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 Eddie
Van Halen
Monday
July 30, 2001
His name is synonymous with rock-n-roll. Eddie Van Halen spent 25 years playing hard, on and off stage! But that was then and this is now. Stricken with tongue cancer, the once hard drinking, chain-smoking rocker is slowing down.
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Golf instructor Ron Del Barrio met Eddie 11years ago at a celebrity golf game. As Ron learned, his teammates, which also included rocker Tommy Lee, were more intent on drinking than driving.
After Eddie's embarrassing performance on the links, he decided to take the sport more seriously. He hired Ron as a coach and what started our as just a professional relationship blossomed into much more. Ron says, "He has become my best friend I’ve ever had. We share things that I don't share with anyone and vice versa."
One of the things Eddie’s shared with Ron is his struggle with cancer. Ron chronicled Eddie’s story in the August issue of Maximum Golf magazine. Ron says, "He is still battling it. He's fighting a good fight. He is doing well. He says he's never felt better than he does now."
Eddie hasn't let his health problems keep him from making music. He's getting ready to release a new album and has been in talks with Van Halen's original singer, David Lee Roth, about possibly playing together again. But Ron says it's his wife, actress Valerie
Bertinelli, and son Wolfgang that give Eddie the strength to keep up his brave fight.
Ron says, "That is his most important thing. His family is more important that anything, than music, than anything."
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