Runnin' With the Devil: A Backstage Pass to the Wild Times, Loud Rock, and the Down and Dirty Truth Behind the Making of Van Halen by Noel Monk & Joe Layden

Author:Noel Monk & Joe Layden [Monk, Noel & Layden, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Entertainment & Performing Arts, Genres & Styles, Music, Rock, Biography, Biography & Autobiography, Composers & Musicians
ISBN: 9780062474131
Google: FYaIDAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 30759306
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-06-13T01:25:36+00:00

NO AMOUNT OF FREE SANDWICHES AND COFFEE, or even fifty-dollar tips, could shield us from the occasional unpleasant encounter with law enforcement. Smoking weed (or even snorting cocaine) backstage was one thing; kicking the ever-loving shit out of bootleggers or harassing unlicensed photographers was more visible and therefore potentially more problematic. The cops and marshals were generally sympathetic to our plight, but they couldn’t just completely ignore confrontations that turned violent and chaotic. We knew this but we rolled the dice anyway.

At a show in Fort Wayne, Indiana, we got into a bit of a roughhouse with some bootleggers, and as happened sometimes, they actually fought back. You have to remember, we were a security force of less than a dozen men, trying to constrict a bootleg operation that often involved forty to fifty vendors and clerks scattered throughout the arena and parking lot. Usually the bootleggers would scatter when they saw us coming, but sometimes they stood their ground, if only for a short time. Well, on this night things quickly got ugly. We slapped a bunch of guys around, took their merchandise, threw the keys to their cars and vans into a nearby lake, and then went backstage to let the commotion die down. Well, a few minutes later, local law enforcement officers joined us, along with some bootleggers who were surprisingly eager to press charges.

“They beat us up!” yelled one of the bootleggers, a kid in his early twenties whose eye was already turning black.

Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it . . .

I pointed to a welt that was rising on my cheek. “No, officer, they attacked us. We responded. It’s called mutual combat.”

Much yelling and screaming ensued, until the cops grew weary and disgusted and decided simply to bring in everyone involved in the fracas. So we all went downtown, had our mug shots taken, and got tossed into the Fort Wayne drunk tank for the night.

Now, I loved my security staff. These guys would have risked their health for me and the band, and in fact did precisely that on numerous occasions. But some of them were not the brightest of bulbs. I mean, they were hired primarily for their balls, not their brains, so that’s okay, but occasionally they looked at things from an almost comically simplistic vantage point.

“Listen, Noel,” one of them said while we awaited bail. “These cops are little. We can take over the jail!”

I stared at him and tried not to laugh.

“I’m serious, man,” he said, this time more forcefully. “We can disarm these motherfuckers!”

“Oh yeah?” I said. “And then what?”

He shrugged, apparently realizing suddenly that he hadn’t thought the plan through.

“Just relax,” I said. “We’ll be out of here soon enough.”

For the next several hours we passed the time by pitching quarters in a corner of the cell. The agreement was this: each time someone was bailed out, he would leave his quarters behind. The last person to get bailed out would get the entire

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