Ain’t Talkin Bout Love

The next day, war broke out in the Van Halen camp. The brothers viewed this whole episode as an effort by Roth to hijack the band’s image for the new album. Newton’s reputation as the photographer to the stars meant nothing to them, and they sensed that Newton had really only wanted to work with the band’s lead singer. Roth, in turn, did want the album’s visuals to present him as the star of the band. Angelus, who ended up in the middle of this fight, says, “Eddie and Alex weren’t that familiar with Helmut’s work, and of course, Dave was desirous to be the center of attention.”

Things were no more harmonious at Warner Bros. headquarters. From Seireeni’s perspective, “This whole thing ended up being a big mess.” All day long, he was on the phone with the band’s personal manager, Noel E. Monk, and their creative consultant Angelus. “There was a lot of fallout from this. The brothers complained to Noel. I’m taking all these calls, talking to Pete and Noel. They’re telling me, ‘These guys are on the warpath and are giving me a hard time.’” He punched back by saying, “Hey! You guys agreed to do this. Your band asked for this.”

No one remembers who came up with the idea, but in an effort to bring inner peace to Van Halen, Warner Bros. hired famed rock photographer Norman Seeff to shoot another set of images for the album cover. Tellingly, when Seeff took the job he wasn’t made aware of the trouble brewing inside of Van Halen. Until recently, in fact, he had no idea that Helmut Newton had ever worked with the band.

Regardless, some wise decision-maker knew that Seeff was the right man for the job. The South-African-born photographer had a talent for taking pictures that made bands comprised of musicians who disliked each other look like they were the best of friends. For those around the band, the hope was that Seeff’s session would produce photos that would present an inclusive image of Van Halen as a group. In this manner, the resentments harbored by Van Halen brothers about the Roth-Newton shoot could be dispelled.

One day in late December, the quartet showed up at Seeff’s Los Angeles studio. Seeff recalled that he immediately sensed that all was not well with Van Halen. “Working with a rock group is always a challenge,” he recalled in a 2012 interview with M Music & Musicians. “There are times when a group comes in for a session, and I perceive there is tension among the members.” Seeff knew he needed to get the four musicians doing something, and fast.

Seeff suggested that Eddie plug his Ibanez guitar into an amp brought along as a prop for the session. Someone put a tape of the still-unreleased Women and Children First into Seeff’s stereo and turned it up—loud. The guitarist began playing along to the tracks as Seeff worked. Smiles soon radiated from the four musicians. A fat joint was lit, and someone cracked a pint of whisky. While Eddie jammed, the others laughed and sang.

From this round of photos came two iconic images. The first, which would appear on the front cover of the LP, shows the four musicians leaning in together while a reclining Eddie hits a hellacious note on his guitar. The second would appear on the back cover. The quartet stands abreast. A stoned Anthony, on the far right, exhales as he holds a joint aloft. Roth, on the far left, flexes his bicep as Alex supports the singer’s raised foot. As the drummer stares into the camera lens, Eddie points at Seeff, as if to say: parents of America: lock up your daughters.

Van Halen photographed by Norman Seeff

Before the workday ended, Seeff did individual shoots with the band members, but those were beside the point. Seeff had taken two transcendent photographs of Van Halen appearing more like four pirates celebrating a day of plunder than four guys who couldn’t stand to be in the same room together. In light of the intense disagreements that had resulted from the Newton shoot, this was a masterstroke. Once the band, Seireeni, and everyone else saw the results, they were ecstatic.

When Women and Children First hit record stores in late March 1980, a surprise awaited Van Halen fans under the LP’s shrink wrap. Along with the record, a folded two-foot-by-three-foot poster of Roth in chains, perfect for hanging on a bedroom wall—or ceiling above a bed—was tucked inside the jacket. Despite all of the friction, Roth’s desire to have a Newton portrait of him in the album’s packaging had won the day.

That said, Roth and the brothers had struck a compromise of sorts. Diamond Dave, after much back and forth with Eddie and Alex, agreed that the poster would be enclosed only in the first million vinyl pressings. Angelus, who so tight with Roth that he would later manage his career as a solo artist, says, “I do recall a discussion of the poster being a limited edition run because it didn’t represent the band.”

To be sure, Roth’s decision to fight for the poster’s inclusion wasn’t all about ego gratification. Controversy, he knew, moved units. As Roth told Creem at the time, “we put the poster in because it upsets people. It’s disturbing. It’s one of those beautiful things where there’s actually nothing going on in the picture, and you’re forced to use your filthy little imagination.” Plus, he added later with a smirk, “it’s always been one of my sexual fantasies to be tied up.”

With the bondage poster enclosed, Women and Children First flew off the shelves. It entered the Billboard Top Ten within three weeks of its release and went platinum by June. But even as the Jack Daniel’s flowed in celebration, the brothers remained resentful about Roth’s seemingly insatiable appetite for the spotlight. “They saw themselves as the sound of the band,” Seireeni observes, “and the band has their name. From their perspective, they’d hired DLR just to be the voice of Van Halen.”

Roth, Eddie, and Alex seemingly put this chapter behind them as the group’s popularity exploded during the early 80s. But the tension regarding Roth’s role in the band loomed like a tumor inside of Van Halen, lying in wait until it would eventually metastasize and kill the original lineup. As Eddie conceded to Rolling Stone in early 1984, “I’m a musician, Dave’s a rock star.”

By 1985, Roth had even bigger plans to grow his public profile. After he shocked the rock world by announcing that he’d left Van Halen, he looked to add “movie star” to his resume via his ill-fated film project Crazy from the Heat. Perhaps the observer least surprised about all of this was Helmut Newton. He had, of course, anticipated Roth’s ambitions for superstardom back in 1979.