ON FIRE

Van Halen might not have been the same group without Ted Templeman, the producer who discovered and signed them, then produced their greatest albums. He tells Guitar Player how it all began with a friendly tip: "Ted, these guys are hot!"

- KEN SHARP

FROM HIS DAYS as an artist with the '60s band Harpers Bizarre to his multi-Platinum hit-making forays producing Van Halen, the Doobie Brothers, Aerosmith, Cheap Trick and Montrose, Ted Templeman has always been content to let the music do the talking.

But through all his many adventures, no one artist has had quite the impact that Van Halen did. In addition to signing the band to a contract with Warner Bros. Records, Templeman nurtured them through the making of their 1978 self-titled debut album and continued with the group through its most successful era. In the following interview, Templeman reflects on how he first heard Van Halen and what went down during the preparation and creation of their ground-breaking debut record, an album that introduced Eddie Van Halen to the world and changed both guitar playing and hard rock.

Take us back to being invited to see Van Halen at the Starwood. What was your initial impression of the band?

Marshall Berle told me about them. I knew Marshall for a long time. He's [comedian] Milton Berle's nephew, and he was kind of managing them. He said, "Ted, these guys are hot. Why don't you just get out there and see them?" So I went down there and went upstairs, so they wouldn't see me. I was watching Ed playing and I thought, Shit! I've never seen anything like this.

I left they didn't even know I'd been there and I called [Warner Bros. chairman and CEO] Mo Ostin, and I said, "You've got to go with me tomorrow night to see them. We've got to sign these guys. So I took him with me the next night. We went into the dressing room and said, "You've got a deal." And there were other labels turning them down! They got turned down at A&M. Gene Simmons had taken them on, and they couldn't get arrested. I told them that we've got to do a demo. So we went in and cut all their songs in one day, me and [engineer] Donn Landee. And we just went on from then.