316

The Zoo Crew has got something a little different spinning for the Zoo Freaks right now, and it is the kind of record that makes a room go quiet for a minute and a half. "316" is the short acoustic instrumental sitting near the end of Van Halen's 1991 album For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, tucked between "Right Now" and "Top of the World." Eddie Van Halen wrote the piece years before it ever got a name, and when it finally landed on that album it became the most personal thing the band ever put on a record. If you are hearing it over at THE ZOO, turn it up just a little. This one is not about the party. It is about a kid who was not even born yet when his old man first played it.

The title is a birthday. Wolfgang Van Halen was born on March 16, 1991, to Eddie and actress Valerie Bertinelli, and 3/16 became the name of the song. Wolfgang arrived about a month before the band finished For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, which hit stores that June and went straight to number one. Eddie had been carrying the melody around since at least 1986. On the 5150 tour he would open his solo spot with that quiet passage before diving into "Eruption," "Spanish Fly," and "Cathedral." It had been written with 5150 in mind and never made the cut. It did not have a title. It was just a little piece of music he liked to play when the house got still.

Bertinelli has told the story in her own way. On Wolfgang's 25th birthday she posted a photo of Eddie sitting with an acoustic guitar laid across her pregnant belly, both of them smiling, and she captioned it that Ed was playing 316 on her growing tummy before he knew he would call it 316. The legend among fans is that the music calmed the baby. Whether or not a guitar on a belly can soothe a kid who has not arrived yet, the picture is the whole story of the song in one frame. Eddie was writing for Valerie and for a son he had not met. When the boy showed up on the 16th of March, the untitled instrumental finally had a reason to go on an album.

Wolfgang has had to defend that story more than once. Some folks online like to point out that the idea existed before he was born, as if that cancels the dedication. He answered them plainly: going out of your way to say the song his father dedicated to him is not for him, just because Eddie had played the idea earlier, does not make it any less dedicated. The fans do not get to decide that. He is right. A melody can wait around for years until the right name shows up. This one waited for a birthday.

The studio version runs a minute and twenty-nine seconds. No vocals, no band arrangement, just Eddie on acoustic guitar. On the tour that followed the album he played it live again, a small quiet island in a show built on "Poundcake" and power drills held against pickups. Years later the song came full circle. On the 2004 reunion tour with Sammy Hagar, a thirteen-year-old Wolfgang walked out during Eddie's solo, sat down at the edge of the stage, and the two of them played "316" together. Fans who were there still talk about the grins. Wolfgang has said the song is where he started on guitar. When he was finishing sixth grade he wanted to play "316" at graduation, the song his dad wrote for him, so he learned it, and from there he took a shine to the instrument. Eddie never pushed him. The only record Eddie really handed him was AC/DC's Powerage. "316" did the rest on its own.

For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge was the third straight number-one album for the Sammy Hagar lineup, and it earned the band its first Grammy, for Best Hard Rock Performance. Sammy has said the title came from his friend, boxer Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini, who told him the rough word they wanted to use was supposedly an old acronym for "for unlawful carnal knowledge." It is not a real legal acronym, but the band liked the joke and figured they were enlightening the fans. The record took about thirteen months. "Poundcake" opened with Eddie revving a battery-powered Makita drill into the pickups. Toto's Steve Lukather sang backup on "Top of the World." "Right Now" was Sammy trying to write about something bigger than cheap sex songs. And right in the middle of all that volume sat eighty-nine seconds of a father talking to a son with six strings and no amplifier.

The band that made that record started a long way from platinum albums. Edward and Alex Van Halen were born in the Netherlands and moved with their parents to Pasadena, California, in the 1960s. Their father, Jan, was a jazz musician who put both boys in classical piano lessons. Rock got them anyway. Alex started on guitar and Eddie on drums, bought with paper-route money, a cheap Japanese kit. Eddie used to say he would be out throwing papers in the rain on a bicycle with a flat tire while Alex practiced on those drums. Alex got better, so Eddie handed over the kit and switched to guitar. His first electric was a cheap Teisco Del Rey. He figured more pickups meant a better guitar.

By the early 1970s the brothers were playing backyard parties around Pasadena in a power trio called Mammoth, with Eddie singing because somebody had to. He hated it. They rented a P.A. from a local singer named David Lee Roth, who fronted a band called the Red Ball Jets, and Eddie figured it was cheaper to put Roth in the group than to keep paying him for the gear. Roth agreed, partly because he had already been watching Mammoth blow the doors off keg parties for the kids from Muir, Blair, and Pasadena high schools. Another band already had the name Mammoth, so Roth pushed them to use the family name. Alex almost said no. He did not want it to sound conceited. Original bassist Mark Stone gave way to Michael Anthony, the singing bass player from a band called Snake, around the mid-1970s. They stuffed flyers in high-school lockers, packed the Pasadena Civic without a record deal, and eventually caught the ear of Gene Simmons, who cut a demo. The debut album arrived in 1978 and went platinum in under a year. The rest is the loudest chapter in American guitar rock.

Eddie died in October 2020. Wolfgang grew up to play bass in the last lineup of Van Halen and then stepped out with his own band, Mammoth, named for the old Pasadena trio. "316" is still the shortest road back to the man who invented half the tricks every kid in a garage still tries to copy. The official home for the band is van-halen.com, where the catalog, the reissues of For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, and the family history all live. The band keeps a verified page on Facebook, posts on Instagram, and holds the handle on X. Fans who want the deep cuts and the old stories gather at the Van Halen News Desk, which has carried the full story of "316" for years, and at VHLinks, the fan board that has been running since 1999. The same crew keeps a public hangout in the VHLinks Facebook group. That is the neighborhood. The song is the front porch.