band]][[/note]] could tour together, he died of cancer.
** Sammy Hagar was against the video for "Right Now", as he was proud of the lyrics and complained that "People ain't even going to be listening to what I'm saying because they'll be reading these subtitles". During filming, Hagar was with a pneumonia and a fever and thus angrier and even less cooperative, as illustrated by how he both steps away from a microphone and slams his dressing room door. That being said, by the time of his autobiography ''Red'' he had warmed up to it, down to reusing the video's idea in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ayk1w3I9oUs "Cosmic Universal Fashion"]].

** Music/OzzyOsbourne [[https://www.nme.com/news/music/ozzy-osbourne-eddie-van-halen-once-asked-him-join-van-halen-2796460 revealed]] that Eddie offered him to become the new lead singer after Hagar left the band in 1996.

* HostilityOnTheSet: Dealing with Eddie Van Halen was apparently not easy. He trashed Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony publically for over a decade while not speaking a word to the guys themselves, trashed Music/DavidLeeRoth ''while he's in the band'', and generally had a bad attitude about any-and-everybody that doesn't have "Van Halen" as their last name. Things eventually got so fiery with both singers that they wanted to take a rest, and Michael Anthony also didn't like being sidelined (to the point he only joined the 2004 reunion because Sammy wanted him there) and he wasn't even ''notified'' of the band coming out of hiatus with Wolfgang van Halen, Eddie's son, in his place. And sadly, when Eddie was trying to bury the hatchet with Hagar and Anthony so all six[[note]]well, seven; but not only [[Music/{{Extreme}} Gary Cherone]] is the only singer that seemingly never clashed with Eddie, [[FanonDiscontinuity everyone prefers to forget his tenure in the band]][[/note]] could tour together, he died of cancer.

* HostilityOnTheSet: Dealing with Eddie Van Halen was apparently not easy. He trashed Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony publically for over a decade while not speaking a word to the guys themselves, trashed Music/DavidLeeRoth ''while he's in the band'', and generally had a bad attitude about any-and-everybody that doesn't have "Van Halen" as their last name. Things eventually got so fiery with both singers that they wanted to take a rest, and Michael Anthony also didn't like being sidelined (to the point he only joined the 2004 reunion because Sammy wanted him there) and he wasn't even ''notified'' of the band coming out of hiatus with Wolfgang van Halen, Eddie's son, in his place). And sadly, when Eddie was trying to bury the hatchet with Hagar and Anthony so all six[[note]]well, seven; but not only [[Music/{{Extreme}} Gary Cherone]] is the only singer that seemingly never clashed with Eddie, [[FanonDiscontinuity everyone prefers to forget his tenure in the band]][[/note]] could tour together, he died of cancer.

** The sheer personal tension surrounding "Humans Being", from the soundtrack to ''Film/{{Twister}}'', nearly destroyed the band. The first half of 1996 was meant to put the band on a break, with the Van Halen brothers Eddie and Alex needing surgery and Sammy Hagar about to have his third child. However, manager Ray Danniels convinced them that contributing to the ''Twister'' soundtrack would make them enough money to get them through the rest of that year. Originally, Sammy and Eddie wrote two songs, "The Silent Extreme" and "Between Us Two". According to Hagar, the two songs were recorded, and he was about to head back home in Maui to his wife until Eddie informed him that ''Between Us Two'' wasn’t going to be used. Hagar and the Van Halen brothers clashed over lyrics, with Alex renaming "The Silent Extreme" to "Humans Being", Sammy flying back and forth between home and work so much that he moved to San Francisco and had to have the baby there (against his wife's wishes). At one point, the lack of compromise angered Sammy so badly he and producer Bruce Fairbairn rewrote their lyrics in 15 minutes ''on the hood of a car'', recorded his vocals in less than 2 hours, and stormed out. Ultimately, Sammy Hagar quit Van Halen due to the Van Halen brothers' prima-donna tendencies. All of this is detailed in a particularly ugly interview from the [[http://www.vhlinks.com/pages/interviews/sh/gw0497.php April 1997 edition of Guitar World]], which suggests the issues went as far back as 1994 with problems rising up from a greatest hits package of Sammy's solo work.

* AuthorExistenceFailure: Eddie Van Halen died of cancer on October 6th, 2020.
** Ten days before that, original bassist Mark Stone ''also'' died of cancer.

** Both Hagar and Anthony expressed hopes that the band could reunite with them in a May 2020 [[https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/sammy-hagar-van-halen-tour-1001675/ interview]], which had it happened, would've marked the first time in which all five members of the classic era would've performed together but Eddie's death sadly ended any potential from happening and Wolfgang said in a November 2020 [[https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/eddie-van-halen-vault-wolfgang-interview-1090873/ interview]] that there were even plans to have Gary Cherone return to the fold for the reunion tour, which would've led the band becoming an seven-piece band.

* HostilityOnTheSet: Dealing with Eddie Van Halen was apparently not easy. He trashed Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony publically for over a decade while not speaking a word to the guys themselves, trashed Music/DavidLeeRoth ''while he's in the band'', and generally had a bad attitude about any-and-everybody that doesn't have "Van Halen" as their last name. Things eventually got so fiery with both singers that they wanted to take a rest, and Michael Anthony also didn't like being sidelined (to the point he only joined the 2004 reunion because Sammy wanted him there) and he wasn't even ''notified'' of the band coming out of hiatus with Wolfgang van Halen, Eddie's son, in his place).

** The sheer personal tension surrounding "Humans Being", from the soundtrack to ''Film/{{Twister}}'', nearly destroyed the band. The first half of 1996 was meant to put the band on a break, with the Van Halen brothers Eddie and Alex needing surgery and Sammy Hagar about to have his third child. However, manager Ray Danniels convinced them that contributing to the ''Twister'' soundtrack would make them enough money to get them through the rest of that year. Originally, Sammy and Eddie wrote two songs, "The Silent Extreme" and "Between Us Two". According to Hagar, the two songs were recorded, and he was about to head back home in Maui to his wife until Eddie informed him that ''Between Us Two'' wasn’t going to be used. Hagar and the Van Halen brothers clashed over lyrics, with Alex renaming "The Silent Extreme" to "Humans Being", Sammy flying back and forth between home and work so much that he moved to San Francisco and had to have the baby there (against his wife's wishes). At one point, the lack of compromise angered Sammy so badly he and producer Bruce Fairborn rewrote their lyrics in 15 minutes ''on the hood of a car'', recorded his vocals in less than 2 hours, and stormed out. Ultimately, Sammy Hagar quit Van Halen due to the Van Halen brothers' prima-donna tendencies. All of this is detailed in a particularly ugly interview from the [[http://www.vhlinks.com/pages/interviews/sh/gw0497.php April 1997 edition of Guitar World]], which suggests the issues went as far back as 1994 with problems rising up from a greatest hits package of Sammy's solo work.

* ThePeteBest: Mark Stone, the bassist who preceded Michael Anthony.
* TestingTheEditors: The reason behind the infamous "bowlful of M&Ms" provision in their {{doorstopper}}-length contract. To elaborate, buried within the section on technical provisions was a demand that the band be provided with a bowl of M&Ms at every show, but with all the brown M&Ms removed; the reason this was included was to ensure that the host for each live performance had actually read the contract in detail instead of just skimming over or skipping it. Since the contract was mostly about technical issues to ensure Van Halen's concerts could be performed both safely and correctly, lack of M&Ms, or the presence of brown M&Ms, inevitably meant there were serious safety hazards.

* HostilityOnTheSet: Simply put: Eddie Van Halen was an asshole. A talented one, but almost universally regarded as a complete dick, mostly since he trashed Sammy and Michael Anthony publically for over a decade while not speaking a word to the guys themselves, trashed Roth while he's ''in'' the band, and generally had a bad attitude about any-and-everybody that doesn't have "Van Halen" as their last name. Said something things eventually got so fiery with both singers they wanted to take a rest, and Michael Anthony also didn't like being sidelined (to the point he only joined the 2004 reunion because Sammy wanted him there).

* ReferencedBy: Two specific Parts from ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'' give [[ShoutOut Shout-Outs]] to Van Halen.
** In ''[[Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureStoneOcean Stone Ocean]]'', the [[FightingSpirit Stand]] of side protagonist Narciso Anasui is named Diver Down, after the Van Halen album of the same name.
** [[DiscOneFinalBoss Akira Otoishi]] from ''[[Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureDiamondIsUnbreakable Diamond is Unbreakable]]'' lists one of his favorite guitarists, alongside the likes of Music/JimiHendrix, Music/JeffBeck, and Music/StevieRayVaughan, as being none other than Eddie Van Halen. The anime adaptation takes it the extra mile by having Akira's right-handed guitar tap sound [[SuspiciouslySimilarSong almost one-to-one]] with "Eruption".

** Both Hagar and Anthony expressed hopes that the band could reunite with them in a May 2020 [[https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/sammy-hagar-van-halen-tour-1001675/ interview]], which had it happened, would've marked the first time in which all five members of the classic era would've performed together but Eddie's death sadly ended any potential from happening and Wolfgang said in a November 2020 [[https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/eddie-van-halen-vault-wolfgang-interview-1090873/ interview]] that there were even plans to have Gary Cherone return to the fold for the reunion tour, which would've led the band becoming an eight-piece band.