Eruption: Conversations with Eddie Van Halen by Brad Tolinski and Chris Gils

This book recently came out and is perfect for any fan of Van Halen

Summary

-This book is a sort of deep look into the life of one of hard rock's best axe slingers. Between interviews with Eddie himself, former/current bandmates and musicians who have known him over the years and even his former girlfriends and wife Valerie Bertinelli. It's a tell all that shows you the many sides of this guitar legend.

-Some of the things you'll learn include: Eddie and his brother Alex Van Halen were born in The Netherlands and emigrated to the US with their Dutch father Jan and their Indonesian mother Eugenia. That both Eddie and Alex are biracial, they are half Dutch and half Indonesian. When they started going to school, because they didn't speak English, they were put into school with black children and Latino and Asian children. Caucasian students would bully them and it was the black and brown kids, as Eddie refers to them, that stood up for them. Alex was the outgoing one while Eddie was the shy, reserved one. And because of Eddie's social anxieties, he often kept to himself.

One Last Joyride by Dean Hughes

I recently finished this book and it was really good. It was very reminiscent of the film The Bucket List with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman

Summary

-Earl Evans is an 89 year old living in his own apartment at the Valleyview Assisted Living Facility in Salt Lake City, Utah. One day, while having lunch in the main building, he meets a new resident. An 83 year old, outgoing almost to the point of obnoxious, man comes immediately over to Earl. He introduces himself as Markham Godfrey, but he's better known as "Teller" because of his fantastic ability to spin wild stories. He learns that, according to Evans' daughter Rebecca, he'll soon be moving into a memory care unit because he's sometimes forgetful. Teller concocts a plan to have him and Earl go on a cross country road trip to see the sights. They escape the facility and embark on the trip, discovering friendship, laughs and more along the way

Good Cover Songs

Musicians are going to do at least one cover in their career. Sometimes they're good, better than the original, sometimes not so much. Here are a few of my favorite covers

I'll even provide the album titles to check out. I'll put the album titles on here as well

Cat Scratch Fever

-Original: Ted Nugent

-Covers: Pantera (Detroit Rock City Official Soundtrack), DJ Ashba (Guns 'N' Roses, Sixx A.M.) (Rock Star Guitar Heroes)

Sweet Emotion

-Original: Aerosmith

-Covers: Tommy Shaw (Styx) (Rock Star Guitar Heroes)

Ticket to Ride

-Original: The Beatles

-Covers: Sweet (100 Versions of Beatles Songs)

Let It Be

-Original: The Beatles

-Covers: Glenn Hughes (Deep Purple (100 Versions of Beatles Songs), Glee Cast

Temple of the King

-Original: Rainbow

-Covers: The Scorpions (Dio This is Your Life)

Catch the Rainbow

-Original: Rainbow

-Covers: Glenn Hughes (Deep Purple) (Dio This is Your Life)

The Mob Rules

-Original: 

-Covers: Adrenaline Mob (Dio This is Your Life)

Eminence Front

-Original: The Who

-Covers: John Wetton (Asia) and K.K. Downing (Judas Priest) (Hard Rock Superstars)

The Boys Are Back in Town

-Original: Thin Lizzy

-Covers: Everclear (Detroit Rock City soundtrack)

Man on the Silver Mountain

-Original: Rainbow

-Covers: Rob Halford (Judas Priest) (Dio This is Your Life)

Blue on Black

-Original: Kenny Wayne Shepherd

-Covers: Five Finger Death Punch (And Justice for None)

Bad Company

-Original: Bad Company

-Covers: Five Finger Death Punch (War is the Answer)

Hangin' on the Telephone

-Original: Blondie

-Covers: Def Leppard (Yeah!)

No Matter What

-Original: Badfinger

-Covers: Def Leppard (Rock of Ages: The Definitive Collection)

Too Young to Fall in Love

-Original: Motley Crue

-Covers: Gilby Clarke (Guns N' Roses) (101 Heavy Metal Classics)

Young Lust

-Original: Pink Floyd

-Covers: Glenn Hughes (Deep Purple) (Covered in Classic Rock)

Under My Wheels

-Original: Alice Cooper

-Covers: Joe Elliott and Phil Collen (Def Leppard) (Covered in Classic Rock)

Rainbow in the Dark

-Original: Dio

-Covers: Corey Taylor (Slipknot) (Dio This is Your Life)

Holy Diver

-Original: Dio

-Covers: Killswitch Engage (Dio This is Your Life)

Jesus He Knows Me

-Original: Genesis

-Covers: Ghost (Pantomime)

Dream On

-Original: Aerosmith

-Covers: Ronnie James Dio (Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Dio) (101 Heavy Metal Classics, Hard Rock Superstars)

The Black Widow

-Original: Alice Cooper

-Covers: Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith (Iron Maiden) (A Salute to Alice Cooper)

Lunatic Fringe

-Original: Red Ryder

-Covers: Joe Lynn Turner (Rainbow) (The Sessions)

All Day and All of the Night

-Original: The Kinks

-Covers: Joe Lynn Turner (Rainbow) (The Sessions), The Scorpions (Comeblack)

Tainted Love

-Original: Soft Cell

-Cover: The Scorpions (Comeblack)

Tie Your Mother Down

-Original: Queen

-Covers: Jani Lane and Erik Turner (Warrant) (Under the Influence)

Yesterday

-Original: The Beatles

-Covers: Molly Hatchet (Abbey Rd A Tribute to The Beatles)

Women in Uniform

-Original: Skyhooks

-Covers: Iron Maiden (Released as a one off single)

All Along the Watch Tower

-Original: Bob Dylan

-Covers: Jimi Hendrix (Electric Ladyland)

Hallelujah

-Original: Leonard Cohen

-Covers: Rufus Wainwright (Shrek soundtrack)

You Really Got Me

-Original: The Kinks

-Covers: Van Halen (Van Halen)

The Sound of Silence

-Original: Simon & Garfunkel

-Covers: Disturbed (Immortalized)

Land of Confusion

-Original: Genesis

-Covers: Disturbed (Ten Thousand Fists)

I Heard It Through the Grapevine

-Original: Marvin Gaye

-Covers: Creedence Clearwater Revival (Cosmo's Factory)

Love Reign O'er Me

-Original: The Who

-Covers: Joe Elliott (Def Leppard) (Hard Rock Superstars)

Here Comes the Sun

-Original: The Beatles

-Covers: Richard Page (Mr. Mister) and Steve Morse (Deep Purple) (Hard Rock Superstars)

Free For All

-Original: Ted Nugent

-Covers: Jani Lane (Warrant) (Hard Rock Superstars)

Same Old Song and Dance

-Original: Aerosmith

-Covers: Jack Russell (Great White), Jeff "Skunk" Baxter (Steely Dan, The Doobie Brothers) (Hard Rock Superstars)

Bruce Dickinson is once again married

The veteran Iron Maiden vocalist has finally married his fiancee, French fitness instructor Leana Dolci

According to an interview he did with Kerrang!, Dickinson revealed that he had been seeing a French fitness instructor named Leana Dolci. They became engaged in April of this year. It's not known when their relationship even started, but Daily Mail stated the couple were first seen together in 2019. In the interview with Kerrang!, Bruce confirmed they were married and that they evenly split their time between Paris and London

"I wander round and it all feels a bit bohemian, a bit exotic. I still love London, but it's a slightly different headspace when you get [here]". He said in his interview. This is Bruce's third marriage. His first was with Eric "Jane" Barnett, a woman he had met while attending Queen Mary University. They divorced in 1986. Then along comes Paddy Bowden. This was his longest lasting marriage, lasting 28 years. With her, they had three children together-Griffin, Austin and Kia. Unfortunately, Bowden died in 2020 from a mysterious illness. Bruce also has other things to be excited about besides getting married. He recently released a single off of a new solo album he's working on called The Mandrake Project. The single is titled "Afterglow of Ragnarok". This will be his first solo album since 2005, when he released The Chemical Wedding. This new album will also include a series of graphic novels, the first of which will be available for purchase on January 17 on Z2 Comics.

Continuing from the Kerrang! interview, "Every album I've done there's always been a couple of songs where you've gone 'Yeah, these aren't quite doing it for me in the same way', there isn't a single track on this album that I don't listen to and love. Number of the Beast didn't even have that. There's so many classics on that record, but I was always a bit, 'Well...' about "Invaders" or something."

Joe Perry sets the record straight in his memoir Rocks: My Life In and Out of Aerosmith

Like almost everyone in Aerosmith, Joe Perry released a memoir. His is titled Rocks: My Life In and Out of Aerosmith. He sets the record straight on all of the issues he's dealt with over the years, including his hard drug use, trying to get clean and his stormy relationship with Steven Tyler.

What inspired him to put pen to paper was the 40th anniversary of Aerosmith forming. "When I grew up, people wrote autobiographies when they retired. I never felt like that until about three years ago, when I realized you can write three or four of these if you want."

It took a couple of years to get the process started, but the logistics of it, mostly involving working with publisher Simon & Schuster and co-writer David Ritz (who's known for helping to write Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" and working with Ray Charles and B.B. King), took an additional year. It centered around tours and music, stemming from a strong work ethic, which he inherited from his parents Mary, a gym teacher and Tony, an accountant

"We don't change that much from one generation to the next." He said. The relationship with his parents was very typical of the generation in which he grew up. He had a close relationship with his parents. "I'm sure that 90 percent of the people I talk to about growing up in that era had that same kind of issue. It's just how it was." His parents were, not surprisingly, hesitant about him playing guitar. "Looking back at it from their point of view, it wasn't the career path you'd pick for any security or longevity. Even The Beatles said 'This will last a couple of years, and then Ringo will open a barber shop'". But it did work out for the soon to be Aerosmith crew: Steven Tyler, Brad Whitford, Joey Kramer and Tom Hamilton

The most iconic item out of the book is not a person, but a place: 1325 Commonwealth Ave in Boston's Kenmore Square. It was the "band apartment" they all shared and where Aerosmith was born. The keys to success for them was that they all live together and also have day jobs. "Everybody had to pay their rent, and by living under one roof, we just pooled our money. If somebody made more than somebody else, he just put it in the kitty. It made a lot easier to focus on the original material, getting into the studio and getting a record deal, which is what we wanted to do." Unlike most bands, they avoided covers and treated each gig as if it were a large concert, and they played only on Friday and Saturday nights.

There was one other benefit of living at 1325. "It put us on the fast track to kind of figuring each other out for the upcoming tours we were going to get, which meant spending time together. We learned how to live together pretty quick. Plus we got along and had a lot of laughs. 1325 was a great place to party. That was one of the prerequisites to being in this club called Aerosmith: you had to love to party."

Of course, that "partying" ended in the 1980s, when manager Tim Collins suggested covering their song "Walk This Way" with up and coming rap group Run-DMC. One of the main reasons behind Perry doing his book was to clear the air of any misconceptions surrounding the band, such as the members' drug addictions. "I wanted it to be as truthful as I could get it, and also put the whole drug thing into perspective. The band was really only affected by it for five or six years, when the band started going downhill and drugs started to take over. We got sober in 1983 or '84, and we've been sober ever since then, so the majority of our career, it hasn't been an issue, at least the way it was in 1976. There are so many tales out there, whether it's the ups and downs between Steven and me, why this happens, what that happened. A lot of stuff got misinterpreted or just out there wrong, and I wanted to get the story straight."

December Birthdays

Since it's December, time to say Happy Birthday

Dave Murray

-Birth name: David Michael Murray

-DOB: 12/23/1956

-Where: Edmonton, London, England

-Because of his sisters, him and his mother moving constantly to avoid their father's moods, as a child he went to at least 10 different schools by the time he was 14

Stevie Young

-Birth name: Stephen Crawford Young Jr

-DOB: 12/11/1956

-Where: Glasgow, Scotland

-He's been playing guitar for AC/DC since 2014

Rick Savage

-DOB: 12/2/1960

-Where: Sheffield, England

-He's one of the original founding members of Def Leppard

Richard Hammond

-Birth name: Richard Mark Hammond

-DOB: 12/19/1969

-Where: Solihull, West Midlands, England

-Unlike James May and Jeremy Clarkson, who detest camping, Richard's idea of a perfect holiday is a rainy camping trip to the English Lake District

Cliff Williams

-DOB: 12/14/1949

-Where: Romford, United Kingdom

-His first album with AC/DC was 1978's Powerage

Maggie Smith

-Birth name: Margaret Natalie Smith

-DOB: 12/28/1934

-Where: Ilford, Essex, England

-Her father worked as a professor at Oxford University while her mother worked as a secretary

Phil Collen

-Birth name: Philip Kenneth Collen

-DOB: 12/8/1957

-Where: Hackney, London, England

-Was previously in a glam band called Girl before joining Def Leppard

Denzel Washington

-Birth name: Denzel Hayes Washington Jr

-DOB: 12/28/1954

-Where: Mount Vernon, New York

-Often known for playing real life figures, such as Malcolm X, Herman Boone in Remember the Titans, Frank Lucas in American Gangster and more

Lemmy Kilmister

-Birth name: Ian Fraser Kilmister

-DOB: 12/24/1945

-Where: Stoke-on-Trent, United Kingdom

-DOD: 12/28/2015

-Where: Los Angeles, California

-He stated the only way Motorhead could replace him on bass or vocals is if the band found someone who could sing worse than him

Lucy Liu

-Birth name: Lucy Alexis Liu

-DOB: 12/2/1968

-Where: New York City, New York

-She is close friends with Rhea Perlman and her husband Danny DeVito, with whom she starred in the TV show Pearl

Keith Richards

-DOB: 12/18/1943

-Where: Dartford, Kent, England

-He met future band mate Mick Jagger while waiting on a train to go to college