Hear Eddie Van Halen jam R&B, rock classics with Cheech Marin in newly unearthed audio from 1985

Over the course of his four-decade career, electric guitar god Eddie Van Halen made relatively few onstage appearances without the world-famous band that bore his and his brother Alex's surname.

One of the rare occasions that did find him performing without his bandmates, though, was a May 12, 1985 charity concert that aimed to raise money for the Malibu Emergency Room.

That evening, Van Halen teamed up with Cheech Marin – of Cheech and Chong fame – for a lighthearted but action-packed set of classic R&B and rock tunes, with a couple of Cheech and Chong favorites thrown in for good measure as well. 

Audio of that evening's Cheech/Van Halen show recently surfaced on YouTube via The Tapes Archive, and you can hear it for yourself below.

All told, Marin and Van Halen (together dubbed the Van Hey Mans) ran through a small handful of tunes – covers of Marvin Gaye's Ain’t That Peculiar and The Troggs' seminal Wild Thing, plus renditions of Cheech and Chong's Mexican Americans and Born in East LA.

Unsurprisingly, the audio quality of the set – which took place at the Firestone Fieldhouse at Pepperdine University – isn't exactly pristine, but you can still hear Van Halen let it rip at multiple points, wowing the enthusiastic crowd with the world-beating, tap-heavy fretboard fireworks they'd have normally only seen at a stadium.

Marin and Van Halen weren't the only ones bringing the star power to the Firestone Fieldhouse that spring evening, either. The benefit concert's bill also featured the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson, Stephen Stills, Dave Mason and Jim Krueger, with Jane Fonda, Michael Landon, and Valerie Bertinelli – Van Halen's then-wife – also making onstage appearances.

The surfacing of audio from the 1985 Malibu Emergency Room concert comes just a month and a half after rare Super8 footage of Eddie Van Halen playing an early configuration of his legendary Frankenstein guitar was posted online.

Though initially lacking sound, the footage was, just days later, synced to audio.