{"id":11076,"date":"2020-11-17T16:08:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-17T23:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=11076"},"modified":"2020-11-19T16:14:39","modified_gmt":"2020-11-19T23:14:39","slug":"kid-groupie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2020\/11\/17\/kid-groupie\/","title":{"rendered":"Kid Groupie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vulture.com\/article\/van-halen-lost-weekend-mtv-history.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">from Vulture<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Our \u2018Lost\u2019 Weekend With Van Halen<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A couple college dudes won an MTV contest to tour with Van Halen. Then all hell broke loose.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>By\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vulture.com\/author\/chris-lee\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Chris Lee<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Van Halen - &quot;MTV&#039;s Lost Weekend With Van Halen&quot; + Outtakes\" width=\"1080\" height=\"810\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bQR_NYBEmEg?feature=oembed\"  allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>On an overcast morning<\/strong>\u00a0in the spring of 1984, Kurt Jefferis and Tom Winnick, a couple of college-age bros of no particular renown, departed the world of normalcy in a stretch limousine to embark on a rock-and-roll fantasy. Their destination: Detroit.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>More accurately: oblivion. Jefferis, a 20-year-old department-store stock clerk, had bested more than a million other competitors to win the MTV contest \u201cLost Weekend With\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vulture.com\/article\/best-van-halen-songs-chuck-klosterman.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Van Halen<\/a>.\u201d He and his plus-one, Winnick,<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>a childhood buddy,<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>would in a matter of hours<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>find themselves backstage with the legendarily hard-partying Atomic Punks on a two-day bender that ticked every box of rock debauchery synonymous with the Big Hair era. \u201cYou\u2019ll have no idea where you are,\u201d Van Halen\u2019s vainglorious front man, David Lee Roth, said in a promo for the contest. \u201cYou\u2019ll have no idea where you\u2019re going and probably no memory of it after you go.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That turned out to be partially true. As Jefferis and Winnick tell it now, nearly 40 years later, in the weeks following Hall of Fame guitar virtuoso <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vulture.com\/article\/eddie-van-halen-obit.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Eddie Van Halen<\/a>\u2019s death,<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>certain elements from the Weekend remain fixed points in their lives \u2014 the private jets, the Champagne and lobster, the cocaine, the onstage chugs of Jack Daniel\u2019s, a woman named Tammy \u2014 while other details have been lost to the fog of time. The contest becamesomething of Van Halen folklore in the intervening years; it was the subject of a short film,\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZVidFIOL6NE&amp;feature=youtu.be\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Lost Weekend<\/em><\/a>, which screened in competition at last year\u2019s Tribeca Film Festival, as well as a dedicated chapter (subtitled \u201c<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=zrBolXPYq40C&amp;pg=RA3-PA17&amp;lpg=RA3-PA17&amp;dq=mtv+lost+weekend+van+halen+movie&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=3XY8ftxc3W&amp;sig=hOJ6gukvOYlRD_VE85fd0gCc-2c&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwi01qepm-TVAhVI0WMKHVpnACkQ6AEIaTAJ#v=onepage&amp;q=mtv%20lost%20weekend%20van%20halen%20movie&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\">MTV and Van Halen Team Up to Nearly Kill a Super-Fan<\/a>\u201d) in the 2011 book\u00a0<em>I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution<\/em>. The events surrounding the contest unfolded just as Van Halen was first ascending the heights of multiplatinum superstardom but only months before Roth would quit the quartet for a solo career. What took place in front of MTV\u2019s cameras served as a primitive precursor to reality television: loosely scripted situational intrigue that wound up far beyond anyone\u2019s control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[ <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vulture.com\/article\/van-halen-lost-weekend-mtv-history.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">click to continue reading at Vulture<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from Vulture Our \u2018Lost\u2019 Weekend With Van Halen A couple college dudes won an MTV contest to tour with Van Halen. Then all hell broke loose. By\u00a0Chris Lee On an overcast morning\u00a0in the spring of 1984, Kurt Jefferis and Tom Winnick, a couple of college-age bros of no particular renown, departed the world of normalcy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mirth","category-weirdness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11076\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}