Humans Being

GW: Were you against the "Twister" soundtrack project?

SH: Yes, I was. I thought it was the worst timing in the world. You see, we weren't supposed to work the first half of '96. Eddie was supposed to get his hip surgery done, Al was supposed to get the vertebrae in his neck fixed so that he wouldn't have to wear that neck brace all the time and look like a paraplegic, and I was having a baby with my wife. Everyone knew that. That was the rule, but they changed it.

GW: Then why did you agree to work on the "Twister" project?

SH: Ray [Danniels] convinced me that "Twister" was going to be one of the biggest movies of the year, and that we needed to do it because the money we'd make off this project would carry us through '96. It would carry us through my wife having our baby, the two months I wanted to spend with them afterwards, up until it was time to start recording the next Van Halen record. I told Ray that if what he was telling me was the truth, then I'd sacrifice and work on the project. He completely conned me. When I found out about the shuffling of songs on this project, I blew my lid.

GW: Van Halen's contribution to the Twister soundtrack was a rocker and an instrumental. Wasn't that the original plan?

SH: The rocker was, but not the instrumental. I had written lyrics to a song called "The Silent Extreme," which Alex later renamed "Humans Being," and Eddie and I were working on a ballad,"Between Us Two," with Bruce Fairbairn. Those were the two songs I thought were going to be on the soundtrack. Bruce didn't care for the rock tune that much, but he absolutely loved the ballad. So, we record the two songs. Bruce says they're done, and I tell them I'm flying back to Maui because I didn't like leaving my wife alone so far along in her pregnancy. As I'm leaving, Eddie goes, "No, no, no. You can't leave yet. They aren't going to use the ballad in the movie now!"

GW: Eddie maintains that Alex asked you specifically not to write any lyrics that involved twisters, yet you went ahead and did it anyway. Is this true?

SH: I have no idea what they're talking about. In our first meeting about the soundtrack, Ed and Al told me they didn't want the song to be about Twisters, and I said fine no problem. Ray Danniels came up to me and said he didn't want a song about Twisters. Again I said fine, no problem. All I wanted to do was see some footage of the film so I could at least make some of the lyrics fit the action on the screen. Since Eddie and Alex saw the movie to make their music fit, I thought I'd better do the same thing to get a vibe or the lyrics. I asked the film's director, Jan De Bont, to send me some footage and he did. From what I saw on the screen, I thought the movie was about the infatuation people have with fear and how it can suck you in. Sometimes you're afraid to fall in love with a chick, but she sucks you in anyway. You know that if you start messing with this girl, you'll become infatuated with the danger that she represents. So "The Silent Extreme" was a song that talked about being right in the middle of all this, and I wrote this really cool lyric I thought said it all.

GW: "Sky turning black/knuckles turning white/headed for the hot zone"?

SH: Headed for the "suck zone." That lyric had nothing to do with tornadoes. Again, I have no idea where Eddie came up with the idea that that was tornado stuff. The only word in that phrase that even comes close to sounding like a twister is "sky turning black." But that line can mean anything, you know. The rest of the song had absolutely nothing to do with tornadoes. It was all about entering the silent extreme.

GW: Did you talk to Jan De Bont about your ideas regarding the lyrical content of the song?

SH: Jan and Bud Carr, the executive producer of the soundtrack, called me in Maui and we talked about the song. Jan told me that he had this folder in his possession that belonged to the guy who wrote the screenplay for the movie. He said the folder contained some 300 pages of technical weather terms that tornado chasers use, like "suck zone," "the bear is coming through" and "there's a dry line down here." He told me that if I wanted it, he'd send it to me. Now, I thought "suck zone" was a bad-ass term, a very teenage trip kind of thing. Jan and Bud totally got off on the idea, and they said that if I could use words like that in the song without writing about a Twister, that would be great. I told them I'd do absolutely that. Jan then sent me the folder the screenwriter used; I still have it at my house today. But when Al and Ed saw the words I'd written, they just freaked out.

GW: Eddie says that because you refused to fly in from Maui to the studio, you put the band in a tight spot as far as a deadline went for the song, so he had to come up with a title for it, "Human Being," and a melody.

SH: Alex came up with that title. He had discussed it with me during the Balance tour because he thought it would be a cool theme to build a song around. Yes, they did come up with the melody. The reason I didn't fly over from Maui at their beck and call is my wife was about to have a baby at any time. Those guys knew that. But you know what, I still ended up flying back and forth three times to work with them. These guys wanted me to come back and forth so much, I finally ended up packing my bags and moving back to my home in San Francisco to have the baby, directly against the plans my wife and I had. These guys would not compromise and meet me halfway.

GW: When you did show up to work on the now re-christened "Humans Being," did you, Bruce and Eddie sit down together to finish the lyrics?

SH: Bruce and I wrote the lyrics, period. When they told me that the ballad wasn't going to be used for the soundtrack, and that they needed an additional minute and a half for the rocker, I headed out of the studio. I had to catch a plane in two hours to be with my wife. I didn't care anymore because I felt I'd been tricked all the way around. Eddie pleaded with me and said all they needed was just a minute and a half of music from me, and then I could go. He wanted me to chant something like, "Bah, bah, bah. I hate this, I hate that, you dirty rat." I looked at Eddie and told him that sucked. He just said, "Well, do something. All they need is a minute and a half; otherwise we'll just make an instrumental out of it." Bruce told me that all we needed was 16 words, two verses,and the song would be complete. I said okay, and came up with this line: "There is just enough Christ in me/To make me feel almost guilty/Is that why God made us bleed/To make us see we're humans being." I wrote those verses in about 10-15 minutes on the hood of a car with Bruce. It was so cheeseball the way it was done. We wrote the lyrics, I sang the song in three parts in about an hour and a half and split.

GW: Eddie says that the tension was so thick between you two that he warned Bruce Fairbairn not to tell you that he'd come up with a song title and a melody to the record. Also, that whenever he suggested anything to you, you just stopped listening.

SH: I want to set the record straight. Everything that Eddie has said about me is the total opposite of what really happened. Eddie says I wouldn't listen to him, but he just never listened to me. Eddie says I wanted to be a solo artist. No, Eddie wanted to be a solo artist. Bruce Fairbairn pulled me to the side once and said, "Sammy, I don't know what's wrong with Eddie. I don't care if you wrote "Stairway To Heaven," right now Eddie wouldn't want to record it because it's something that you want to do. For some reason, this guy's has it in for you." Now, this is Bruce Fairbairn saying this to me. He felt so sorry for me and the situation I was in, he wouldn't even let Eddie into the same room with me when I was singing. He couldn't get anything done with Eddie hanging around the control room because he was interfering so much. If I would go up on a high note, Eddie would want a low one. That's how petty the situation had become.