Geeky Bob

Today marks the 46-year anniversary from Van Halen's multi-platinum debut album. To celebrate this occasion, I thought I'd share the following story from my youth.

In the fall of 1978, I was starting out in Middle School, and I made friends with another student, Gene, who was just beginning to play guitar like I was. We met because Gene was carrying a notebook emblazoned with the KISS logo, and at the time I was a big KISS fan. (Hey, no judgment.) Gene and I eventually played together in several bands throughout our Middle School and High School years, and we've remained in touch over the years. I visited Gene and his wife recently, and Gene recounted the story of when I came up to him during our 7th grade year to say, "Dude - you've got to hear this new album I just bought!!!" The album in question was Van Halen's debut offering, which had been released earlier that year.

When Gene came by my house after school, the track I immediately dropped the record needle on was - of course - "Eruption." Gene's mind was completely blown, as mine had been when I first listened to the album end to end. I had a reel-to-reel deck at the time, and we recorded "Eruption" on tape so we could slow it down, and yet it was still so @#$% fast. Neither of us had seen Eddie's signature two-handed tapping yet, so we had no idea what EVH was doing to play at such a mind-numbing tempo.

By my Freshman year of High School I would play "Eruption" at the backyard parties and other gigs that typical High School bands would get, though never as cleanly as EVH. (And these days I probably couldn't pull off playing the bulk of "Eruption" without some serious practice.)

Nevertheless, EVH turned my world upside down - but in a good way. To this day I phrase a bunch of chords on the guitar in ways I learned from playing Van Halen's assorted catalog of songs, and my efforts to learn what EVH was doing on each of Van Halen's albums made me a much better guitar player. There are few albums that I can literally say altered the course of my life, and if you read my blog from a few years ago titled My List of 20 Most Influential Albums, you'll see that I listed Van Halen's debut album at #3.

As he boarded his venerable longship, the mighty Viking warrior, Rudolph the Red, readied his sturdy craft to sail the turbulent waters of the North Sea. Once again, the fierce leader and his men would reign terror over the poor, unsuspecting villagers of the British Isles as the Vikings pillaged their way through farms and fields of Scotland and England.

As the crew completed their final preparations for the perilous voyage, the rugged chieftain leaned over the bulwark of his vessel to kiss his wife goodbye, and he said to her, "Tomorrow, we shall be victorious in battle. But today, we sail forth into a storm."

As she cast her gaze toward the sun as it slowly rose above a clear horizon, she asked her husband, "How can you be so sure?"

"Because," he replied, "Rudolph the Red knows rain, dear."

POSTSCRIPT:

I will admit that I saw the punch line from this brief bit of humor several years ago, and I chuckled when I read it. However, I couldn't find the source of the original pun, so I decided to write my own story, albeit with some AI-generated artwork. This illustration of Rudolph the Red was generated by the application at http://bing.com/images/create, where I asked it to create "a 3d image of a viking with red hair on a ship that is sailing through the rain." I think the image fit my story rather well.