Metal Overview: Van Halen (Roth Era)

Happy October fellow Otaku & Metalheads!

Normally when it comes to this month, I examine the career of a group that’s either incredibly spooky, or really gothic. Not this year! For 2021, I wanted to cover a band that’s anything but spooky or gothic. As many of you know, Eddie Van Halen passed away last year due to stroke, effectively ending the storied band that shared his name. So, to pay tribute to a musical icon, I’m devoted this normally scary month to one of the biggest groups ever. Normally, I’d split this into 3 separate posts, but an opportunity came up. Perhaps more than any other band I’ve covered for this occasion, Van Halen has gone through some highly distinct periods in their career. So, to start things off, I’m going to cover the beginning era of the band, when a badass Jew fronted the group. So, without delay, here’s my look at the David Lee Roth era of Van Halen. Let’s begin!

Van Halen (1978) ***

Our story begins in the early to mid 1950s in a little nation known as the Netherlands. Amsterdan, to be exact. In 1953 & 1955 respectively, brothers Alex Van Halen and Eddie Van Halen were born. Their parents were Dutch musician Jan Van Halen and Indonesian-born Indo Eugenia Van Beers, so their heritage was already something unique. The family would move to Pasadena, California, in 1962, and shortly after Eddie began studying classical piano by ear. He would become so good, he won an annual piano recital contest 2 or 3 years in a row, despite never mastering the ability to sight-read sheet music. Eddie and Alex would begin playing music together in the 1960s, with Eddie on drums and Alex on guitar, but out of out frustration and brotherly competition, Eddie said to his brother: “OK, you play drums and I'll play your guitar”

In 1964, Eddie & Alex had formed their first band, Broken Combs. As they became more popular playing backyard parties and local high school functions, they changed their name to the Trojan Rubber Co, then to Genesis in 1972, but would later become Mammoth when they discovered Genesis was already a major-label band. At the time Eddie was both vocalist and lead guitarist and friend Mark Stone on bass, but it would be a chance encounter with Indiana-born, Pasadena transplant David Lee Roth that things really took shape. Eddie & Alex were renting a sound system from Roth for 10 dollars a night, but ultimately decided to save costs by simply having Roth become the band’s lead singer. Come 1974, Roth had been in the band for about a year, when they decided to replace the Stone, who wasn’t sure about a career in music. To replace him, Eddie brought on  Michael Anthony Sobolewski, a Pasadena college music-classmate of Eddie. Not only that, but in the same year, then changed their name to Van Halen, and the rest was history.

As for their beginning self-titled album, Wikipedia has this to say:

“Van Halen began recording demos in 1976. However, a three-track tape financed by Gene Simmons attracted no interest from record labels. Guitarist Eddie Van Halen was not convinced of the quality of the material because they could not make the recordings with their own equipment. Simmons left to tour with Kiss after recording the demos, but said he would try to secure Van Halen a record deal afterwards.

After recording the demos, the band was offered several concerts. At a sold-out show in their hometown, Pasadena, the group's future manager, Marshall Berle, discovered the band. He and musical entrepreneur Kim Fowley paired them with punk rock band Venus and the Razorblades for a gig at the Whisky a Go Go. After being well received by Berle at the Whisky a Go Go, the band gained the attention of Mo Ostin and Ted Templeman of Warner Bros. Ostin and Templeman were impressed with the band's subsequent performance at the Starwood, and Van Halen proceeded to sign a contract with Warner.The recording of their debut album began in October 1977 and lasted three weeks. With producer Ted Templeman, it was mostly recorded live. "Runnin' with the Devil", "Jamie's Cryin'", "Feel Your Love Tonight" and "Ice Cream Man" contain guitar overdubs. Overall, the album cost approximately $40,000 to produce.

"We didn't have a ton of material," recalled bassist Michael Anthony, "so we basically just took our live show and all the songs we knew and went for it. The whole album only took a couple of weeks. Ted Templeman wanted to make a big, powerful guitar record, and he had all he needed in what Eddie was doing."

The subsequent tour began with the band opening for Journey, along with Montrose, in the United States. They later opened for Black Sabbath in Europe and the United States.”

The album would go onto have a great amount of success. Van Halen would reach number 19 on the Billboard Top 200, and their cover of The Kinks' "You Really Got Me"would be on there for three weeks, peaking at number 36. By August the 7th in 1996, the album was re-certified by the RIAA for selling ten million copies in the United States alone. Van Halen remains One of only six rock bands to release two RIAA Diamond status albums, and it remains one of the group’s two best-selling albums (The other I’ll talk about at the end).

Best Track? Runnin' with the Devil was always a banger of a track (Not to mention a great opener), and really shows off everybody’s talent. From Roth’s subperb vocal work, to Eddie’s amazing guitar playing, to his brother Alex’s ability to smash the drums, and Michael Anthony’s bass playing, the song displays what the band was capable of. It’s intense, it gets your blood pumping....what more could you ask for!?

Runnin' with the Devil

Worst Track? I dare you. No.....I TRIPLE DOG DARE you to find a single bad piece of music on here! Every single song is great, and despite Eruption being just a short 1 minute & 42 seconds, it is on record for being one of the best guitar tracks ever put onto a record. Vah Halen, an absolutely perfect way to start a career, and a great piece of 70s Hard Rock/Heavy Metal in it’s own right. Next album!

Van Halen II (1979)

If there’s one thing that people can give Van Halen credit for, it’s that the band works fast in addition to working hard & well. Less than a year after the release of their highly successful self-titled debut, recording of their 2nd album began on December 10, 1978 at Sunset Studio a week after their first world tour. The band went with using a Putnam 610 console to record the record, which was similar to what Eddie Van Halen would put in his home studio in 1983. Curiously, many of the songs of this release were known to have existed prior to the release of their debut, and are present on the 1976 Gene Simmons demos, as well as the  1977 Ted Templeman ones. Some of these included an early version of "Beautiful Girls" (then known as "Bring On the Girls") and "Somebody Get Me a Doctor ". So, after just a single week of recording, Van Halen II was released on the 23rd of March, 1979. Commercially, VHII would go on to have a great degree of success, reaching no. 6 on the Billboard 200, and no. 23 on the UK Charts. The album would go on to be certified platinum 5 times in 2004, and would sell 5.7 million copies in the United States by that same year.  

Best Track? Dance The Night Away, like the opener from their first output, deserves to be the first song you hear. It’s got a similar pacing when compared to Runnin' with the Devil, but the instrumentation has a hint of blues to it, and David Lee Roth has a little more crooning in his voice. Certainly an interesting way for VHII to start on.

Dance The Night Away

Worst Track? Much like their first album, there’s not a single bad track on here! As Timothy White said in his 1979 Rolling Stone review: “Scattered throughout Van Halen's second album are various Vanilla Fudge bumps and grinds, an Aerosmith-derived pseudobravado, a bit of Bad Company basement funk and even a few Humble Pie miniraveups”. Basically, there’s something for everybody on here. If there’s one fault to be had with VHII, it would be that the record on the whole fundamentally comes across like a carbon copy of their first release. This isn’t necessarily bad, as said first record was a musical juggernaut, but at the same time there are enough similarities where you may scratch your head over this.

Van Halen II. Similar to their first outing, but at the same time still has a great deal of care & quality put into it. If you loved their first release, then you definitely get a kick out of this also. Next album!

Women and Children First (1980)

Released on the 26th of March, 1980, Van Halen’s 3rd outing followed some similar guidelines that the last 2 albums did. The band recorded in Hollywood at Sunset Studios, and they managed to do it in about 2 weeks time. However, there were also a number of differences as well. For starters, there was a little experimentation to be hand: there were more studio overdubs, less emphasis on backing vocals (2 songs were recorded in a Cherokee Studios demo in 1974, before Michael Anthony had joined them), female backing vocals (the only time they were ever used in the band’s history), and the first usage of electric keyboard/piano.

Women and Children First would go on to be very well received by critics & Van Halen fans alike. It would reach No. 6 on the Billboard 200 like their last album did, and would be at the No. 51 spot by the end of the year.  David Fricke of Rolling Stone magazine highlighted the songs, Romeo Delight, Everybody Wants Some!!, and Loss of Control, calling them "works of high-volume art". He also praised the band, calling them "exceptionally good players". In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine rated Women and Children First with 4.5 stars out of 5. He called the release “mature, or at least ... a little serious” and noted that “there's a bit of a dark heart beating on this record”.

Best Track? Gotta give to the two iconic openers And The Cradle Will Rock and Everybody Wants Some. As great as the album is on the whole (And by extent most Van Halen albums), there’s just something about the beginning that has a bit more of a punch. The former song once again occupies that mid-level of pacing, which in turn gives it quite a bit of punch. Everybody Wants Some, on the other hand, is a much faster song. It’s wilder, more chaotic, but it doesn’t fly off the tracks. The track also happens to come across as a bit more metallic also, and said metal nature would come out more & more as the 80s would go on.

And The Cradle Will Rock

Everybody Wants Some!!

Worst Track? Once again, there isn’t a single damn thing on here that’s bad! Somehow, someway, Van Halen have managed to have an incredible level of quality across their earliest work so far. There’s no slipups in the recording or production process, and the band are giving it their all in their respective role. As their first release in the 1980s, Women and Children First continues the band’s streak of great records. Next album!

Fair Warning (1981)

And here is where we see the cracks begin to form in the band’s ranks. In 1981 as they were recording their 4th album, artistic tensions rose, as Eddie desired darker and more complex songs in minor keys, which clashed with David Lee Roth’s pop tastes and style. Fortunately (Or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), Roth and veteran Warner Bros rock producer Ted Templeman acquiesced to Eddie's wishes on the record. Released on the 29th of April, 1981, Fair Warning ended up being the slowest-selling of the David Lee Roth era, and it only got platinum status after $250,000 of payola pushed it up nationwide from 400k copies. Ultimately, it managed to seel more than two million copies. Whether the band knew that payola was involved or not, nobody has ever said.

Despite the disappointing sales, the album would be greeted with mostly positive reviews from critics. Robert Christgau of The Village Voice's rated the album at a B-, signifying "a competent or mildly interesting record that will usually feature at least three worthwhile cuts." He stated that Fair Warning featured “not just Eddie's latest sound effects, but a few good jokes along with the mean ones and a rhythm section that can handle punk speed emotionally and technically.” He would also explain that “at times Eddie could even be said to play an expressive – lyrical? – role. Of course, what he's expressing is hard to say. Technocracy putting a patina on cynicism”. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic found the album fairly positive, stating that “it's a dark, strange beast, partially because it lacks any song as purely fun as the hits from the first three records” and that “whatever the reason, Fair Warning winds up as a dark, dirty, nasty piece of work." He went on to say that "dull it is not and Fair Warning contains some of the fiercest, hardest music that Van Halen ever made. There's little question that Eddie Van Halen won whatever internal skirmishes they had, even with the lack of a single dedicated instrumental showcase". He concluded that "nastiness is the defining characteristic of Fair Warning, which certainly doesn't make it bunches of fun, but it showcases the coiled power of Van Halen better than any other album, which makes it worth visiting on occasion.”

Best Track? Unchained comes across as the lone “Happy” track of the album. In a circumstance similar to something like Creepy Green Light, this is like a lighthouse standing on an island in dark bay, sending out a signal for anyone to see it. The instrumentation comes across as similar to songs off of prior releases, and Dave’s vocal work isn’t quite as harsh as everything else on here. There’s still a little bit of a serious on here, but it doesn’t feel as overwhelming as it sometimes is on everything else on Fair Warning.

Unchained

Worst Track? Compared to the previous three releases, Fair Warning is definitely a darker record. There’s not that much in the way of happy party & rocking vibes on here, replaced with what I can only and bizarrely call Proto-Guns ‘n’ Roses grittiness. There’s a little bit of upbeat energy on here, but this album seems to show more of the “Man Behind The Curtain” as it were. The instrumentation seems a bit more dirtier, David Lee Roth doesn’t have a much of a “Fun” tone to his singing, and the band is using more real-world/serious subject matter for the music on here.

Fair Warning. Certainly maintains the same level of quality as the past three albums despite what some critics say, but the darker nature of the content pushes towards the lower parts of the shelf. Still, it’s certainly something to track down if you’re curious about it. Next album!

Diver Down (1982)

And here we reach the first hated album of the Van Halen brothers. Don’t take this the wrong way: Diver Down isn’t a bad album necessarily: Released on the 14th of April, 1982, it would reach no. 3 on the billboard 200, and end up at no. 60 by the end of the year. On top of that, it would sell 4 million copies in the United Stated by 1998. However, it would be the circumstances that would draw ire from the brothers. The record company want some of the songs on the album to be covers. 5 cover tracks, to be exact. Their reasoning was that Diver Down had a greater chance of being a hit if it was composed of songs that were already successful. In retrospect the Van Halen hated this release like I said above (Eddie said that “I'd rather have a bomb with one of my own songs than a hit with someone else's”), but in a interview with Guitar Player magazine in 1982, Eddie said:

“When we came off the Fair Warning tour last year, we were going to take a break and spend a lot of time writing this and that. Dave came up with the idea of, 'Hey, why don't we start off the new year with just putting out a single?' He wanted to do 'Dancing in the Streets.' He gave me the original Martha Reeves & the Vandellas tape, and I listened to it and said, 'I can't get a handle on anything out of this song.' I couldn't figure out a riff, and you know the way I like to play: I always like to do a riff, as opposed to just hitting barre chords and strumming. So I said, 'Look, if you want to do a cover tune, why don't we do 'Pretty Woman'? It took one day. We went to Sunset Sound in L.A., recorded it, and it came out right after the first of the year. It started climbing the charts, so all of a sudden Warner Bros. is going, 'You got a hit single on your hands. We gotta have that record.' We said, 'Wait a minute, we just did that to keep us out there, so that people know we're still alive.' But they just kept pressuring, so we jumped right back in without any rest or time to recuperate from the tour, and started recording. We spent 12 days making the album... it was a lot of fun.”

Best Track? (Oh) Pretty Woman was the most popular of the 5 covers on this album, and this I feel that it’s the best thing on Diver Down. This is one of those kind of covers that doesn’t necessarily follow the letter of the original song, but follows the spirit quite well. The band’s instrumentation is fundamentally similar to the original, but slathered in early 1980's Hair Metal grit & dirtiness. David Lee Roth’s vocal work is music the same: he travels a similar crooner’s path that Roy Orbison did, but brings the tone & energy of the early 80s to the lyrics.

(Oh) Pretty Woman

Worst Track? Having nearly half of the album be covers is an incredibly frustrating thing. They’re not bad by any measure, but having 5 on the record because the record company wanted them there is just silly. The whole things comes across like the company didn’t have any confidence in the band to have a successful album of completely original material, and seemed like an attempt to exert more control over the band than anything else.

Diver Down. Certainly not an awful release by any measure, but the above average amount of cover tracks makes this the record from the David Lee Roth era the one I’m least likely to listen to if I’m in the mood for some Van Halen. Recommended, but weakly so. Fortunately, as time went on, and we would reach the year 1984, nobody was prepared for the musical juggernaut that was to come. Next album!

1984 (1984)

Following the tour that supported Fair Warning, Van Halen wanted to slow down from all of the writing & touring, and take a break from it all. They did manage to put out a stand-alone song, which was a cover of the Roy Orbison classic (Oh) Pretty Woman that I mention above. Unfortunately, the label asked for another album due to the cover’s big success, and so they recorded Diver Down pretty quickly. Following this recording, Eddie Van Halen was pretty dissatisfied by the concessions he made to David Lee Roth and Warner Bros. producer Ted Templeman, who both discouraged him from making keyboards a prominent instrument in the band's music going forward.

By the time 1983 came around, Eddie was in the process of building his own studio alongside Donn Landee, the band's longtime engineer, naming it 5150 (Named after the California law code for the temporary, involuntary psychiatric commitment of individuals who present a danger to themselves or others due to signs of mental illness). With boards & tape machines being installed, Eddie began experimenting with synthesizers to pass the time so he wouldn’t be bored during the construction. From this experimentation,  he composed Van Halen's follow-up to Diver Down without as much perceived "interference" from Roth or Templeman. The end result was 1984. Released on the 9th of January in 1984, it was a compromise between the two creative factions in Van Halen: a mixture of keyboard-heavy songs, and the intense hard rock that they were known for. The album would go on to have incredible success: so much so, that it would stay at the number 2 spot on the Billboard 100 for 3 weeks.....just behind Thriller.

Best Track? Like I said in my original review of the album, Jump & Hot For Teacher were the tracks that always stuck out for me when I listened to 1984. Hell, even before I listened to the record, I was always a big fan of these two songs. Both are energetic, upbeat, and incredibly happy tunes. The former is a nice take on licking your wounds & taking in the bright side of life, while the later is a funny take on the classic “Hot Teacher” trope. All the other tunes are absolutely fantastic in their own way, but these two in my view are the face of 1984.

Jump

Hot For Teacher

Worst Track? Like I said back in 2019, only the title track is bad. At only a little over a minute (1 minute & 7 seconds to be exact), it feels like a fluff track made to extend the already short run time 1984 has. At 32 minutes & 10 seconds with the title track taken out, you gotta listen to this album at least twice (For many of you at least) in order for it to stay in your head. Like I said in my review, I got nothing against short albums as long as the quality of the music is good, and if you take the title track out of the equation, then said quality is most excellent indeed!  

1984. My absolute favorite out of the David Lee Roth era of the band! Perhaps the happiest, warmest, and fuzziest out of their 80s material, it’s also the album I go to for when I’ve had an absolutely awful day. If you want a gateway into Van Halen, 1984 is the door to go through.

And that was a look at the David Lee Roth era of Van Halen. Easily some of the most iconic releases in the realms of Hard Rock and Hair/Glam Metal, these albums are still popular even now in the beginning of the 2020s. Now, we wait until the middle of October, for there is another singer that will take up the mantle of singer of this band, and help create some classic records in their own right. Seen you then!



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For a more complete history on the band’s origins, check out their wikipedia page.