Eddie Van Halen’s Michigan family opens up about the real rock god – Detroit Free Press

The late legendary rocker Eddie Van Halen had strong ties to Michigan right up to his death. 

For one thing, his first wife, TV star Valerie Bertinelli, grew up in Clarkston. Van Halen’s former brother-in-law, David Bertinelli, has lived in Charlevoix for years. Just last fall, Van Halen donated one of his autographed guitars to Bertinelli’s son’s school fundraiser in Charlevoix.

So Oct. 6 — the day Van Halen died — is seared into David Bertinelli’s soul. When he talks about it, all he can say is, “I was glad I was sitting down. It was in the afternoon. I’ll never forget it.”

Van Halen was 65 when he died of cancer. David Bertinelli had stayed close to Van Halen over the decades and knew his former brother-in-law was ill, but he didn’t expect the death.

“It knocked me over. It hit me so hard,” Bertinelli said. “Ed was very down to earth. I didn’t look at him as a rock star brother-in-law. He was part of our family. Even after he and Val divorced — they went through some ups and downs — but they always remained close and they raised a wonderful son.”

Van Halen’s namesake band had a string of hits starting in the late 1970s through the 1990s such as “Running with the Devil,” “Panama,” “Unchained,” and the band’s only U.S. No. 1 single, “Jump.”

Bertinelli, who manages parks and trails for Charlevoix County, is a photographer in his free time. He has taken hundreds of photos of his sister Valerie and her first husband, Van Halen, along with the band, on road tours in the 1980s and 1990s. David had hoped to publish a book of photos with Van Halen contributing memories to each picture.

Bertinelli shared his memories and some of those photos with the Free Press. 

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Growing up in Michigan

The Bertinelli family declined to discuss the funeral arrangements for Van Halen because they want to keep it private. 

David, 59, and his siblings, Patrick, 56, Drew, 65, and Valerie, 60, were all born in Delaware. Their father, Andy, worked at a GM factory there. They had another brother, Mark, who died when he was 17 months old after he accidentally drank poison at a family friend’s farm, Valerie told People magazine in May. 

Because of Andy’s job with GM, the family moved around the country. They landed in Michigan in 1968 when Andy was transferred to GM’s plant in Pontiac. The Bertinellis settled down on Walters Lake in Independence Township along Clarkston Road. They lived near Pine Knob, now called DTE Energy Music Theatre. 

Former next-door neighbor Joe Fabrizio, 75, remembers the family well. They grew to be close friends, with Valerie often babysitting his kids.

“One summer day, Valerie somehow captured a Canadian goose with her bare hands and we still have a photo of her holding the frightened goose on our front porch while my astonished children looked on with amazement,” Fabrizio said.

Dad’s ‘square’ friend

It wouldn’t be the first time the Bertinellis would astonish Fabrizio. The neighbors kept in touch after Andy got transferred to Van Nuys, California, in 1971. In fact, Andy’s wife, Nancy Bertinelli, painted as a hobby and sent the Fabrizio family her painting of the Santa Barbara Mission, a piece of artwork Fabrizio hopes to give to David.

Years after moving to California, Andy returned to Michigan and paid an unexpected visit to Fabrizio’s backyard. With him was his young son-in-law — decked out in striped, tight-fitting pants, Fabrizio said. 

“We were having a family picnic and he introduced us to Eddie Van Halen, who was between performances at Pine Knob,” Fabrizio said. “Eddie didn’t know anyone other than his father-in-law and must have felt a little uncomfortable. Eddie was very polite, a gentleman.”

Fabrizio said his Italian family liked to perform music at parties. But Van Halen had to get to his show and didn’t stay long, he said. 

“Otherwise, with Andy’s help we would have persuaded him to play a song or two with us,” Fabrizio said. “Funny thing, although my then-teenage kids worshipped him, at the time I wasn’t really familiar with who Van Halen was and when I introduced him to the kids they kinda shrugged it off without realizing it was really him. They presumed it was just another old, square friend of Daddy’s.”

Good looks, good music

When the Bertinelli family landed in California, Valerie went from being a babysitter to a TV star. In December 1975, the TV comedy “One Day at a Time” aired. Valerie, then 15, played Barbara Cooper in it. The show, produced by Norman Lear, was a success, ending production in 1984. 

Fabrizio remains amazed at how Valerie was the kid next door one minute and then “there she is on TV” the next.  Most recently, she has hosted ‘Valerie’s Home Cooking’ on the Food Network.

GM transferred Andy from California to Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1978, but David Bertinelli stayed in California. He lived with his sister while he finished his senior year at Hollywood High School.

She was into Elton John’s music at the time, he said. But David was a rocker and had discovered a new metal band.

“She borrowed my car one day and I had an 8-track tape with Van Halen on it and she thought it was really good,” Bertinelli said. “She saw the back cover with Eddie on it and said, ‘He’s good looking and plays good music.’ ”

Van Halen is considered one of the greatest guitarists to ever perform. A self-taught prodigy, Van Halen reinvented the way a guitar could be played by using a tapping technique on the neck that changed how it sounded. He even changed how it was made, often building his own instruments. 

Rolling Stone magazine wrote in its Oct. 6 obituary: “Eddie confounded rock fans with what became known as ‘finger tapping,’ playing the guitar with two hands, kind of like a piano, on ‘Eruption’ and other songs. The approach was so revolutionary that Alex (Van Halen’s brother and bandmate) encouraged him to play gigs with his back to audiences so aspiring ax men wouldn’t steal it before the band had a record deal.”

‘Entranced with each other’

By the summer of 1980, David moved to Louisiana with his parents when Valerie learned Van Halen was set to play a concert in Shreveport. Their brother, Patrick, knew a local radio DJ who got them all tickets and backstage passes to the show. Valerie was on the first flight there.

“She had it in her mind, ‘I gotta meet this guy Eddie Van Halen,’ ” David Bertinelli said.

The Bertinellis made it backstage and Valerie met Eddie. David, who stood nearby with his camera, said the chemistry was instant. He snapped two pictures of them, which Valerie declined to share for this story.

“I was there from the very first moment they met. We were all backstage and there were all these other people in the room,” Bertinelli said. “I looked over and they were just talking to each other like they were the only two people in the room. They were so entranced with each other. It was amazing.”

Van Halen was scheduled to perform the next night in Baton Rouge. So Valerie and her brothers drove there so that she could spend more time with the rocker. 

“It snowballed from there and a year later they were married,” Bertinelli said.

The two married in April 1981 and were together until July 2001, when they separated. They divorced in 2007, but remained close right to the moment of his death.

Valerie was at his bedside when he died and hours later penned a heartfelt tribute to him on social media: “40 years ago my life changed forever when I met you. You gave me the one true light in my life, our son, Wolfgang. Through all your challenging treatments for lung cancer, you kept your gorgeous spirit and that impish grin. I’m so grateful Wolfie and I were able to hold you in your last moments. I will see you in our next life my love.”

On the road with Van Halen

During the couple’s 20 years together, David Bertinelli got to know Van Halen as a man, beyond a musician, and the two became close friends.

Bertinelli was a budding photographer in the early 1980s, so he would often go on the road with the band, capturing every moment he could.

“I’d take pictures of them,” Bertinelli said. “It was a difficult thing because I was a fan and I was taking it all in at the same time, but I got some unique shots after the show.”

Earlier this year, Bertinelli started tweeting some of his vintage photos. The reactions from people included many suggesting he do a book, he said. 

“Patrick said, ‘You’ve got great images.’ So I talked to Ed about it briefly and he was OK with the idea,” Bertinelli said. “My goal was to get him involved in it and comment on the images, but, unfortunately, that didn’t happen.”

Bertinelli said he shot “many hundreds” of photos throughout the years, most have never been seen publicly.

“I was able to capture things that other people couldn’t,” such as backstage, on the road, at home and in Van Halen’s famous 5150 Studio in California, Bertinelli said.

He’s still pursuing the book, even though his late former brother-in-law can’t participate in it now. But for Bertinelli the book will be a labor of love because, “a lot of the photos will have stories behind them.”

At home with Van Halen

After marrying Valerie Bertinelli, Van Halen grew close to the entire Bertinelli family, especially Valerie’s mom, Nancy, who died last year. Valerie’s dad retired in 1984 after 32 years with GM and died four years ago. Both were 82.

“There’s a picture of all of us in Louisiana. It’s Ed and Val … our dog, all in the backyard and he fits right in,” Bertinelli said. “He’s not a rock star or guitar god, he’s part of the family.”

Van Halen, an avid skier and snowboarder, bonded with David Bertinelli there too. Bertinelli lived in Park City, Utah, for 18 years before moving 12 years ago to Charlevoix, his wife’s hometown. In Utah, he was a ski instructor having learned to ski as a kid at Pine Knob. Van Halen would hit the slopes with him whenever he and Valerie visited Park City.

“One time, we’re skiing and he took this big, old digger and crashed,” Bertinelli said, describing it as a “yard sale” because Van Halen’s skis and poles flew off in every direction.

“I thought, ‘Is he OK?’ I thought he’d injured himself before going on the road to tour,” Bertinelli said. “But he was fine and I said to him, ‘That looked like a crash at Daytona.’ So sometimes I’d call him Daytona. But he got right back up and kept going.”

Bertinelli still teaches skiing at Mount McSauba in Charlevoix.

Cars and Sammy Hagar

The family’s good times extended to living under the same roof.

In the late 1980s, Andy, Nancy, Patrick and David lived with Valerie and Van Halen in her house in Malibu.

“My older brother (Drew) lived across the street and at one point Sammy Hagar bought a house nearby,” Bertinelli said. “We had a trampoline out back and we’d all get on the trampoline. The time we spent there was a blast.”

They had bonfires on the beach and played volleyball together, even recruiting tennis legend John McEnroe to join in a game one time, Bertinelli said. 

“I remember us hopping the neighbor’s fence to cut through to Sammy’s house to see him,” Bertinelli said. The band’s previous lead singer, David Lee Roth, had left the band in April 1985 and Hagar had taken over the job. 

Often Hagar and Van Halen would visit each other just to compare their car collections, Bertinelli said. 

“Ed had a 1960 Volvo he owned one time just because he thought it was a cool car and he had Mini Coopers, Lamborghinis and a Volkswagen Beetle Bug before,” Bertinelli said. “He enjoyed his cars.”

The creation of music

But underscoring the fun was always music, Bertinelli said.

Van Halen knew he had been given a gift and he wanted to share it with the world, Bertinelli said. That meant constantly creating and practicing music until it was perfect. 

“When I’d go to their house in California and crash on their couch, Ed would sometimes come in the living room and it’d be late at night,” Bertinelli said. “He’d be working a riff over and over and over, and I’d be trying to sleep. But he’d work all hours of the night to get it perfect.”

Bertinelli said he can recall a few of the riffs that disrupted his sleep turning into hit records, such as “5150” and “Dreams.” Often, his brother-in-law came to him, with cassette in hand, asking Bertinelli for the keys to Bertinelli’s late-1990s Chevrolet S-10 pickup. The two would climb in the truck, pop the tape in and listen to a song the band recorded on the vehicle’s speakers. Van Halen wanted to hear what the mix sounded like in different environments.

“It was neat to hear those songs before anyone else did,” Bertinelli said.

Van Halen’s brother, Alex, is the drummer in the band. Eddie had started out taking classical piano lessons before moving to the drums. But then Alex became better at the drums. So Eddie put down the sticks and picked up the guitar, Bertinelli said. The rest, as they say, is history. 

“You listen to all of their music and you hear the breadth of music they wrote as a band,” Bertinelli said. “Ed stayed true to his roots, but he was always evolving and changing.”

Wolfgang’s natural talent

When Van Halen’s son, Wolfgang, was born in 1991, it became evident early on that the boy had his father’s gift, Bertinelli said.

On a visit to his sister’s house in Los Angeles many years ago, Bertinelli recalls hearing some “really good drum playing” upstairs. 

“I said to Val, ‘What’s that?’ and she said, ‘Oh, that’s Wolfie up there playing,’ ” Bertinelli said. “Here’s this little kid, about 12, just rockin’ away. It was natural talent. He probably learned some of it from his dad, but he had natural talent.”

Bertinelli said Wolfgang has a solo album coming. On it, he plays all the instruments and sings. He’s heard the album and describes it as “amazing.” Wolfgang performed with the band, replacing bassist Michael Anthony in 2006.

“It makes me sad that Ed won’t be able to see him go on the road and prosper,” Bertinelli said.

Van Halen was a doting father, Bertinelli said, spending as much time as he could with Wolfgang amid a demanding schedule. In fact, Van Halen wrote and performed the instrumental ballad ‘316’ from the ‘For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge’ album for Wolfgang, Bertinelli said. The song’s name comes from Wolfgang’s birthday, 3-16-91, and it’s meant to express Van Halen’s love for his son and celebrate his birth through the music.

Giving to Charlevoix

Beyond music, Van Halen was a generous man with his money and his time.

In August 2019, Bertinelli called Van Halen to ask whether the rock star would be willing to donate one of his guitars for Bertinelli’s son’s school, St. Mary School in Charlevoix, for a fundraiser. He said Van Halen, “doesn’t normally donate his guitars.”

“I asked, ‘Could it be one of your red, striped ones?’ He didn’t hesitate in saying yes, but he then said, ‘But I’m not going to give you the original Frankenstrat. I said, ‘No, no, man I know that one is invaluable’ and it was too personal and worth too much,” Bertinelli said. 

Van Halen made the Frankenstrat — sometimes called Frankenstein — himself in the 1970s. It’s one of the most famous guitars in the world. He pieced it together with various odd parts to achieve the best elements of a Gibson and a Fender Stratocaster guitar all in one instrument. The original was on display in 2019 at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The guitar Van Halen donated to the school was an EVH Striped Series 5150. It fetched “a good amount” of money for the school, but Bertinelli declined to provide the amount. 

MusicRadar reported in 2008 that a similar guitar Van Halen played during the 1986 5150 tour and autographed was estimated to be worth $35,000- $48,000, with the starting bid at $25,000 at that time.

The one sold in Charlevoix “was probably the last guitar to be signed by Eddie,” Bertinelli said. 

The proceeds go to the music and arts program as well as toward tuition assistance.

“That’s the way the guy was — he was very generous with everything including his time and his talent,” Bertinelli said.

‘Reluctant star’

But Van Halen wasn’t without his flaws.

He lived the life of a rock star, admitting to a long struggle with drugs and alcohol, which contributed to the end of his marriage to Valerie. He was also a heavy smoker, likely contributing to his cancer. 

He got sober in 2008. In a 2015 Billboard article Van Halen said, “I didn’t drink to party. Alcohol and cocaine were private things to me. I would use them for work. The blow keeps you awake and the alcohol lowers your inhibitions. I’m sure there were musical things I would not have attempted were I not in that mental state. You just play by yourself with a tape running, and after about an hour, your mind goes to a place where you’re not thinking about anything.”

Also, Van Halen was never fully comfortable with the attention and fame that came with the music, Bertinelli said.

“He was shy to an extent,” Bertinelli said. “He’d do the radio interviews and TV interviews, but it wasn’t the first thing he wanted to do. He realized it was something that came with it all.”

Likewise, Van Halen would go with Valerie to her interviews as “a supportive husband,” Bertinelli said. But Van Halen often got pulled into performing or being interviewed too, he said.

“He was a reluctant star, but he had God-given talent that people enjoyed,” Bertinelli said. “He wanted to make people happy. That’s what he did with his music, his generosity with donating guitars and with always giving his time. He was just a unique individual.”

Contact Jamie L. LaReau: 313-222-2149 or jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.