“We submitted plans for a racquetball court”: Eddie Van Halen's 5150 Studios was decades ahead of its time – but it required a white lie to build

Eddie Van Halen's 5150 Studios was, at the time of its construction in 1983, almost as groundbreaking as the man's playing.

Even for a band like Van Halen, who were by 1983 headlining shows to many thousands of people, the traditional record company hierarchy still ruled. Eddie Van Halen's shattering of the electric guitar rulebook didn't necessarily matter much to the band's label, Warner Bros. – hits were the order of the day.

That hierarchy asserted itself in the form of the band's producer, Ted Templeman, who pushed for the band to focus on bankable singles, wherever they came from, in lieu of artistic progression – a tale as old as time. This dichotomy came fully to light with the band's acclaimed, influential, but slower-selling 1981 record, Fair Warning, and its covers-heavy '82 follow-up, Diver Down, which indeed produced the sort of hits Warner craved.

Bursting at the seams with ideas as he was, though, Eddie Van Halen had no interest in becoming best known to the public as a virtuoso who found his greatest commercial success with re-workings of others' material.

Going forward, he wanted the space – a space – to work up original material without someone looking over his shoulder, reminding him of commercial obligations, and without racking up those dreaded and formidable per-hour studio tabs.

Now under the proud stewardship of his son Wolfgang, 5150 Studios was originally envisioned by Eddie Van Halen as more of a personal workshop.

Ever behind on the times, record label suits still saw proper, established studios as the only environs in which a successful record could be made (see the absurd saga of Boston's enormously successful debut album, where executives demanded guitarist Tom Scholz re-record his home demos in exacting detail, but in a professional studio.)

“I didn't initially set out to build a full-blown studio,” Van Halen explained to Guitar World in a 2014 interview. “I just wanted a better place to put my music together so I could show it to the guys.”

Workshop or something more, though, there were some hurdles to clear first...

Eddie Van Halen's Home Studio (1998) | You Had To Be There - YouTube

Watch On

“Back then, [Los Angeles] zoning laws disallowed building a home studio on your property. I suggested that we submit plans for a racquetball court,” Van Halen told GW.

“When the city inspector came up here, he was looking at things and going, ‘Let’s see here. Two-foot-thick cinder blocks, concrete-filled, rebar-reinforced… Why so over the top for a racquetball court?’ I told him, ‘Well, when we play, we play hard. We want to keep it quiet and not piss off the neighbors.’ We got it approved.”

Much to the surprise of even the guitarist himself, though, the band's longtime engineer, Donn Landee, had a plan to level 5150 up from its original plan to a one-stop shop studio.

“Slowly, the studio turned into a lot more than I originally envisioned,” Van Halen recounted. “Everybody else was even more surprised than I was, especially Ted. Everybody thought I was just building a little demo room. Then Donn said, ‘No man! We’re going to make records up here!’”

You'd think the powers that be would be thrilled – no more worrying about studio costs! But this also meant a lack of oversight, the label surrendering control of the recording process to the artists, who would now theoretically be free of the pressure to put a lid on experimentation, due to time (and therefore cost) constraints.

“When Ted and everybody else heard [the plans for a full home studio], they weren’t happy,” Van Halen said.

Nevertheless, the album that became 1984 was the first to be recorded at 5150, and if you're reading this, you probably know how that went. A #1 hit single, an incredible 10 million copies sold – Van Halen's insistence on doing things their way, in their own environment, paid off handsomely.

Van Halen - Jump (Official Music Video) [HD] - YouTube

Watch On

Though labels obviously still keep a close eye on the progression of their artists' recordings, the ever-increasing ease of home recording (without having to build anything resembling a top-of-the-line studio like 5150) has rendered the you-need-the-professionals-around attitude obsolete – one can hardly imagine a C-suite figure sternly requiring that home studio loyalist Billie Eilish re-record tracks at Electric Lady.

As Van Halen told GW upon 1984's 30th anniversary, the album's monster success was a vindication of his singular, un-meddled-with vision, and further proof that labels needn't always fear their artists taking the reins of the recording process.

“Everybody was afraid that Donn and I were taking control. Well… yes! That’s exactly what we did, and the results proved that we weren’t idiots.”