If you were walking down Santa Monica Boulevard in the heart of West Hollywood on a rainy Monday night in early 1977 and happened to glance up at the marquee of the Starwood Club, you’d have seen two band names staring back down at you. The first was that of Yesterday & Today, a straight-ahead hard rock band from up the coast in Northern California who had already released their debut album a year earlier and were headlining a gig that evening.
The second was a quartet from Pasadena, out on the edges of Los Angeles County, who were making a name for themselves in the clubs of LA. They had a reputation as a fearsomely single-minded and ambitious band, but that wasn’t the main attraction. No, the reason why people were talking about them was because they had a guitarist who was truly reinventing what could be done on the instrument, along with an outrageous singer who seemed hellbent on bringing some showbiz to rock’n’roll. The band’s name? Van Halen.
