Picture was taken in St. Louis
The St. Louis area McDonalds where a famed Van Halen picture was taken nearly 45 years ago has reopened. Photographer Richard Upper, who was hired for the promo tour, snapped a photo of Eddie Van Halen and David Lee Roth on March 5, 1978 standing in front of a giant McDonald’s sign and its single arch on Watson Road in Crestwood, MO.
Van Halen and Roth had just finished promoting the band’s first single, “You Really Got Me,” with radio station KSHE 95 when the the pair and Upper visited a nearby McDonald’s. Upper turned the food run into an impromptu photo shoot that has now become iconic.
The duo are seen dressed in Army surplus jackets and bell bottom pants as they eat. Upper explains the history behind the photo in a new mini documentary that can be viewed below and on YouTube.
“So it’s winter, ’78, [the] song’s out, we’re hitting these radio stations, they’re doing these interviews and so forth — and of course, we’re also hitting the distribution centers for Warner and Elektra — everybody’s just loving these guys, they’re so much fun. So we’re taking a break in the limousine and we go to this McDonald’s. You can see the jackets they’re wearing. They’re both wearing the same jackets. They didn’t have enough money to get nice coats so they went to an Army surplus store and bought these two Army fur line jackets,” Upper shares. “Somebody told them it was quite cold. So I take this picture of them standing in front of this — one of the early McDonald’s with a single arch — and that becomes just this impromptu photo shoot, but it becomes this photograph of these two guys just goofing around and it becomes hugely popular.”
The picture’s location had been debated online for years as being shot in Detroit until John Sebben of Keep Live Alive Saint Louis, an organization that supports the awareness of live entertainment and arts throughout the city, confirmed its origins as St. Louis.
“I told him it was definitely Crestwood because I did some research first just to prove what people were saying online,” Sebben shares. “The St. Louis County Library Headquarters has old Haynes directories which are like backwards or reversed telephone books where you can search by street rather than by name. And sure enough there along Watson — 9915 was McDonald’s, 9919 was Site and after that KFC, Shell and all these other items that were in the photo.”
Upper returned to the McDonald’s for a grand reopening and ribbon cutting ceremony on Thursday (Sept 29th). The photo will permanently hang in the dining room of the restaurant at 9915 Watson Road in Crestwood, MO. Copies of the photo signed by Upper can also be purchased via Rock and Roll Gallery.
