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change—“Mammoth” sounded too ponderous. Roth suggested “Van Halen,” a cool, memorable moniker like Santana that would stand out on a poster next to other local bands like Snatch or Kuperszyth. Next, Van Halen devised their first band logo—loopy, with descending lines that looked like musical notes.
    Graduating from high school auditoriums, the next step for a fledgling hard rock band was playing the informal backyard party scene. Rock ruled for California teens in 1974, and massive crews of kids in tank tops and cutoff jean shorts passed the hot summer nights with kegs of beer and ample opportunity to score cheap grass. By the time Van Halen played their first backyard party, they were already able to muster nine hundred paying heads.
    In demand from the start, Van Halen played everywhere they could draw electricity—outdoor parks, the backyards of mansions, and roller rinks. Where extension cords couldn’t reach, they took electric generators. The locations became familiar—Huntington Drive, Arden Road, Colorado Avenue, Hamilton Park, and Madison Avenue—all announced on mimeographed party flyers with hand-drawn maps. Friends remember an early flair for showmanship, like Eddie sticking his cigarette in the headstock of his guitar in emulation of Keith Richards. Eddie’s lead guitar playing was unrivaled. He usually closed shows with an extended firestorm based perfectly on the electric blues boogie “Goin’ Home” by Ten Years After—no easy task, as their guitarist Alvin Lee had been billed the “fastest guitar in Britain.”
    Inevitably the police arrived to bust the backyard parties, sometimes in helicopters, to keep the revelry from going too far over the edge. For the kids, it was all part of the light show, and “crime scene” videotapes made by the police remain the ultimate unseen early documents of Van Halen. When the cops broke up the show, the kids would scatter, spreading out into suburban neighborhoods, scrambling in their sneakers through culverts and vacant lots, evading the long arm of the law, hoping to regroup before night’s end. If they were lucky, Van Halen would arrive at the next party, and Eddie would seize whatever guitar was available and reel off a few choice tunes in the living room.
    There were minimal distractions at that time—no video games, no VCRs, no Internet chat rooms, and no cable TV. There were barely even any skateboards. When they outgrew GI Joe dolls and Evel Knievel action figures, live rock bands gave kids a setting to entertain one another. While the adults of California partied with cocaine in hot tubs, the children got wild in the streets with cheap beer and little plastic sandwich baggies stuffed with green grass. Not only was AIDS not an issue, there was no War on Drugs, and the drinking age was for all practical purposes nonexistent. “Back in 1972 I OD’d on PCP, thinking it was cocaine,” Eddie later told radio interviewer Mark Razz. “That’s when I first got exposed to that stuff, and I didn’t know what it was.”
    Along with neighborhood divisions came territorial rivalries. Van Halen represented the San Gabriel Valley and fought for turf against the San Fernando Valley’s Quiet Riot, who dressed in polka dots and showcased their own guitar prodigy, Randy Rhoads. Innocent but extremely headstrong, Van Halen weren’t above a bit of sabotage, unplugging amps to steal the thunder of opening bands and hurry themselves onto the stage. “What’s a party without any guests?” Dave taunted from the stage. “A Quiet Riot concert!”
    As wild Pasadena parties and Eddie’s guitar wizardry put the band in demand, Van Halen’s repertoire of cover songs grew to a hefty two hundred tunes—three hundred if you count blatant hack jobs. Their set list ranged from pounding proto-metal by Deep Purple, Queen, Black Sabbath, and the little-known Captain Beyond, to boogie rock by ZZ Top and Grand Funk Railroad. To broaden their appeal beyond