In a Maximum Golf exclusive the legendary rocker tees it up and tees it off on his band's new record, his new feud with David Lee Roth--and his greatest personal battle, the fight to beat cancer. "WHO THE F--- IS JIM LAMPLEY??!!!" yells Eddie Van Halen. It's 1994. My client is dragging his golf bag onto the driving range at the Studio City Golf & Tennis Club--where I once taught and spent most of my semi-waking hours--the day after playing in the Bob Hope Desert Classic. I'm Eddie's golf instructor.

Jim Lampley is a sportscaster. Eddie tells me Lampley was mocking him ("cartooning me," as Eddie puts it) throughout the broadcast, going to town on his orange knickers and leopard shoes and sniping that "maybe Mr. Van Halen should spend less time in the studio and more time on the driving range."

During the tourney Eddie also hit a spectator with a wild bunker shot. The guy was unhurt (and actually ecstatic after discovering it was his rock idol that had nearly brained him), but one of Eddie's playing partners, Payne Stewart, wasn't too thrilled with Eddie's performance.

Eddie is embarrassed. And mad.

"Let's get to work!" he says.

And he does. For months, Eddie is my most serious show-business client. We work two or three times a week for two or three hours at a stretch. Eddie builds a driving net on top of his recording studio. He joins the famous Lakeside Golf Club in Burbank, California. He gets better. He looks better.

Time passes.

"Awright," he says one day. "We're doing the Hope again. I play, you caddie. Meet me at AvJet at Burbank Airport tomorrow morning at 7:30."

I don't like flying, not even on a 747, but I have too little self-esteem to tell Eddie that I'm terrified. They close the tiny side door, start the engines, and deliver a famous guitarist and a basket case to Palm Springs. We're just in time to check into the hotel, visit PGA Tour millionaire John Cook at his house, try out his piano, and have some laughs. I figure that since I'm with Eddie Van Halen we'll be out "discussing strategy" until at least 8 A.M.

After dinner Eddie says, "Early tee time tomorrow. Let's go to bed."

We're in our hotel rooms by 8:30. At 8:45 the next morning, Eddie and I hit the practice tee. While he's warming up, he introduces me as his friend and guru to half of the PGA Tour's top players. My stomach begins to twitch. And here comes our playing partner, Tom Kite, who played a practice round with Eddie the year before.

"Hi, Mr. Van Halen," says Mr. Kite. "Let's do it again."

"Hey Tom, how's the cheese? Hopefully I won't do any brain damage to the peanut gallery this year." I don't get the cheese thing--but I hope Eddie is right about not beaning someone again.

We walk to the first tee--maybe 10,000 people are watching--and I'm nervous as hell. I send Eddie a telepathic swing thought: Don't shank it and kill someone!

Eddie pulls out his driver and hits it 240 yards down the middle, with a draw. He plays absolutely out of his mind the first 11 holes. Tom is playing the back tees and Eddie is hitting from the whites. On the 12th hole, Tom hits his drive 270 down the middle. Eddie hits his 250 down the middle. Tom hits a 4-iron about 12 feet from the pin. Eddie looks at me. Eddie looks nervous. The are an awful lot of spectators around the green. The pin is 180 yards away. So figuring my guy is pumped up, I hand him a 5-iron instead of a 3.

He knocks the ball three feet from the hole. The gallery goes nuts. Eddie and I look for Lampley. He's not around.

"Maybe they fired his ass," I say.

Then Eddie misses his putt.

"Now that's a tragedy man," says Eddie, grinning.

Flash forward to 2001. I'm standing at the back of the tee box at the par-5 second hole at Lakeside Golf Club. Getting ready to hit is my prize pupil and mentor, one Edward Van Halen. Capturing all of the non-action is a photographer named Blake and a sunburned scirbbler I'll call the Ghost. Mr. Van Halen steps up to the tee waggles his driver, and looks with up a wicked smile. "Hey Reynaldo," he says. "If this article has anything to do with how good a teacher you are, you're screwed!"

"Yeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaah, right," I say.

The only distinguished Lakeside GC member currently wearing pink custom-made golf shorts winds up and hits a lame hook maybe 75 yards. He drops another ball, swings again, and produces a robust shank. Ball three: a topspin dribbler to the first sprinkler head. Granted he isn't in top form. After his hip replacement in 1999, he didn't pick up a club until the end of 2000. Then there was the little matter of his cancer diagnosis in January 2000. Oh, and lest I forget, Eddie has spent a fair amount of time in the studio laying down tracks for the new Van Halen album (which is in limbo--more on that later). Basically, he's been too busy with life to play much golf.

But still, Eddie is angry. Not at me--at himself. He grips the club by the neck, gives it a nice therapeutic choking, and laughs like the maniac he is.

Forget all those journalistic traditions like objectivity and ironicism, because I do love Eddie Van Halen. Not because he's the founder and leader of Van Halen, one of the greatest bands in history--with hit singles like "Jump" and "Panama" and albums like Women and Children First, Diver Down, and Balance--and the most inventive rock guitarist in the known universe. No. For the past year, Eddie has been my friend, confidant, adviser, motivator, and sponsor.

No need to wear out the L-word. But consider this: Mr. Pink Pants and I are on this little golf outing in the middle of May, just a few days after he announced via his fan-club Web Site that he's battling cancer. He says he's winning, that his chemo treatments appear to be working. Unfortunately, most of the press repsonds to his polite request for privacy--and his desire to tell his cancer story when he's ready--by hounding him until he's practically six feet under.

Meanwhile, Eddie, and his brother Alex Van Halen (drummer), and Michael Anthony (bass player)--who make up the band Van Halen--are also seriously discussing, with David Lee Roth (the band's original singer), putting out an album of new material and doing a tour. But there's a hitch. "The last time I spoke to or saw Dave was back in September of last year," Eddie says hesitantly. "I played him a few new tunes, we bulls----ed a bit, had some laughs, and everything seemed cool. He was even kind enough to turn me on to his uncle, Jack Roth, a cancer surgeon and research specialist at--coincidentally--M.D. Anderson, in Houston, where I had been going once a week for treatment."

"Everything looked pretty positive about gettin' together," Eddie continues. "But before you know it, attorneys are involved. These cats had me so beat down and confused, it made the cancer seem like a tiny zit on my ass. Everything seemed to fall apart after these guys got involved. I mean, we used to do it on a handshake. At this point, I don't have a clue what's going on."

"I write and play music for a living," Eddie continues to continue. "I'm not a businessman. It seems like all attorneys ever do is stir up trouble. They create problems that never existed and ream you for half your money, then they try to fix what they started and nail ya for whatever money you got left. I'll tell ya, man, I don't see how these guys sleep at night. But what the hell are we talking about? This is Maximum Golf, not Maximum Dirt, right? So let's get back to my suck-butt-swing..."

On top of the Roth business--which is just a tad distracting--Eddie's wife, actress Valerie Bertinelli, is in Utah doing the TV series Touched by an Angel. So Eddie is in charge of getting their 10-year-old son, Wolfgang, back and forth from school and tennis lessons and basketball games.

In the middle of this mayhem--and while Eddie and his record label Warner Brothers, are turning down hundreds of interview requests--he sets aside an entire day for me and Maximum Golf.

At 8:12 on a cloudless Wednesday morning, Eddie steers his Mercedes-Benz into the parking lot of the Studio City Golf & Tennis Club and sticks his head out the window. "Hey Reynaldo! Galaxy Quest!!!" he shouts, referring to his favorite video-rental comedy, which he had turned me onto a few days earlier. He zooms off, and I follow in another vehicle with the Ghost and the photgrapher. During the eight-minute drive to his house, which he does in four and change, Eddie and I talk via cell phone and exchange our favorite lines from the movie ("Are you enjoying your Kep-mok blood ticks, Dr. Lazarus?").

After we arrive at Eddie's place, I show the crew the house and grounds while he changes into his first fetching golf ensemble. On Eddie's pool table in the living room lie two beat-up red-white-and-black electric guitars. These are the guitars, cigarette burns on the neck and all, that Eddie built by hand in the early days and that appear on his posters and album covers and that Eddie has played on every concert tour up to a couple years ago. Located oh-so-conviently just outside the living room is the two-in-one racquetball/basketball court. We pass it on the way into the garage, which holds Eddie's other Mercedes as well as his 220 mph Lamborghini military vehicle, immaculate Austin Mini Cooper, and an assortment of blindingly fast electric scooters. Then I show off the backyard Astroturf mat where Eddie, Wolfie, and I--in between dips in the pool--hit a ball or two, head back into the pool (via the 40-foot monster water slide), and then call it a day--for golf, that is.

After that, we troop up the driveway to the 5150 recording studio (named like Van Halen's 1986 album, after the Los Angeles Police Department code for the mentally unstable and insane), where since 1984 all of the band's recordings have been made. On the wall is one of the few remaining original (1958) Gibson Flying V's, which is the guitar Eddie played on "Hot For Teacher." Our Better Homes and Gardens tour is interrupted when my cell phone rings. It's Eddie, asking me and the Ghost to meet him upstairs in the main house. He's listening to a phone message from Valerie in Salt Lake City. She says it's Eddie's turn at the PTA rotation to deliver a hot lunch today to Wolfie and his classmates. Eddie pauses for a moment to figure that one out, then takes us into the hallway. "Hey guys, you wanna see some tripped-out stuff?"

Against the baseboard leans a framed 1999 Master flag signed: "To Eddie--Keep On Rockin'! Your friend Mark O'Meara." Lying beneath it is a photo taken at the Bob Hope. It's a picture of your average smiling foursome, consisting of Gerald Ford, Fuzzy Zoeller, Bob Hope--and Eddie Van Halen. Says Eddie, "When people see this picture they always ask me, 'What the hell did you talk to the president and those other guys about?' I tell them: 'What do all guys talk about when they're away from their wives? P---y, what else?!'"

Eddie walks next door to the music room and takes a few licks on his son's drums kit. (In a strange DNA twist, Wolfgang loves to play the drums, and Arie, 11, the song of Eddie's brother Alex, Van Halen's drummer, loves to play guitar. Who knows, maybe they'll end up swapping like Alex and Eddie; as kids, Alex played guitar and Eddie played drums.) "Wolfie's been playing for about five hours. It's like he's been playing for five years," Eddie says proudly.

He adds that he and Wolfie recently scheduled their first gig together. It's a benefit for Wolfie's school. He looks up and blinks a couple of times, lost in thought. "You know," he says slowly, "there's a reason Valerie's working right now. It's God saying, 'Now's the time for the kid to spend time with his pop.'"

You don't have to be the strongest link to figure out what everybody asks me these days: "How did you get to be such good friends with Eddie Van Halen?" The answer goes back to 1990. If you've been following the story so far (see "Nice Shots, Dude!" Maximum Golf, July 2000) you remember that Eddie was one of the alcoholic foursome--along with me, Tommy Lee, and Toto's Steve Lukather--laid out in the fetal position on the 15th tee at a tournament during that year's T.J. Martell Rock 'n' Charity Weekend. The way we played, it should have been called the Jägermeister Celebrity Open. Eddie says he doesn't remember that day. I believe him.

A year or two later, Eddie wanders onto the driving range at the Studio City. He's not drinking by then, and neither is Ron del Barrio. I reintroduce myself. Eddie tells me that since 1988 he's been fooling around on various golf courses while touring, A bunch of Tour pros, including O'Meara and Cook--and, oh Tiger Woods--are fans and show up at his concerts.

I give Eddie some lessons, nothing serious, maybe once or twice a month. He's...not great. He tends to spoil his fluid, natural swing by gripping the club too hard or swinging it too fast, which throws off his hand and body positions. But his poor technique is saved occasionally by fantastic hand-eye coordination; hours of poor shots are redeemed by 275-yard bursts of brilliance.

Then Eddie's friend Rick Dees gets him into the Bob Hope.

After Eddie's triumph at the second Bob Hope he played, in 1995, he's scheduled to leave immediately for his band's Balance Tour. He asks me to come along--and, when it's over, to fly to Europe to golf our way across the continent. Bizarre as it may sound, I turn him down. I can't leave L.A. and my then girlfriend (now wife) alone for nearly that long. Instead, a week or two later I meet Eddie and the band in Las Vegas, for the opening of the Hard Rock Hotel and the sold-out Van Halen concert at the Thomas & Mack Center. What was that like? Let's just say that when you sit at a blackjack table or stand around backstage identified as someone--anyone--tight with the members of a group like Van Halen, be prepared to fend off (or not) clouds of flying panties and hotel-room keys.

Eddie and I are in close touch for another year or two, when dives back into songwriting and inventing--he has a dozen patents and dozens pending for amps and pickups and other music-making gear--and gets away from golf. In November 1999, Eddie takes care of a long-running problem and has hip-replacement surgery.

Last winter, Eddie calls me and starts Wolfie on golf lessons. Eddie works with me on his game, again, too but we're talking less swing thoughts and enjoying each other's company a lot more. We speak on the phone at least once a day--tons of crapola and cartooning but lots of deeper conversations, too. One day Eddie tells me he has been claustrophobic since he was a kid--and then we laugh when we realize we were both scared s---less when we got on that jet in Burbank, only too much into being macho to admit it.

Eddie talks about what it was like growing up as an outsider in Pasadena, an immigrant kid--his mom worked as a maid and barely spoke English. He tells me some incredible stories about the lowlifes and parasites who crawl through the music industry. He tells me that he believes in God--or the Man Upstairs, or whoever gave him his musical talent--and how he feels responsible for working as hard as he can to make use of his gift.

Eddie also tells me about the initial fear and shock he felt when he was diagnosed with cancer, but says now: "I know I'm kicking its ass out. The way I look at it is like this, I've run too many red lights and gotten away with it for a long time, but it kinda caught up with me. I believe that God doesn't lay this on you unless you're supposed to learn something. And boy, I've learned more in the last year and a half than I ever thought I'd learn in a lifetime. Sometimes when things are right in front of your face, you don't see them. It seems simple, but all that really matters to me is my son and my wife. Everything and everybody else can pretty much kiss my ass. Even making music--which is pretty much my life--takes a backseat to my family and my health."

I open up wide and tell Eddie about Ron del Barrio's microscopic problems, like being responsible for my new family and my own craft and love of golf while dealing with the egotists and liars and deadbeats of La La Land.

Just before the Christmas holidays this past year, we're on the putting green at Studio City. Eddie pulls me aside and says the words that change my life.

"Ron I don't know if I ever told you this, but I was born with mensenkennis," he says.

"What," I ask. "Is it contagious?"

"No, moron. It's a Dutch word that means, 'knowledge of people.' I know you're unhappy being Mr. Golf Teacher to the Stars. I mean, people are using you, ripping you off right and left. What's your passion? What's your gift? What do you really think you should be doing?"

"Playing golf, working on my own game, competing," I say.

"So why not just do it?" asks Eddie.

I tell him how much money I need each year--$1 followed by too many zeroes--to quit teaching and try to earn a Tour card.

Says Eddie, "No, you don't understand. I know you can play. I'veseen you hit some golf shots. I'll give you 10 years of backing if you need it. Right now money for me is just a tool to help the people I love. I f---ing love you. So let's go!"

Eddie looks me in the eye, and I look back at him. We start crying right there and sob away like two big babies. A few weeks later I sign a contract with Eddie's management company. I stop working with most of my teaching clients and spend most of my time working on my own game. I sign up for the satellite tournaments ont the Pepsi and Buy.com tours. In my first five starts, I get five top-five finishes. I have Eddie to thank for all of it. "Hey Jules! It's Eddie! How're you doin'?" It's 1 P.M. The badass rock god is on the kitchen phone with the mother of one of his son's classmates. Eddie apologizes profusely that he has to do this "golf thing," trades off his hot-lunch day, and begs a huge favor--that she pick up Wolfie at his after-school tennis lesson and drop him at his afternoon baseball game.

Favor secured, Eddie goes deeper into the house and makes a half-hour's worth of private calls. He returns and apologizes for holding up the photo shoot. "You can't believe what my life is like these days," he groans.

Back up to the studio. Eddie happily does his thing in front of the Hasselblad. Between setups, the Ghost corners Eddie and mentions some of the articles that have been appearing about his battle with cancer. "I really don't understand it," says Eddie, peeved. "I mean, everybody I know has been getting calls asking what's going on with me. Guys pull up beside me at red lights--as if I'm gonna give them an interview at a stoplight."

"I don't know why people want to know what only my wife and son and maybe my best friends have a right to know. I say to everyone else, 'Look, all I have to say is that I'm doing great.' But I'm not about to go into the details until the cancer is completely gone."

"But that's not enough to satisfy the jackals. They say, 'Everyone wants to know everything right now because you're a famous rock star.' That's crap! I'm not a rock star! I'm just a musician, a kid from Holland who knows what it looks like from both sides of the fence." "I used to get wasted because I didn't know how to act," Eddie continues. "I was, and still am, very uncomfortable being a so-called 'rock star.' I would get so hammered that I would make a complete fool out of myself. I was like, 'Okay, I'm a rock star. Now, what is that?' I sure as hell didn't know--regardless of whether I was drunk or straight. So I figured I might as well go straight, because drunk, I was a complete idiot; straight, at least I have the chance of just being half an idiot. Funny thing is, after all these years, I still don't have a clue what a 'rock star' is."

Note to the editor, editors, Editor, or Editors: I know the title of this article is "18 With...Eddie Van Halen." But by the time we finish the photo shoot, it's 3:30 P.M., and there's no way we'll finish a round here before Eddie is supposed to pick up Wolfie post-baseball. We load up our golf bags anyway--Eddie plays a set of custom-made clubs called Red Planet, by Ohio-based Mars Golf--and motor at the usual speed (illegal) over to Lakeside. We hit from the first hole sans warmup and discover what kind of golf certain famous musician plays when (1) his best friend and golf teacher is too busy recently to give him any golf lessons; (2) some guy with a notebook and another with a camera are staring at him; and (3) he has some bad habits--like gripping and swinging too hard--that pop up when he's a bit nervous.

It's not all bad, though. For instance, Eddie's 6-iron to the par-5 fourth green, at exactly 4:44 P.M., May 16, is one of the best shots I've ever seen him hit. And for all the lost balls and pulled putts, we're having a great time. Yes, Mr. Van Halen's swing sucks--for the moment--but his head is on straight and his attitude is good.

Afterward, on our way to the parking lot, Eddie tells me that he can't wait to see how good a golfer Wolfgang turns out to be. Just before he climbs into this car, he offers a parting thought, conjuring his best Sammy Davis Jr.: "You know," Eddie says, "you might not fully understand at this point in your life, but you'd better smell the cheese more often, so you know when it's getting old."

It's that Kite joke again, I guess. But whatever, you gotta love this guy.


Report by Ron Del Barrio and Andy Meisler.
© 2001 Maximum Golf.