But that day he was so mad, it was like, ‘Fuck this band, fuck this rock concert stuff! Nobody is coming to our show! They’d rather go to a fucking car race!’ His vibe was very strange, like, ‘Nobody likes me. The money was starting to roll in and Ed was always working very hard. “The band was really starting to see some success. Ed playing with his freshly-painted guitar in Logan, Utah on March 31st, 1979 As it turned out, it was also the same year as the first Long Beach Grand Prix. In the midst of our conversation, Ed mentioned that ticket sales for the important show at the Coliseum were very, very slow. “He had a real thing about people copying him. He was painting it red because he was pissed how everyone was copying his guitar. It was the black-and-white striped one he used to play. I pulled in the driveway and Ed was in the backyard with his dog, Monty, painting his guitar. A few days before the gig, I stopped by Ed and Al’s house on an overcast, rainy day. But they were just becoming a major arena-size band. They were successful on their first tour, opening for Sabbath, but were still an opening band at that time. Aerosmith with the headliner, but Van Halen had just begun to become a headliner. It was a two-day event, and on the first day there was a shitload of bands. Van Halen was going to play the Los Angeles Coliseum for an event called the CaliFFornia World Music Festival. “I just thought of another interesting tidbit. Here’s what he said in our interview, conducted in 1997: This guy is legit, and he gives the only recollection we’ve ever heard about when Eddie painted his most iconic guitar red. In digging through interviews that we conducted years ago, we rediscovered an interview with Wally “Cartoon” Olney, a childhood friend of the Van Halens. Here’s the inside scoop from an old friend… That makes it 35 years ago this week that the famous guitarist transformed his white guitar (with black stripes) into its even more recognized red/white/black colors. Legend has it that Eddie Van Halen painted his Frankenstrat guitar (also known as The Frankenstein) with the iconic red/black/white color scheme sometime in early 1979. We’ve just figured out that it was almost certainly the last week of March when he painted it.
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