Here it is, boys and girls, episode 80, the dream becomes reality.

I'm Bill. That's wendy welcome to episode 80 the

bill and wendy show wendy before anything else uh the world of music lost uh two very very big names

since you and i met yesterday please take the lead on this i i know how much they meant to you

well eddie van halen i am so devastated by this loss.

I really am.

I think Van Halen won was probably the first album I spent my own money on.

1978, the debut, I was in high school, a sophomore.

I had gotten albums before, but this was just, I listened to it nonstop.

I know Eddie Van Halen has been battling cancer for quite some time.

It's a bizarre story because I think it started as tongue cancer, moved to mouth cancer, and he was a really heavy smoker, and I'm pretty sure that's what did it.

However, he claims that he used this metal pick when he was just starting out and he always put it in his mouth because

when he wasn't using it, a lot of guitarists do that. And he said it was, what did he say?

It was metal. It was copper and something else. And he says that's right where his tongue cancer

first appeared. So he was

blaming the pick. I think smoking had a lot to do with it. Even though he knew that the cigarette

smoking was a constant thing for him, he still is saying it's the pick that caused the cancer.

Well, yeah, because he said that his lungs were actually fairly clear. So it wasn't

lung cancer, but, you know, smoking or tobacco or, you know, I don't know. I would think cocaine in

your mouth wouldn't be really good for it either. So that's bad too, right? Yeah. And 65 years old,

not old enough. And I knew he's been in ill health for quite some time. I was trying to prepare myself for this a little bit. But it just, it's so final. I know that sounds stupid, but it's done. And that is upsetting to me.

Thankfully, in 2015, I took, Jim and I took the boys to go see Van Halen live at the Tinley

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