1984

Van Halen rolled with the punches and reached the pinnacle of their success with the fun and funky radio friendly riffage of this new wave metal hybrid.  They had reinvented rock with their eponymous debut and found increasing fame and fortune with each subsequent album.  Although the group had used synthesizers on previous albums, it wasn't until the production of '1984' ('MCMLXXXIV') that they became a prominent element of their sound.  Eddie Van Halen began experimenting more with them during the construction of his  5150 Studios in Hollywood, California.  Anticipation was high for the new album in the wake of the huge success of his featured guitar solo on 'Beat It' from Michael Jackson's blockbuster 'Thriller' album.  Eddie would express at the time:    "It’s near completion and will be out in January. It seems like we’re taking our time on it but we’re actually not. The US Festival, again, hasn’t stopped haunting us. We were committed to do a radio show we didn’t know about and in the meantime we’re trying to do a record. We get a call, 'Hey, you’re committed to a radio show', and we go, 'Oh, God, not again!' ... We have all the tracks finished for thirteen tunes but we can’t use them all. The songs are four to five minutes long and we don’t like putting more than thirty-five or forty minutes on a record because you lose that crispness. It starts sounding like a greatest hit package from the ’50s. You lose fidelity. People give us shit about that too: 'Your records are too short.' You listen to a record from beginning to end and if you feel you got your money’s worth, that’s fine...I think this next one is going to be a hellified record. The majority of the solos will be overdubs. It just depends on how it feels right. There’s a fast boogie called “Hot for Teacher.” There’s another one called “Anytime, Anyplace” with a live solo on it. Lots of overdubs. My dad might play an intro for a song. There’s a song called “Panama” with a live solo, and a song called “Jump.”... I’ve been getting into keyboards lately. Donn [Landee, engineer] is going to find me a piano. There are two songs basically based on keyboard; one is called “Jump” and I don’t know what the other one is called yet...It ended up sounding completely different, but I still liked it... I think as long as I do whatever I do well, whatever they say I don’t really care. I mean they can’t say that it sucks. If they don’t like seeing me play keyboards that’s too bad."

The sessions were produced by Ted Templeman and featured David Lee Roth on lead vocals; Eddie Van Halen on guitar, keyboards, and backing vocals; Michael Anthony on bass guitar and backing vocals; and Alex Van Halen on drums and percussion.  The album became the band's biggest ever, going to number fifteen in New Zealand and the UK, twelve in Austria and Norway, eleven in Australia and Germany, eight in the Netherlands, seven in Switzerland, four in Sweden, two in the US, and number one in Canada.  '1984' sold over twelve million copies in the US alone.  

Roth would reflect:   "Van Halen has always come down the beach with a torch in one hand and a sword in the other, and that's the way we've always approached our music and our live show and particularly my interviews and I don't see how people can resist. In '1984', you can't avoid us. You can talk whatever you want about clothing and haircuts, but it's all in the grooves. If the music moves, then you've got it...Who was it, George Bernard Shaw wrote that after all the years of being an outcast, or being an outsider, the worst possible fate had befallen him - now he was popular and everyone was applauding him and he was acceptable. That's not something we ever considered. We're not forging a specific image here; a lot of artists try to do that, and if you're trying to be Jesse James and they're writing you up as if you're Louis Pasteur, I can see where you might lose some sleep over that. We never really sat down and decided what we were going to sell to the people - I've always been acceptable to myself, it's damn time that the world figures it that way too...I know for a fact that to a small degree, we've bred a small legion of imitators, copycats, mimics, people who are using Van Halen for their prime and sole inspiration. But even more important than that, are all the people who are just disgusted and revolted by our music and our presence and our appearance and the way I do interviews, and they've been forced to come up with some very substantial musical alternatives to Van Halen type rock, and that's why we have new wave...love some new wave music, I'm just explaining where it comes from. I'm talking about haircuts and shoes, more than anything...I'm talking about the synthesizer and a drum machine...I think there was a lot less mental pressure during the recording of this album. We recorded it over a period of a year or more, and I think during that year we must have spent - in the studio, actually working - I think at least two and a half, three weeks... There's a sense of ease about this album that I don't feel on the other albums." 

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'Jump' was a worldwide smash hit, going to number twenty-nine in the Netherlands; twelve in New Zealand; eleven in Sweden; seven in the UK; four in Germany; two in Australia; and number one in Canada and the US.  Roth revealed:  "Jump" is a song that we wrote for several different reasons, primarily because it is leap year and secondly, because I was watching television one night and it was the five o'clock news and there was a fellow standing on top of the Arco Towers in Los Angeles and he was about to check out early, he was going to do the thirty-three stories drop - and there was a whole crowd of people in the parking lot downstairs yelling "Don't jump, don't jump" and I thought to myself, "Jump." So, I wrote it down and ultimately it made in onto the record, although in a much more positive vein. It's easy to translate it the way you hear it on the record as a "go for it" attitude, positive sort of affair - I jog, therefore, I am, approach." 

'Hot for Teacher'

'Panama'

'I'll Wait'

'1984' ('MCMLXXXIV')

full album:

1. "1984" (instrumental) 1:07

2. "Jump"   4:04

3. "Panama"   3:32

4. "Top Jimmy"   2:59

5. "Drop Dead Legs"   4:14

6. "Hot for Teacher"   4:42

7. "I'll Wait"   4:41

8. "Girl Gone Bad"   4:35

9. "House of Pain"   3:19

van halen

Van Halen caused a seismic shift in rock music with the revolutionary fretboard pyrotechnics and fiery flamboyance of this utterly original eruption.  Brothers Eddie and Alex Van Halen were born in Holland and moved to California where they started playing around locally.  Eddie says:  "We played some outrageous parties. It used to just be me and Alex on drums and a different bass player. We used to be called Mammoth. I got tired of singing. I used to lead sing, you know, and I couldn't stand that crap! I'd rather just play. So Dave was in another local band, and we used to rent his P.A. We said, 'It's much cheaper if we just get him in the band!' So we got Dave in the band, and then we were playing this gig with Michael Anthony’s band – a group called Snake. They opened for us. We were all tripped out, because he was lead singing for his band and fronting his own band. Dave was fronting his own band. Then we all just kind of hooked together."

 One night during their several month stint at the Starwood, Marshall Berle connected them with record company bigwigs:   "All of a sudden Marshall walks in with [producer] Ted Templeman and [Warner Bros. executive] Mo Austin. I mean, it was heavy. Because I remember talking to other bands, and they've always been trying to get Ted to produce their records, but he only works inside of Warner Brothers. He doesn't produce other acts. And there he was. He said, 'Hey, it was great, man.' And within a week we were signed. It was right out of the movies, man, because really… Well, we made a tape once with Gene Simmons from Kiss. We flew to New York with them, and nothing really ever came of it, because we didn't know where the hell to take our tape. So we had a bitchin' sounding tape -- the world's most expensive demo tape, which he paid for. We didn't know where to take it. We didn't start walking around knocking on people's doors, pushing ourselves on them, saying, 'Hey, sign us, sign us!' We just kept playing everywhere, and eventually they came to us."

'Van Halen' was produced by Ted Templeman at Sunset Sound Recorders in Hollywood with David Lee Roth on lead vocals and acoustic guitar; Eddie Van Halen on guitar and backing vocals; Michael Anthony on bass guitar and backing vocals; and Alex Van Halen on drums.  According to Eddie, the sessions took:  "Three weeks. The album is very live with no overdubs – that's the magic of Ted Templeman. I'd say out of the ten songs on the record, I overdubbed the solo in two or three songs. One of them's doubled in 'Ice Cream Man' and 'Jamie's Cryin'.  All the rest are live! I used the same equipment I use live, the one guitar, soloed during the rhythm track, and Al just played one set of drums. And Mike, you know. And Dave stood in the booth and sang a lot of lead vocals at the same time. The only thing we did overdub was the backing vocals, because you can't play in the same room and sing with the amps – otherwise it will bleed on the mikes. The music, I'd say, took a week, including 'Jamie's Cryin', which we wrote in the studio – I had the basic riffs to the song. And my guitar solo, 'Eruption', wasn't really planned to be on the record. Me and Al were dickin' around rehearsing for a show we had to do at the Whiskey, so I was warming up, you know, practicing my solo, and Ted walks in. He goes, 'Hey, what's that?' I go, 'That's a little solo thing I do live.' He goes, 'Hey, it's great. Put it on the record.' So the music took a week, the singing took about two."

'Van Halen' charted at number nineteen and went on to sell more than ten million copies in the US.  David explains their crossover appeal:   "We're the band that sold a Ricky Ricardo rhumba in 'Jamie's Cryin'. Dance the Night Away is Santana, because we used to play all those weddings and those dances at the backyard parties ... I can point for you and go: right there we're imitating Eric Clapton; right there I'm imitating vocally David Bowie; right there is Bruce Springsteen -'Diamond Dave, you're a big man!' - but this is how you create a signature sound. If you're lucky to have it, there's no way around it. I actively imitated everything from the Nicholas Brothers tap dancing to Mick Jagger going 'Oooh yeah!' But because of whatever it never sounds like anything to you but David Lee. And when Edward plays you might never have heard the material before but you instantly recognise it as fast as, say, Jimi's guitar ... Metal is a bit specific.  The neighborhoods we grew up, learning, acquiring musical knowledge, were very separate neighborhoods, unlike, for example, New York City where Mr Chin lives next to Mr Steinberg who owes rent to Mr Patel and they all speak Serbo-Croatian. It's just the school system. Here [in California], the Venice Beach surf neighborhood is very different than San Bernadino Hell's Angels. Below south of the harbor freeway: 'Que pasa? What are you looking at?' And that all works into Van Halen. You can hear it - it's loudly diverse but you can't feel the seams. It's like if you go to a car show and you Stevie Wonder it: you can't feel where the Chevy turned into a Mercedes door frame which turned into – that's a De Soto grill! – 'That's my girlfriend loco! What are you doing?'  All those different neighborhoods add up into the sound, and to say it's one kind of sound – no! It's so much of a hybrid that you have to give it its own name."

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'Van Halen'
full album





All tracks written by Eddie Van Halen, Alex Van Halen, David Lee Roth and Michael Anthony, except where noted.

Side one
1. "Runnin' with the Devil" 3:36
2. "Eruption" (instrumental) 1:42
3. "You Really Got Me" (writer: Ray Davies) 2:38
4. "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" 3:50
5. "I'm the One" 3:47
Side two
6. "Jamie's Cryin'" 3:31
7. "Atomic Punk" 3:02
8. "Feel Your Love Tonight" 3:43
9. "Little Dreamer" 3:23
10. "Ice Cream Man" (writer: John Brim) 3:20
11. "On Fire" 3:01