and Words
Girl, you really got me now
You got me so I don′t know what I’m doin′
Girl, you really got me now
You got me so I can’t sleep at night
Girl, you really got me now
You got me so I don’t know where I′m goin′, yeah
Oh yeah, you really got me now
You got me so I can’t sleep at night
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
For some time now, a quiet thought lingered as I wrote these posts. Is my writing a sanitized version of the thoughts that bounce in my head? While I definitely write about loss and even longing, it’s all neatly packaged and resolved. It gives the quiet impression that I have my shit together, and that you can similarly magically resolve all conflict in your life.
The story I tell myself is that I choose not to write about it yet because it’s not yet complete. To follow typical high school writing instructions, a piece needs an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. Writing about unresolved conflict felt a bit like giving you only the first half of a book without showing how it all resolves. Why would I write a story that leads nowhere?
However, life is messy. We all carry baggage in different places and around different subjects. It stands to reason that if music carries such depth and meaning around pleasant memories, it will similarly carry that weight with less pleasant memories. Some stories are about the journey, not the destination.
As this blog indicates, music has played a big role in my life. Music permeated some of my earliest memories. As I approach high school, I listen to mostly American music (or specifically English-speaking music). My favorite band was Def Leppard, and they were also the inspiration for this blog. However, a long-running debate among friends began over which is the best rock band. The two rock bands that got the most votes were Van Halen and Rush. I won’t debate that both of these bands had better musicians than Def Leppard.
I certainly knew and respected Rush; ‘Tom Sawyer’ overwhelmed my mind when I first heard it with its depth and complexity. I understood why Rush got high marks. That said, I have not read any Mark Twain, so the references eluded me. Furthermore, I did not yet have fluency in English, so I still struggled to understand many of their words. I won’t say that I necessarily faulted them for it, but I couldn’t yet develop a taste for them. Most acknowledged that Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart as among the top in their respective instruments.
Then there was Van Halen. Both Eddie and Alex Van Halen were touted as among the top guitarists and drummers. I did not debate this point. However, I couldn’t understand the fascination many friends had with Van Halen. They came to the Hollywood Sportatorium on tour in 1984, when I was a sophomore in high school. It was an event; hordes of students wore their concert shirts on the days that followed.
Even with this song, ‘You Really Got Me’, I distinctly preferred the Kinks’ version once I discovered it. There was a certain something about Van Halen that turned me off, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
Allow me to take you on an unexpected detour, with the promise that I’ll bring you back to the original loop.
I endured the years leading up to high school at Parkway Middle School. I spent the first year navigating a bullying minefield without a map. On school grounds, I survived bullies mocking my name, my command of the English language, or anything they could imagine. Upon getting off the 407 school bus, I endured the physical bullying. On bad days, I endured elbows, fists, pushes, and even the occasional chewing gum spat into my hair, followed by the excruciating walk home, where I might endure more abuse. On good days, I sat quietly on the bus, hoping that the bullies would lose interest or that I might somehow avoid detection.
Upon reaching South Plantation High School, the bullying didn’t stop but instead changed form. While I rarely feared for my physical safety, the bullies chose to attack my self-esteem instead. I’d get whispers only loud enough for me to hear that I’d amount to nothing, or that I was “disgusting”. When I wasn’t looking, they’d slip similar notes into my jacket or book bag. All this for simply being an awkward Chinese teen. It fueled me to excel.
Every great once in a while, I may get into a conversation with someone who bullied me when they had their guard down. I was able to extract as much of an answer as I’d ever get. They didn’t hate me, nor did they consider me a threat. I was neither the target of their ire nor a threat to their well-being. My abuse accomplished one of two objectives: their amusement or greater social standing among their friends. Honestly, I’m not sure which one I detested more.
By the time I graduated high school, Van Halen released 5150, and they finally got my attention. David Lee Roth left the band as lead vocalist to be replaced by Sammy Hagar. My purist friends referred to this era of Van Halen as ‘Van Hagar’, to indicate that this is not really Van Halen. Though to me, here was the startling revelation.
I liked this version of Van Halen. Songs like ‘Dreams’ and ‘Love Walks In’ had substance and heart. Bands change, and so do their styles; this is especially true when band members leave. For years, that’s what I chalked it up to, and that rationalization worked. Slowly, as I thought about the music and, more specifically, how I felt about it, this didn’t fit. There are plenty of bands that never tickled my fancy, but I didn’t especially dislike them.
I disliked the older Van Halen. Or, specifically, I came to discover that I disliked David Lee Roth. As I pondered it more, I realized it had little to do with his music; it was more about his demeanor. He gave off a particular vibe and carried himself with a distinctive swagger. His actions were wilfully geared towards either gaining your attention (or approval) or amusing himself. In other words, he exuded precisely the type of personality that would’ve bullied others.
He resembled the Alpha Betas from the movie Revenge of the Nerds. The Alpha Betas were the athletic fraternity at the college, the alpha males, if you will. They trampled over others for their amusement and their affirmation. I could finally put my finger on it; that’s the vibe that I got from David Lee Roth. Van Halen’s music with him was technically sound and performed well, but had little substance. To make another 1980s movie reference (this time from The Breakfast Club), Van Halen (with Roth) sounded like a ‘Heavy Metal Vomit party’. Naturally, with both Eddie and Alex Van Halen, it’d be an exceptional one, but a shallow, showboaty one nonetheless.
Am I carrying some baggage and unresolved issues? Absolutely; I won’t deny it. Do I know for a fact that David Lee Roth is (or rather was) this way? Absolutely not; I have no tangible reason to believe that Roth is (or was) this way at all. Do I have the right to allege this is when it’s something he may have never done? That’s a tough one. It took me years to decipher this puzzle; it’s not as if I’ve been saying this for years. This is, in fact, the very first time I mention it.
While it seems rather shallow to avoid music artists based on nothing but a vibe, there’s plenty of good music out there, and many other esoteric reasons to mentally boycott bands. Some avoided Poison because they wore makeup. Others refrained from Stryper because they were a Christian band. Some shun Kid Rock because he supports Trump.
Honestly, I don’t think I missed much. Even today, when I set that baggage aside, I can’t tell you that I would’ve listened to those early albums. I have 5150 on CD, and even saw them in concert (Monsters of Rock at the Orange Bowl). I like the band, just not that era.