OUT OF THE VAULT AND INTO OUR HEARTS?
Van Halen vs. The Press vs. The Public vs. The Biz vs. The Past vs. The Present vs. The Fans vs. Rush vs. Van Halen
Digging through CREEM’s slutty archives is a ticklish combination of admiring your collection of Happy Plants Cards and checking for priors. The real old issues go so far back in time their numbers have to converted into astronomical terms. And the more recent ones still evoke painful memories of wrong-way carbons, caffeine trembles and desperate prayers for brain death.
Wading through them for a purpose can almost be fun. This cheap detective’s search-and-employ mission was to arrange for window seats at Van Halen’s initial encounter with the crazy people who write those sick things in CREEM’s letter column and the ones that get paid for writing sick things in the rest of the magazine. Worse yet, my clients expected me to follow the band’s slithery trail right up to the so-called present as if 1 was a commentator on Snake Previews.
