Brothers

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes sexual content.

Van Halen’s growing success allowed them to open for musicians they loved. Where on an earlier tour they were the opening act for the rock band Journey, “when we toured the UK for the first time, we were no longer traveling with bands whose music didn’t speak to us. We were opening for Black Sabbath,” a band they all “worshipped” (119). Music critics and legendary Black Sabbath members Ozzy Osbourne and Tommy Iommi agreed that Van Halen stole the show throughout the tour. In his 2017 book about his time managing Van Halen, Noel Monk points out the unusual professional and personal respect between Black Sabbath and Van Halen: This “sort of upstaging almost never happens,” so it “is something of a mystery” (126) why it did not destroy the rapport between the bands. Alex Van Halen suggests that this is because Van Halen did not think of themselves as upstaging the more established band, but rather as paying homage to performers they idolized.

The European leg of the tour was the first time that the brothers were back in their homeland of the Netherlands since childhood.