The Pasadena Star-News is reporting that during a City Council meeting on Monday, October 26th City Manager Steve Mermell was given the task of coming up with suggestions as to how Pasadena can honour homegrown guitar legend, Eddie Van Halen, who passed away on October 6th.

One suggestion, initially made in the staff report, would see alleyway Electric Drive renamed for Eddie Van Halen — or, as his name is written in the staff report, Edward L. Van Halen.

“Tonight, we can’t have a workshop on where we can put the memorial or where it should face at sundown and the like,” Councilman Steve Madison said. “The only thing substantively we should decide is to never call him Edward L. Van Halen again.”

Residents who live near Electric Drive spoke out against renaming the alleyway — which runs behind the Raymond Theater, one of Van Halen’s rehearsal spaces — concerned that it would attract significant crowds. That’s according to Steve Mulheim, the president of the Old Pasadena Management District.

Others suggested potentially erecting a monument somewhere in the city, whether that’s a statue of Van Halen, or a plaque on one of the band’s former stomping grounds, or renaming a walkway in the city-owned convention center, where Van Halen played some of its first shows.

The prospect of a Van Halen memorial in Pasadena brought out dozens of public commenters, including several from out of state, urging the city to take action, each with their own suggestions.

Some suggested renaming a park, several asked for a life-size statue, others want to turn his childhood home into a historic landmark. One person pressed the city to preserve the concrete where Van Halen wrote his name in the sidewalk outside a local liquor store.

Read the full article here.

Soundboard recording of Van Halen at the Pasadena Convention Center in Pasadena, California on May 29, 1976.

Setlist:

"On Fire" 
"Somebody Get Me A Doctor" 
"Babe Don't Leave Me Alone"
"Show Your Love"
"Runnin' With The Devil" 
"Let Me Swim" 
"Let's Get Rockin'" 
"Eyes Of The Night" 
"Simple Rhyme" 
"La Grange" 
"Honolulu Baby" 
"Eruption" 
"House Of Pain" 
"I Live With Fools"

(Photo - Mark Gromen)