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- [00:00]
Scott Bertram
Foreign.
- [00:07]
Jeff Blair
Hello again everybody and welcome into another edition of Political Beats, a presentation of National Review. We invite you to follow us on X oliticalbeats. Well also we're also over on Facebook as well and subscribe to the feed for new episodes through Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your audio. Find us too@nationalreview.com, click on the podcast tab. Where possible, go ahead and leave reviews. Help others find the program. We also direct you to our patreon page@patreon.com politicalbeats support us there. Help the show stay ad free as it has been. We have entry level for your support and some voting privileges from time to time. Mid level for early access to our programs and at a higher audio quality and our upper level best friends for early access access the higher audio quality Monthly exclusive content episodes, the Ask Us Anything show coming up later in December. Remastered episodes, playlists and more. All of that patreon.com politicalbeats now the part of the program where we thank some of our Patreon supporters personally for their efforts over the years. Thank you to Jack, Mark, Ngr, Mack Michael, Jim Peterson, Phil C. Captain America, the real one, I'm not sure. James Tucker, John Rosenblatt, Darren and Andrew Howard. Thank all of you for helping us make this happen here at Political Beats. You can join them by going to patreon.com politicalbeats My name is Scott Bertram. Find me on Xcott Bertram, my tag team partner. Standing by as always, Jeff Blair. Jeff, how are you?
- [01:56]
Sam
Well, I can tell you I'm certainly not standing. I'm not doing so great. I'm not gonna lie, Scott. I got a little bit too into preparation for this week's episode and tried to do a midair splits. And all I'm gonna tell you is that I used to be a lot more flexible than this.
- [02:10]
Jeff Blair
Oh boy. Well, we hope the recovery is swift and you'll be back to hanging from the rafters in no time.
- [02:17]
Sam
I'm walking funny, yeah.
- [02:18]
Jeff Blair
At Esoteric CD for Jeff on X and we welcome in our guests for today's program. We'll tell you more about why we're doing it in a moment, but Sean Trendy's back with us, Senior elections analyst at Real Clear Politics, a visiting scholar at AEI & Co host with another Political Beats guest, Jay Cost, brand new podcast called Stubborn Things. We'll hear more about that in just a moment. Sean, thanks so much for joining.
- [02:47]
Sean Trende
Us. Oh gosh, thanks so much for having me.
- [02:49]
Jeff Blair
Back. You sound better this time. Wiser.
- [02:53]
Sam
Older. Sean Eight years.
- [02:55]
Sean Trende
Wiser. Yes, certainly. Was that really eight years.
- [02:58]
Sam
Ago? Eight years ago, yeah. August, I think more than that.
- [03:01]
Jeff Blair
Actually. August of 2017. So a little more than eight years.
- [03:03]
Sean Trende
Ago.
- [03:04]
Jeff Blair
Wow. Sean, tell us first, before we get to our band today, a little bit about you and your work at Real Clear Politics and in particular, the new podcast, Stubborn.
- [03:15]
Sean Trende
Things. Yeah, so I've been with Real clear politics since 2010, so 15 years now. And my day job, my primary job, is analyzing elections, electoral trends, writing about demographics, and trying to do quantitative analysis at a level that average people can sort of understand. The podcast is actually through American Enterprise Institute. Jay Cost and I have been friends for a long time. He was at Real Clear Politics with me when I started, and we are trying to give a more historical and grounded view of elections. The both of us have PhDs, so we do understand this stuff pretty deeply. But I think what makes us unique is that we think that's the least important of our credentials.
- [04:09]
We want to have the knowledge base to be able to get down in the weeds and understand the arguments on both sides. But we think what's really most important is an ability to kind of communicate that and to be willing to apply some common sense when.
- [04:20]
Jeff Blair
Appropriate. And that's available now. Stubborn Things, where you find your fine podcasts. J. Not Jay. Jay's your co host, Sean. Sean is back with us this time. You might remember his voice from the very first episode of Political Beats ever recorded. And we'll give you a bit more on the background of that in a moment. But suffice to say, there are reasons we have decided to reconvene today to talk once again about the great American rock band Van Halen. And as we begin, we turn the floor back over to Sean, who can tell us why he loves Van Halen, how he got into the band, and why people should care about this music we're going to discuss today.
- [05:03]
Sean Trende
Sean.
- [05:06]
So my story with Van Halen actually starts back in eighth grade, and I was on a band bus. I just started playing guitar. I had a little cheap acoustic guitar that was so poorly out of tune. The 12th fret, which is supposed to be an octave above the open key, was actually a full half step higher. So if you played the 12th fret on the E, you actually got an F. It was. Regardless, I loved it. And I was on the bus, I think, to a band concert or something, and I was talking about with my friend Ken, who was a drummer, and he said, oh, you got to listen to this. He had an older brother and so he was always passing along the cool music to us that way. And he played. He. I took the cassette tape and put it in my Walkman, and Spanish Fly was up.
- [06:31]
And I just listened to that, and I was like, like, what in the world is going on here? I. He was doing things I didn't even know were possible on the guitar. And so over the course of the next six months or so, I used my allowance to collect all of their cassette tapes. And they were just. They were my favorite band for most of late middle school and high.
- [06:52]
Scott Bertram
School.
- [07:05]
Sam
Sam.
- [07:43]
All right, well, I guess it's time for me to explain why we're doing this episode over again. And this is a story that I guess we may have told once or twice, perhaps on our Patreon, but I don't think we've ever discussed here. So I. I will begin by saying that episode one of Political Beats marks the first and last time that we've ever taped an episode of our show where I've never actually listened to the music recording the episode. And I was been haunted by that ever since we went over how this thing came together. As I said on Patreon, it was very last minute for the first episode. We had been fumbling around trying to find a time, trying to find a topic, trying to find a guest, and then all of a sudden, it came together. I think it was Scott. You might actually know the specifics about this. Who said, hey, well, Sean said he wants to do Van Halen. We can do it right now. And I mean literally right now. As in three hours from that moment, we taped our first episode of Political Beats, and I had about that much time to try to go back and remind myself of some of the greatest hits. And, I don't know, the show sounds nothing like the rest of our episodes, not a single one of them. Even our second episode, we've gotten a little bit better about sorting out the format. And I can at least assure you that I was familiar with the band I was talking about. I'd had time to prepare in that case. I had no preparation time in this case. And it really has always haunted me because I later on went back to listen to Van Halen and all the stuff that I didn't know anything about, the albums I'd never heard of, the songs that I never discussed. Well, that really actually turned out to be. Be a lot of the meat of their musical.
- [09:14]
Scott Bertram
Legacy.
- [09:38]
You better call me a doctor Feeling downplay overloaded down the drain Somebody can be a doctor.
- [09:53]
You better bow up the ambulance out deep in shock oh, loaded baby I can hardly walk.
- [10:03]
Somebody give me a doctor.
- [10:07]
Somebody give me a.
- [10:08]
Sam
Doctor.
- [10:12]
And so there are only two show episodes of Political Beats that we have ever re recorded and. And I think those are the only ones we ever will really re record. And I suppose it's got to be some sort of cosmic irony or coincidence that the other person we did this with was Jay Cost with the Kinks. Okay, we did that one like the beginning of the year. And we had to do that because a couple of over determined reasons. It should have been a two parter. Jay had to leave early a lot of things. And this is a similar situation where like I felt like I was not prepared. I felt we did not do the band justice. And I guess that actually brings me to what it is I like about Van Halen. What is it that I want to do justice to about this band? Well, it's funny because I haven't. I, by the way, I've not gone back to listen to that first episode. I don't know what I said there. So if I sound like Peter, if.
- [11:02]
Jeff Blair
I. By the way, I don't recall what I said.
- [11:05]
Sam
Anything. I mean that thing was recorded in just a blur again at the last second. So if I repeat myself, forgive me, but Van Halen to me as a kid was, you know, just a phenomenon of like MTV and the radio. My brother might have bought a couple of their albums, but I was never into them at that time. In that age I was probably more into like radio pop and you know, Phil Collins for that matter. I wasn't into the hard stuff. It, like when did For Unlawful Carnal knowledge come out?
- [11:33]
Jeff Blair
1991.
- [11:34]
Sam
91. That put, that puts me in sixth grade as an 11 year old. Okay? So imagine the kinds of things you're listening to at that time. My brother was into the acdc. He was a year older. I was, but not me. All right, so when we recorded that episode, I was thinking, well, what did I know? I knew the, the big hits from the first album. I knew right now, some of those Sammy Hagar songs. But I didn't understand what it was that this band brought to music, how important they were in the late 70s for basically kind of cementing a sub genre of music that eventually grew into hair metal. But it really didn't describe Van Halen themselves in a curious way, because Van Halen themselves, of course we know. You know, it's. It's the Van Halen brothers. It's. It's David Lee Roth at. And then It's Michael Anthony, you know, you got the Van Halen brothers and it's the guitar technique that first jumps out to anybody, the advances that he made in guitar that I'm frankly unfit to discuss on a technical level. But you just hear, instantly you hear the sound of Eruption, and that's Eddie Van Halen. That's a style that everybody and their mother was going to try to be imitating over the next half.
- [12:34]
Scott Bertram
Decade.
- [12:47]
Sam
Sam.
- [13:18]
But then, you know, what you also find out about this band is that they had a lot of personality in between the grooves. They did a lot more than just the big anthemic stadium stadium rockers. They did cool, like, little side, you know, bluesy, folksy stuff. Group vocals like little Led Zeppelin tributes that kind of poke in and out of their material. The group had a ton of personality and that was just with David Lee Rothschild. The biggest thing that people will discuss about Van Halen is the, the break, the break between David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar. And the other thing that I've really come to appreciate now, now that we're coming back to re record this group, re record this episode, is that Van Hagar has a fair amount to recommend it. There are some good songs. There's actually one pretty darn good album in that run. And I, I, I understand exactly why people roll their eyes at it. Every criticism people have made about Sammy Hagar's lyrics remains perfectly valid. Some of the music is far too generic and keyboard based. They evolved into a very different and radio ready proposition. But the second half of Van Halen's career is actually also still pretty great, right up until they, they end it basically with balance. And then everything afterwards is like, you know, Zarby Dragons, you know, that's the weird, the weird afterlife of Van Halen's career is something we can at least briefly discuss at the end of the show. But really the story ends in the, for the most part with Hagar. This is, I appreciated none of this when we originally recorded the episod. I do now. And that's why I'm really eager to actually talk about what these guys brought to rock.
- [14:49]
Scott Bertram
Music.
- [15:10]
I found a simple life once so simple no When I jumped out on the road.
- [15:20]
Got no love, no love you carry up Got nobody waiting it out.
- [15:34]
Running with the.
- [15:35]
Jeff Blair
Devil.
- [15:38]
I.
- [15:40]
We just didn't do this band justice, clearly in the first episode, but that's largely because we didn't know what the show was going to be in the first episode. We were fumbling around and thought, well, sort of skim over some of the highlights. But our strengths. Our strengths are doing much more than that with our bands. And so Van Halen needed to be revisited for a number of reasons. I did love Van Halen growing up. You know, MTV played a huge role with Panama and Hot for Teacher and Jump being on constantly. I remember David Lee Roth's you know, Crazy from the Heat solo EP in the California Girls video. And the.
- [16:22]
Sam
Just. I remember that.
- [16:23]
Jeff Blair
Video. And then the split and Sammy. And so, I mean, I owned 5150 on cassette. I owned 1984 when I was, you know, in the single digit of age, wore out for Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. I mean, these songs, a huge number of these songs are just part of my DNA. I've heard them I don't know how many dozens or hundreds of times over the years. And so this is a band that I have not conflicting opinions about. But certainly, I think I'll probably be tougher on the Hagar era than Jeff will be. We'll.
- [17:01]
Sam
See. I think everybody. Hey, I didn't say I was gonna praise it. I was just gonna say that things to.
- [17:06]
Scott Bertram
Praise.
- [17:23]
Come on down. Turn this thing around.
- [17:29]
Tomorrow.
- [17:32]
Right now. Come on. It's everything.
- [17:37]
Right now. Get your magic moment. Do it right here and now.
- [17:45]
It means.
- [17:46]
Jeff Blair
Everything.
- [17:50]
And, you know, the split is so interesting. The split is interesting because around that time, my dad owned Synchronicity by the Police on vinyl, and he owned Heartbeat City by the Cars on vinyl. And then 1984 was everywhere. And so when I'm starting to grab these records, I'm probably, you know, six, seven years old, and my first thought is, wait a minute. The Police were hugely successful, and this album's great. Why would they break up the cars? Heartbeat City sold a billion copies and they broke up. And why would David Lee Roth break up with Van Halen? Why would he leave Van Halen? I was very confused about why successful bands would implode in this manner. They were making great music and they were really successful. Why couldn't they just go on and do that forever? Well, there are many reasons. We'll discuss today about why Van Halen couldn't work with David Lee Roth and then Sammy Hagar and then David Lee Roth and then Gary Sharon and then Sammy Hagar and then David Lee Roth and then David Lee Roth. So we'll talk about all that during the course of the show today. But really, you know, we'll talk first about where Van Halen comes from, because. And I think we'll discuss when we get to the first record, the debut, you know, trying to find the roots. The core of where Van Halen comes from musically is maybe a bit tougher than you'd expect. It's a band that doesn't sound a whole lot. I mean, you can hear elements, you know, I can identify a few things for you here and there, but. But this Van Halen sound that they produce, that they came up with, is their sound. I don't think they're really trying to grab from others necessarily. It's something that they developed themselves because they had the ultimate weapon in Eddie Van Halen, who could do things that no one else could.
- [19:36]
Scott Bertram
Do.
- [19:45]
From our roll. Loose to lose Nice white teeth.
- [19:56]
Real heaven I ain't fool Getting ready.
- [20:04]
Ooh, oh.
- [20:15]
I know what he.
- [20:16]
Jeff Blair
Means.
- [20:31]
So we'll get to the debut in a second. How about I fill in a little bit of backstory, a little bit of history of the band as we build up to. To the first record, famously. The Van Halen brothers are not from around here. They were born in the Netherlands and moved out to California in the early 1960s. Their dad was very musically inclined when they were young. Eddie learned piano first, actually, and was extremely talented on the piano. So the. The move to synth and piano later in the band's career shouldn't have been unexpected. And the brother started playing. Eddie on drums, of course, Alex on guitar, just like we've always known them. At some point they switch. Alex picks up the drum kit while Eddie's off and develops a.
- [21:14]
Sam
Passion. Delivering newspapers or something like that. Isn't that the story? Like he'd be out, like, slinging newspapers at doorsteps and Alex would be practicing on his drum kit that he's still trying to pay.
- [21:23]
Jeff Blair
Off. Yep. And got pretty good at it. And so at some point, Eddie said, okay, okay, okay, you take the drums, I'll take the guitar, and we'll go from there. They're formed a band in 1964, called it the Broken Combs. Gotta love those 60 bands name 60s band names. Played a lot of parties and high school functions. They changed the name to the Trojan Rubber Company, then to Genesis. Oops, Genesis didn't know that this.
- [21:48]
Sam
British in 1972, by the way, they should have known by then. Come.
- [21:52]
Jeff Blair
On. And later changed from Genesis to Mammoth. And Mammoth stuck around for a while. Eddie was singing at this point and playing lead guitar and Alex was on. They had a friend named Mark Stone on bass around this time. They started renting a PA system from this dude named David Lee Roth for 10 bucks a night. And eventually sort of collapsed and gave in and let David Lee Roth join the band to save on money from brenting his pa, even though he had failed, like multiple auditions. Now you're not good enough for us, but we do want your PA system.
- [22:29]
Roth claims he convinced the guys to change the band name from Mammoth to Van Halen. I have no idea if that's actually true or not. They played clubs, they played all over Los Angeles, played all over West Hollywood, and people started to really dig the sound. Later in 74, Michael Anthony joins the band replaced Stone, who was kind of ambivalent about actually continuing in a career in music and playing bigger places, playing Whiskey a Go Go, getting people out, getting people excited. At some point, Gene Simmons of Kiss is introduced to the band and he likes them A and he puts together this almost 30 track demo of Van Halen songs in 1976. That doesn't get the band a record deal. And eventually Simmons has to, you know, go play and Kiss. And drops the idea of trying to work Van Halen into a, into a money making proposition. But others are still enamored of the band and somebody convinces this guy named Ted Templeton, Templeman, excuse me, to come out and watch the band. And Templeman comes out along with a Warner Brothers exec and they see him play and.
- [23:37]
Sam
They'Re. He's a big hit on Truman. Yes, I've seen his name all over everything from like Van Morrison records, the Doobies and everything. Yeah.
- [23:44]
Jeff Blair
Yeah. And they, they love it. They love it so much they write up this agreement on a napkin. They come back the next week, they nail it down and they, they give them a two record deal. Wow. With, with, you know, with, with the monetary points that were very much in favor for Warner Brothers, but that's the case for a lot of bands when they start out and then they have to sue, get their back catalog, renegotiate. But that's how Van Halen makes their way to Warner Brothers Records, who would release this debut album, recorded late in 77, in just a couple of weeks, released in February of 1978. And I'm certain I don't recall specifically Jeff, but I would imagine that this one was included in our greatest debut albums of all time episode. Again, way, way, way back when in our exclusive content shows, because this first Van Halen album is an absolute grand slam from start to finish. One of the greatest debuts of all time. It's Van.
- [24:43]
Scott Bertram
Halen.
- [24:47]
Jamie's crying.
- [25:20]
Jamie's.
- [25:21]
Sean Trende
Crying.
- [25:24]
Van Halen won. You know, a couple things I think Back for a little bit of further backstory. You left out my favorite part of the Gene Simmons story, which is that he had an idea for a name as well. He wanted them to change their name to Daddy Short Legs.
- [25:41]
And he had a little, like, mascot drawn up. It was a spider and a top hat with, like, short legs. So we imagine the world might be a very different place had Gene Simmons. For those of you who believe that all things in life happen for a reason, like, I think this is a pretty strong argument in your.
- [25:59]
Sam
Favor. Yeah, I also kind of think, like, Van Halen's not the sort of band that would have looked great in stage makeup. So, you know, dressing their faces.
- [26:07]
Sean Trende
Up in top hats with, like, spider costumes. No, but, but like, so. So the thing that strikes you about Van Halen one, and it's a big picture thing about the band that maybe I should have done part of why you should listen to them. But so, you know, I listened. I have a musical background and I love the, like, virtuoso bands. Right. Like, if you ever want to do a Dream Theater episode for some reason, like, I can be your guy. But, you know, Dream Theater, Rush, early Genesis, like, they're all. It's incredible musicianship, but it's not terribly accessible. Right. You couldn't play this at a podcast unless you wanted everyone to leave. No one wants to hear Count of Tuscany except me. But Van Halen is different, right? It has arguably the world's greatest guitarist. It has one of the world's greatest frontmen of all time. Not so much a vocalist, but great frontman, great drummer, good bass player, but probably in the conversation for greatest, like, background vocals. But they're a party band. Like, they're, at their core a band you could have gone to a frat party and, like, heard playing, because they did come up through the clubs. And that's what comes through on Van Halen. One is you put that cassette tape in back in the 80s and you press play, and it starts out with, like, the horns coming, and I guess, like, someone actually drove their car past the speaker to record it. So that's an actual Doppler effect that's kind of mixed up. Then Eddie, you know, puts his. Puts his pick across the strings above the nuts, so it makes kind of this, like, high pitched clanking sound that just goes into this, like, rocking guitar.
- [27:58]
Scott Bertram
Riff.
- [28:24]
I live my life like this through tomorrow.
- [28:29]
All I've got.
- [28:34]
Reached out on.
- [28:35]
Sean Trende
Me.
- [28:55]
And that first song, like, if you heard he was the greatest guitarist of all time time, you might be Listening to it and thinking, okay, like I like the riff. Like, it's got a great sound, but it's got a really straightforward guitar solo. Two great straightforward guitar solos. And then that song ends, there's your like two second song break. And then the drums come in and he launches into.
- [29:16]
Scott Bertram
Eruption.
- [29:26]
Sean Trende
It.
- [30:01]
And that is just a two minute escapade of stuff no one had done on the guitar about. That's where he introduces his famous two hand tapping technique. And so the way he puts it, he went to go see Led Zeppelin in concert. And I'm a left handed guitarist, so I'm gonna have to think about the hands so I can flip them over.
- [30:24]
Sam
But. And I say, am I?
- [30:25]
Sean Trende
Yes. Yeah. So Jimmy Page was doing this thing where he was just going with his left hand up and no hammering on. It's called hammering on and pulling off, where you bang your finger on the fretboard, it makes a sound, then you pull it off and you get the open note string. And he was going up and down the fretboard with his left hand. Then he took his right hand and he put it behind his left hand. So he was effectively like acting as a capo on the string, kind of moving that bass note up and down while he did his normal thing with his left hand. And Eddie thought to himself, you know, that's kind of a weird way to do it. What if you use the two fingers on your left hand and then hammer on with your right hand above. That gives you a lot more flexibility. And you know, people say, well, people had done it before, that's fine. But no one had done it like Eddie Van Halen did. And he ties it, you know, you can use that then to kind of play chords, you know, like the first third and fifth really easily and minors and everything. He then used his musical knowledge from playing piano and playing violin. He actually works in a little bit of a famous violin etude.
- [31:39]
But it gives this kind of classical feel to it that was just. It had never been.
- [31:44]
Sam
Done. The arpeggiation in particular those chord progressions as he goes to the climax of it, that's a very classical run. It doesn't sound like it sounds for the time in 1978 of. Of a sort of classical style that you'd associate with people like Steve V or Ying V Maline, who was a kind of a competitor of his later on, but. Or maybe even Zappa. Zappa in the 70s, the late 70s, one of the very few people who was playing in that form. But Eddie Van Halen just did Something completely different.
- [32:13]
Scott Bertram
With.
- [32:23]
I am the ruler of this little world.
- [32:28]
The underground.
- [32:38]
Look around.
- [32:40]
Oh yeah Nobody rules these streets Are not right but me.
- [32:46]
Sam
Nobody.
- [33:03]
The thing about Van Halen that comes to mind when I'm listening to you discuss them is, is how the chops, like the incredible, like fiery guitar sound and also the classical chops are one thing, but there's also such formalism to the way Eddie Van Halen actually constructs these songs. Now, I say him, I don't know. These things are all group credited, but I don't really know who does most of the songwriting. And you have to assume the classically trained musician is the one who's doing it, right? The guy who has the ideas, the vision guy, right. But he doesn't write Prague songs. All right? Every Van Halen song is a rock song. It's a basic song. They have great chord changes. They have really interesting kind of a middle eight or something like that. But they all stick really within the basically the 40 yard lines of what you would consider to be hard rock to be. They don't ever try for something like Genesis, as you say. And that makes the sort of the Flash both remarkable and self contained and basically, basically undeniable. It turns it into candy. This first album. Like, the only problem with Van Halen one is the fact that almost all the really great songs are on side one. Like, the first side is so famous that the second side songs feel a little bit more anonymous. Except for Jamie's Crining, which is a really great famous pop song. But like, you know, it begins with Running with the Devil, then it goes to Eruption, then it goes to you really Got Me, which is probably actually my least favorite of their big famous covers. I don't know if they do the Kinks that well. I guess it's something that David can sing. You know, it's right. David Lee Roth can sing the vocals. So you really Got Me. And Eddie gets to do something completely insane that of course, Dave Davis never had a chance to pull off, whether in 1964 or at any time in his life. But the real one that just jumps out to me on that, that record that I heard by the minute, Men of all people first is Ain't Talking About Love, Love, which just has that furious opening riff, you know, which just sounds like. It doesn't even sound like. It sounds like the invention of a sound. Boston didn't make that kind of noise when they put out their album a year or two before. No one sounded as thunderous as Eddie Van Halen did. On Ain't Talking About Love, which to me, by the way, explains the. The overall virtue of this record, which is that it sounds really live. Sounds like they're playing in a big. Like an empty stadium, not a stampede, like an empty theater. Right. But you've got that echo, that room echo. You don't even feel like you hear a lot of overdubs. I know there are that because you can hear two guitars in some of, you know, some of the songs. But it feels like a very kind of a spare, stripped down album. There's not a lot of pump. There's not a lot of, like, syrupy keyboards. That's something we'll talk about later on in their career. It just feels really raw and not punk, but just like. And not. It doesn't have any of the. The glamour or the pretense of what hair metal would later grow on to become. This stuff's the real.
- [35:48]
Scott Bertram
Thing.
- [35:52]
Sam.
- [36:18]
About your disease.
- [36:21]
Yeah, you may have all you want, baby But I got something you need oh, yeah.
- [36:31]
My love is right to the.
- [36:33]
Sean Trende
Core.
- [36:39]
So the thing about Eddie Van Halen is that, you know, we can talk about this will come in a little later on, too, but he's not a very pleasant person. He's kind of a.
- [36:49]
Sam
Jerk. All these people, except Michael Anthony, were difficult to get along.
- [36:53]
Sean Trende
With.
- [36:53]
Sam
Yeah.
- [36:54]
Sean Trende
Yeah. And so that overdub thing actually, like, was a non stop fight during the recording of this album because Eddie did not want to use overdubs. He was just insistent, like, this is how I play live. I want to play it like I play it live. And they're like, but this isn't live. This is an album. And you can get a fatter sound and keep the riff going that you solo over anyway, so that's part of why it's so spare, is because that's what that was like to play Kate, Eddie. And it's not the first time that play.
- [37:26]
Sam
Came. I mean, it works to the benefit. Like Running with the Devil, That's a rhythm track, right? He doesn't really play lead until he gets to, like, the solo part. But the whole song itself, the verse of that is just him, one guitar, playing it with such a, like, you know, fury that it just sounds like it could be three different guys all strumming at the same.
- [37:44]
Sean Trende
Time. Yeah. Well, you know, the other thing about that album, and I agree with you, side two is the weaker entry, although I do still love it, but it also shows off some of their. Their diversity that a lot of bands didn't have. You have that. You have Ice Cream man, which is like an old 1920s John Brim. It starts out with like a boogie woogie acoustic part. Then it goes into like the rock part, but it's still.
- [38:08]
Scott Bertram
Bluesy. I'm your ice cream man Stab me when I'm passing by all my my I'm your eyes remain Stop me when I'm passing by.
- [38:20]
See now all my flavors are guaranteed to satisfy. Hold on a second, baby. I got. Put my banana Dixie cups. All flavors and push ups.
- [38:31]
Jeff Blair
Too. I'm your ice cream man baby.
- [38:33]
Scott Bertram
Stop me when I'm passing by.
- [38:37]
See no Almighty. My flavors are guaranteed to.
- [38:39]
Jeff Blair
Satisfy. Hold on one.
- [38:41]
Scott Bertram
More. Well, I'm usually passing by just about 11 o'.
- [38:45]
Sean Trende
Clock. You have to remember too, this album drops at the height of the disco era. You know, I think you can make a case that like this saves rock and roll. You know, I, I mean, yeah, you had Boston and there's still plenty of rock. Lynyrd Skynyrd, plenty of rock.
- [39:01]
Sam
Bands. Here's the thing, actually, that occurs to me. This might sound blasphemous, but I was thinking, who was making anything remotely sounding like this back in the seventies in American music? And it probably Aerosmith until they fell off the.
- [39:12]
Scott Bertram
Wagon.
- [39:12]
Sam
They. They peaked with rocks. That would be like 76. And then like their next album, which is. Is 77, draw the line. It's atrocious. They. They fall in it. They fall straight into the drug ditch at that point. And then here comes Van Halen a year later. Just pick up the torch and carry it somewhere.
- [39:27]
Sean Trende
Else. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's. It really. I mean it's, it's a musical masterpiece and a milestone because like you said, everyone kind of takes the classical feel for, in rock and metal guitar for. For granted now. But like, this is where you first have it coming in. And Yang Vay Malmsteen builds on that and, and Randy Rhodes and, And you know, but they're building on that. It's a foundation that Eddie Van Halen.
- [39:52]
Sam
Laid. I also want to point out that this album appealed to everybody back then. Everybody who was young and into music and was kind of cool. Loved the first Van Halen album. There was nothing that was thought to be like corporate or kind of lame about this. This was.
- [40:06]
Scott Bertram
Hot.
- [40:09]
Ram.
- [40:38]
Girl, you really got me now. You got me. So I don't know what I'm doing.
- [40:47]
Sam
Now.
- [40:53]
I mean, as I said, some of the songs on this album I heard first from like, like crazy math rock, post punk bands. Like the Minute man on Double Nickels on the Dime. They do a great version of Ain't Talking About Love. They don't not play guitar as well as Eddie Van Halo does, but they've got the spirit of that in there. I found these songs in all sorts of places before I even encountered them on this album. And of course, the thing is they also had like, what, four years to prepare for this record. Those songs had been germinating for a long time. They played them on stage, they knew what they. That was why Eddie was so insistent, obviously, because he knew what he wanted to sound like. He knew what these things sounded like when they got across live. And then they had about like, you know, four months to record their second album. And that brings us to Van Halen 2, actually. You know what, Scott, I haven't even talked to you. Have you said anything about Van Halen first.
- [41:41]
Jeff Blair
Yet? No.
- [41:44]
Sam
Sorry. Maybe we shouldn't pass over.
- [41:46]
Jeff Blair
You. I'm just listening. I'm just listening. You know, it is, it is. I wasn't even planning to say much because I, I just listen and experience like so many of these songs, as I mentioned, have become part of DNA. Ain't Talking About Love, of course, course. But even the side two ones that you guys say aren't quite as good. I mean, feel your Love Tonight is one of my favorites on this record. And no one was sounding like this at this time. No one at all. And it doesn't. It's not a song that kind of grooves, but it shakes in the right way. And those backing vocals, Michael Anthony leading and Eddie Van Halen begging you, baby. That's, you know how many, count how many times throughout the course of the show today that the backing vocals actually sing the chorus, right? I mean, they're the ones pushing things forward while Dave does his yelps and, and jumps around. Those backing vocals do a lot of heavy lifting on a song that's.
- [42:41]
Sam
Going to come up on a major way on the next.
- [42:43]
Jeff Blair
Record. Feel your love.
- [42:44]
Scott Bertram
Tonight.
- [42:53]
I can't wait to feel your love tonight I can't wait to feel your love tonight I can't wait to feel your love tonight I can't wait I can't wait well, I've been working since the 10 of 9 I'll tell you sure. Goodbye midnight I'll be flying.
- [43:17]
Flying time.
- [43:25]
I'll tell you honey, by morning you'll be.
- [43:29]
Jeff Blair
Fine.
- [43:35]
You know, I think I'm the one is fantastic. I, I actually this will be my segue into this. I, I, I know a Few guitar players. One of them told me that actually I'm the One is the hardest Eddie Van Halen island thing to replicate. Especially the intro on I'm the One. And my friend Yvonne Pongrasic is a, is an economics professor here at Hillsdale. But he's also a very successful respected surf guitarist. He's played with a number of bands over the years and he was coming of age of guitar right around the time Eddie was exploding. And I saw, I asked him, look, you were, you're an actual guitarist, I'm not. What, what, what do you think about Eddie? And so I'm just going to read a little bit of what he wrote. He said, Eddie is by far the most important guitarist of the past 50 years. He revolutionized how guitar was played and sounded. Even what modern guitars looked like and the features they were expected to have. I'd go as far as saying that he basically single handedly was responsible for the explosion of guitar sales and the profusion of pop hair metal bands in the 80s. Van Halen shaped the hard rock music of the 80s. For better or worse. Pretty much all rock metal guitarists started using Eddie's techniques and stylistic characteristics. I started playing guitar in 83, 84. Eddie was the king of the entire guitar scene then. No contest. I opened the doors to the much abused and maligned guitar shredder scene of the mid-80s. Though he was not really about that. He was always first and foremost about the song. But he inspired many a young hotshot guitarist to play faster and more technically. We haven't seen anybody that has had even a sliver of Eddie's impact on the guitar playing world since Eddie. I don't think we ever will again. The man was a miracle and I really mean that. And the best way to experience that is just to listen to this debut album. As you guys were saying previously, it's a specific way that Eddie wanted the songs to sound that had been playing them and he knew exactly the way he wanted it. And so much of this is how he, he plays guitar. How that guitar sounds, how he, how he manages the rhythm parts with the lead parts and that sound, how that sound comes together makes Van Haven one, the debut so.
- [45:49]
Scott Bertram
Special.
- [46:03]
Whoa.
- [46:14]
We gave it a treat you leaving here we aggravate you don't you know it means the same to me Honey, I'm the one, the one you love Come on baby show your love wow. Give it to me.
- [46:31]
I see echo that fills this room.
- [46:35]
I see it going off of you.
- [46:39]
Eat out your message from afar I'M telling you.
- [46:47]
Come on and show you.
- [46:48]
Sam
Now. All right. Well, what do we think then of Van Halen 2? The album that they had to do with all that preparation for their debut album? They came up with this one and then, like, I think it's like six or seven months. They are under pressure to follow up a fantastic record. A record that had just not only, you know, put their name on the charts, but certainly, like, created a new sound of guitar. What are they going to do for a follow up? Well, Van Halen, too, keep it simple. They just give. It's like Led Zeppelin too. And I think that's, by the way, quite intentional. You're going to see Van Halen stealing a lot of cues, paying a lot of tributes to Led Zeppelin, but they come up with this record, which is. Is universally treated as like a step down. Oh, that's a bit disappointing. But I have to say this is the point where I was not familiar with the band's music at all when we did the first episode. Almost all of these albums up through 1984 are pretty new to me, honestly. I'm hearing this music largely for the first time. And I've got to say that I see the obvious flaws on Van Halen 2, but I'm really excited by this record. I'm excited, by the way, it maintains that nice, spare live sound from the debut record, but now it introduces some interesting pop turns as well. We re. We learned something about Van Halen on a song like Dance the Night Away, which is that they're not like, just heavy metal. They're not hard rock. This is some sort of pop metal or pop rock. But we use that term to, like, think of something more like the Hollies. This is actually like hard rock, but with a very melodic sound. And I remember you were talking earlier about the importance of backing.
- [48:24]
Scott Bertram
Vocals.
- [48:24]
Sam
Vocals. Well, you talk about a song that is defined really in a lot of ways by Michael Anthony. It's Dance the Night Away. That glorious chorus where he's just singing in the background, Dance the Night Away. And then Eddie is doing his, like, nice little arpeggiated, like sort of geometric figures on his guitar. That's a pop song. You know, you'll never convince me in a million years that that shouldn't have been a top 40 hit. You know, it's. It's actually. Actually I'd say the only one on this record that is clearly that poppy. But this is obviously a direction that they would go in the future.
- [49:45]
Now I can continue to talk about Van Halen too. But I want to hand it over to one of you guys. You want to offer your.
- [49:49]
Sean Trende
Thoughts?
- [49:51]
Yeah, I'll, I'll go. You know, this, this album has always.
- [49:57]
Had kind of. By the way, I, I looked it up. I'll do, I'll do the music, bro. Oh, actually, Dance the Night Away went to number.
- [50:03]
Sam
15. Oh, it did? Okay. So, so it was a big hit. It's a top.
- [50:07]
Scott Bertram
20.
- [50:07]
Sean Trende
Good. Yeah, yeah, but, but you know, they only had two before 1984, with the other one being their Pretty Women Woman.
- [50:15]
Sam
So. Which I, which I like quite a bit.
- [50:17]
Sean Trende
Actually. I, I do. We can talk about the video getting banned, but we'll get to that. Yeah. When we get there. Look, I, I, this is the first album I ever owned, so it's always going to have a warm place in my heart. The one thing that I want to mention about it is more it's, it's less defined by, like, the big chunky rock riffs, like Van Halen. One was, but one thing that Eddie, you know, this was alluded to a little bit by Scott's friend, but, you know, Eddie was a genius. Not just because he was a great guitar player and talented, but he was like a mad scientist with the guitar. He would get guitars and he would just take them apart and put them back together in ways that no one, it's why his sound is so unique and no one can really.
- [51:07]
Mimic his sound. But every album he brings in a new technique. And so with Eruption, you get the introduction of two hand tapping. And actually, when he had played live in clubs, whenever he would tap, he would turn around so no one could see what he was doing, what he was doing. Which is pretty genius and just hard not to slide. Slip up. But Spanish Fly, you know, the first instrumental I ever heard, what he introduces is tap Harmonics. And so when you listen to Spanish Fly, you hear that intro.
- [52:08]
And it's all harmonic. So with the guitar, if you, if you lightly touch your finger to a string, at certain points, you get a note that's harmonic. It's higher up. And we could get into the physics of it. It's really cool. But what Eddie figured out, out, you know, you're limited in the number of notes you can produce that way. But what Eddie figured out was that. So the 12th fret harmonic is, you know, two octaves above. Or maybe it's just an octave. No, it's two octaves above the open string. So what Eddie figured out was that if he put his left finger down on the second fret, he could then tap on the 14th fret and get. So he had unlimited harmonics that way because he would get the second fret two octaves up, and if he had his left hand on the fourth fret and tapped on the 16th fret, he would get the fourth fret two octaves up. And that probably makes no.
- [53:03]
Sam
Sense. A full palette to play with musically.
- [53:06]
Sean Trende
Though. Yeah. Yeah, it probably makes no sense.
- [53:10]
If you don't play. But when you listen to Spanish Fly, the instrumental, you can hear this, like, weird, ethereal sound. That's something that he invented for this episode.
- [53:16]
Jeff Blair
Album.
- [53:19]
Van Halen 2. So the first half of this record, I'll speak about it the way you talked about the back half of Van Halen debut. I think it's good and fine and like, somebody get me a doctor. Sounds like a little Black Sabbath in there. Very Tony Iommi kind of. Kind of riff. Bottoms up is like, you know, as much as you don't think of them being a southern guitar band, like, that's just lagrange and ZZ.
- [53:45]
Sam
Top. I was about to say. It's ZZ.
- [53:46]
Scott Bertram
Top.
- [53:47]
Sam
Yes. That's in my.
- [53:47]
Jeff Blair
Notes. Y turned inside out. But for me, Van Halen 2 is all about the closing kick that starts with Spanish Fly and runs through three of my favorite Van Halen tunes. Doa, Women in Love and Beautiful Girls. That Trifecta just slays me every time, that DOA chunking riff.
- [54:13]
And then, of course, Alex pops in. Bum, bum, bum. It's such a dirty riff. And I think David Lee Roth knows, because how many times does he say, what? Dirty face kid Broken down and dirty. Down and dirty in a garbage can. Like, it's all grimy and greasy. And DOA specifically speaks to the genius. I think of Ted Tebbelman, the way he produces, where Eddie's guitar is shoved over to one channel that is so distinctive in the way that Van Halen songs sound. And I love it. I don't know if everyone does. I love it. DOA specifically sounds that.
- [54:50]
Scott Bertram
Way.
- [54:57]
Now we're folding out in dirty dressing rags.
- [55:03]
I'm from the day my mama told me Boy, you pack your bags.
- [55:10]
Here we was for the policeman.
- [55:17]
They found a dirty face kid in a garbage.
- [55:20]
Jeff Blair
Can.
- [55:35]
Women in Love is one I came to appreciate more prepping for this.
- [55:40]
Sam
Show. I can't. It's my favorite of the record, actually. I love that.
- [55:43]
Jeff Blair
Song. Get it out of my head. And as, as, as wild and crazy and riftastic. This is restrained in a very nice way, and it has touch and feel.
- [55:57]
And you know, even the. The lyrics are really about losing a woman to another woman, which still fits in the Van Halen canon, but maybe, man, when. Again, those backing vocals, when Michael Anthony kicks in.
- [56:12]
That chorus is so strong. I love.
- [56:14]
Scott Bertram
It.
- [56:32]
Stay in the night.
- [56:36]
Maybe make up your mind make up your.
- [56:39]
Jeff Blair
Mind.
- [56:59]
Woman in Love and Beautiful Girls might be like the Apex Van Halen track. Everything that indelible riff that starts it off.
- [57:12]
So one of the all time great intros. And then Michael Anthony pops in with the bubbling bass and Alex and the drums. It's brilliant to slow that down just at the halfway point point to allow the rift to reestablish once again. And of course, David Lee Roth. David Lee Roth talking about. He's on top of the world, got a drink in his hand Toes in the sand all he needs is a beautiful girl. And that. Ooh la la. This is used to such perfection in the great SNL commercial parody for Schmidt's Gay Beer with Adam.
- [57:43]
Sean Trende
Sandler.
- [57:43]
Jeff Blair
And.
- [57:46]
But that it works because they picked this particular song to use in the Schmidt's Gay ad because it conveys everything in just a riff. It conveys everything in just that. That sound. And again, Michael Anthony's Beautiful Girls, the backing vocals and the, you know, the cherry on top of the sundae. When Roth gives you a big. The smooch at the end of the song, like, that is so Van Halen. It is so Van Halen. In three and a half.
- [58:13]
Scott Bertram
Minutes. Sit down right here.
- [58:20]
O la la.
- [58:27]
I think I got it now.
- [58:33]
I'm a seaside sitting just a smoking and a drinking a ringside I'm top of the world.
- [58:42]
I got a drink in my hand I got my toes in the sand All I need is beautiful girl Beautiful girl oh yeah Here I am angel man of the world All I need is a beautiful girl.
- [59:03]
Beautiful.
- [59:04]
Sam
Girl.
- [59:09]
I mean, you said that all perfectly. I love side two of this record. You mentioned all the songs. The one you didn't actually is the first one on that side. I think Light up the sky is interesting. A really interesting melody line. The kind of weird pop idea that gave you a hint. Right. Right from early on in their career that Eddie Van Halen had strange ideas about. Right. Yeah, it was those sort of. What is it? It's a group vocal. They're singing like. I don't even know know what the actual.
- [59:34]
Jeff Blair
Lyrics. Oh, no, it's wolves and fireworks and yeah, it's.
- [59:37]
Sam
Fire. But I'm telling you, it works. It's the last thing you would have expected From a dumb hard rock band. And this is the album where ups and downs, sure, I don't think out of Love Again is anything other than generic, you know, and I never much cared for Bottoms up myself either. But I gotta tell you, this is the one where they actually show that they are. Aside from being, you know, stadium giants, which they're going to continue to be, they've also got a lot of fun, weird quirks. It's not a five star album, but it's a good four star ALB at least. I was very impressed with this one coming back to it.
- [60:38]
I guess. I suppose. Unless you have anything else else to say about it. Sean, this takes us to women and children first. Yet another one of these records that I just didn't listen to when we first did the show, but now I really enjoy. I can pick out some flaws on this record. There's at least one of the worst tracks that David Lee Roth era Van Halen ever recorded is on this record. It's called Loss of Control. And it's like the band has lost control. Control. It is a complete waste of the time. I can't even, you know, they have some pretty stringent quality control standards because the last album they ever put out called A Different Kind of Truth is basically just demos from this era that they didn't think were good enough to go onto the album at the time. But this one, this one has some really fun stuff. And the Cradle Will Rock is the only song that most people know who aren't Van Halen fans. But I have to mention Chuck Klosterman's incredible observation. He wrote a piece about them most accurately rated bands of all time. And at number one, he put Van Halen. He said, this is the most accurately rated band of all time. They were supposed they should have been the greatest, like, you know, stadium rock act of the early 80s, and they were. Everybody thinks that they, you know, everybody claims that they got a little bit worse after, you know, Sammy Hagar joined the band. And they did. And he then identifies and the Cradle Will Rock as the most adequate song of all time in the specific sense that everything worse than. Than it is a bad song and everything better than it is officially a good song. This is just the most cromulent piece of music that has ever been made. And he's right. I actually think he's unfair to it. I really love and the Cradle Will.
- [62:12]
Scott Bertram
Rock.
- [62:34]
Well, they say it's kind of frightening how this younger generation swings. You know, it's more than just some new sensation.
- [62:43]
Well, the kid is into losing sleep and he don't come home for half a week. You know, it's mob it.
- [62:48]
Sam
Just.
- [63:04]
The one I really like from this album, then I'll give it back to you guys is the really strange country stomp called could this Be Magic. This is clearly a tribute to Led Zeppelin's Bronnie Our stomp, you know, hey, saw you smiling at me. It's the one that's on Led Zeppelin 3.
- [63:19]
Scott Bertram
They're.
- [63:19]
Sam
They're. They're clearly in a kind of a Led Zeppel in three mode on this record. They're trying out some funny stuff, including, as I said, a Failure and Loss of Control. But I love that sort of group choral magic in countryish focus sound on could this Be Magic? That one's one that no one ever talks about, that I never would have heard of unless we had gone back and done this show again. But it's a real.
- [63:39]
Scott Bertram
Keeper. And I see lonely ships upon the water Better safe for women and children Fly.
- [63:48]
Sail away where someone started Better save the women and children first I hear music on the landing and there's laughter in the air Just could be your boat is coming in yeah, you leaning back in your foot tab and ain't got your head right There's a full moon out tonight Baby, let's begin and she said, said could this be magic? Or could this be love? Uhoh. And I said could this turn tragic? You know that magic off.
- [64:24]
Jeff Blair
In.
- [64:30]
The water Better say this is. It's not a bad album, but I, I, I it's a step down. I will say it's my least favorite of the Roth era. This first Roth era. It's my least favorite. Which is not to say there's not highlights, but, you know, I never really liked Romeo Delight all that much. Jeff already mentioned loss of control. I don't love could this Be Magic, but there are a few things here. Everybody wants some, which I think we just talked about in the 1980 episode of the exclusive content.
- [65:01]
Sam
Episode. That's a ton of.
- [65:02]
Jeff Blair
Fun. That is so much the tribal drumming from Alex and David Lee Roth acting like a monkey and oohing ahhing in the open. The way that song builds and blows up and then builds and blows up. And Roth's throwaway line, which, like, only he gets away with at the end, he's like. And the beauty thing for radio stations is it's so late. You've already faded out by this point. But Roth says, look, I mean, it's, you know, everybody wants them. Look, I'LL pay you for it, you know. What the f. He.
- [65:28]
Scott Bertram
Says.
- [65:36]
What's up, baby? How are you?
- [65:41]
Everybody? What's up, everybody? Me some Everybody what's up.
- [65:51]
Jeff Blair
Everybody?
- [66:23]
So. So I mentioned the band sounding like a southern band, so. Take your whiskey home. That's just a Skyrd song. Give me back my bullets era Skynyrd song. Southern Boogie sounds like Rossington Collins kind of solo. Even has whiskey in the title. Like, that's. That's a Skyd song. The one I want to make sure that I mention is the very last one, which is again one that I came to like more this time around. In A Simple Rhyme, which you could argue is their first kind of attempt at a. At a power ballad. It's not quite a power ballad in that 80s definition, but they're slowing things down and they're actually. Actually Roth is actually singing about, like, being in love and. And. And it not working out. And that's not something they had explored very much. He even sounds a little vulnerable as he delivers the lyrics of In A Simple Rhyme. I. I love that they do. At the end of every chorus in this song, they do something a little bit different. They do, they do. They go somewhere else. They try something different at the end of every song. And. And In A Simple Rhyme is my favorite. I think it's my favorite song on this record. I love the first two, but In A Simple Rhyme is right at the very end. It gets lost. That's one that's very worth going back to and hearing from women and children.
- [67:34]
Scott Bertram
First.
- [67:46]
Simple ride.
- [67:57]
Well, he left grand when you finally hit it. I'm always a sucker For a real good time Woke up in life found I almost missed it Ain't I glad that love is flying? But I was young and I was far too crazy Been that way for a long, long time Needed a girl but I was just too lazy now that I found.
- [68:24]
Sean Trende
You.
- [68:28]
Yeah. So all their early albums I love for different reasons. Like, I have a very hard time when we get to the, like, ranking things, because this album is like, you know, Van Halen 2 is kind of poppy and this is kind of a return to the meaty, riff driven rock and roll that I think gets.
- [68:49]
You know, it hits its apex for me in. In the next album we'll talk about which no one knows except for fans. It's like the fan favorite. But I agree, In A Simple Rhyme is just a very well put together song. You know, the songwriting's off the chart. Take your whiskey home yeah, it's skinnered but it's one of those things where, where, you know, Eddie takes a Skynyrd song effectively and shows how he's going to do it better than anyone else. Right? Like that, that acoustic guitar at the beginning that he places insanely difficult to play. And it's insanely difficult to play as kind of cleanly as, as Eddie does. So I, you know, I, I do, I agree in the, in the early catalog, if you have to place it on the weaker end. But in kind of the big picture, seeing how the band comes together together, I, I, I still love it. A bad Van Halen album is still a good one, at least in the.
- [69:43]
Scott Bertram
80S.
- [70:15]
With that liquor in the nighttime these strange memories Seems a lifetime since yesterday.
- [70:25]
Come the daybreak and come tomorrow that woman's waited up all night for me again oh, she said I think that you're in a whole lot of trouble yeah, I think that you hit.
- [70:41]
Sam
For a whole lot of trouble okay, so this brings us to the one where I feel like I'm about to say something vaguely blasphemous because, you know, as I said, I really gone back and reviewed all these early albums for the first time, you know, and certainly in sequence in a way I never had the chance to do before. And I'm going to confess to you that 1988, 81's fair warning to me is the clear, weak one of the bunch. I know, I know. Apparently the fans feel differently. You've certainly made it clear that I have stepped wrong here. But I'm going to tell you, it's the one with the fewest songs that really actually leap out to me. And before I even mention which ones those are, why don't you guys just start first and explain to me why I'm a.
- [71:21]
Sean Trende
Fool?
- [71:24]
So as background, you know, at this point, the band has quite a bit of money. And so Eddie builds, being the mad genius that he is, he builds his own recording studio in his backyard, as one does. And he basically locks himself in the studio for three months with a bag of cocaine and writes as one did in the 80s. If you were a rock guitarist and comes out with this new sound, this is the first album that really where his quote unquote, brown sound comes into full view. And he writes these songs that are just. I feel like every band in, like, the 70s or so has their album that, like, didn't generate any hits, but that the fans still love. And that's what this is. This was not a very popular commercial hit record, but the songs. So first off, with mean Street. That introduction that it plays, this is another, like, Eddie introducing something. So basically, like bass, funk bass players do something called slapping and popping, where it's like, when you hear that.
- [72:31]
Sam
On stage, the Seinfeld sound actually.
- [72:33]
Sean Trende
Is. Yeah, exactly. And Eddie. That fast thing that Eddie's doing, he's slapping and popping on the guitar, which is insanely difficult to do because the strings are way thinner and they.
- [72:45]
Sam
Don'T bounce in the same.
- [72:45]
Sean Trende
Way.
- [72:46]
Sam
Right. They're not thickly coiled. You snap.
- [72:48]
Sean Trende
Them. Yeah. And as fast. It's just like most of Eddie's songs I've been able to play at one point. I have never been able to do the intro to Mean Street. It's.
- [73:00]
Scott Bertram
Just. It's.
- [73:00]
Sean Trende
It's. It's.
- [73:01]
Scott Bertram
Crazy.
- [73:44]
At night I walk this stinking street Past the crazies on my block and I see the same old faces and I hear that same old time and I'm searching for for the latest thing I break in this routine I'm talking some new kicks One like you ain't never seen this.
- [74:03]
Jeff Blair
Is. Joe Satriani said the same thing to Howard Stern about two years ago when Sammy put that band together to do the residency. And I think Satriani said that actually, that intro to Mean street is the toughest thing for him to try to learn. He still can't really, really do.
- [74:21]
Sean Trende
It. Yeah, it blows my mind, but. And one other fun thing that just kind of is like, the most Van Halen thing ever is that women and Children first ends with this hidden song called Growth. It's just like 20 seconds of a drum part and then a guitar rift. And the idea was going to be that the next album was going to open with the song that that was built off of, which is a really cool idea, and they just didn't do it.
- [74:45]
So.
- [74:46]
Jeff Blair
There'S. Go.
- [74:47]
Sam
Ahead. I totally didn't clock that. Like, I've listened to that album about, like, 20 times in the past two months, and I just made no connection at all. That's.
- [74:54]
Jeff Blair
Funny. Yeah, it's.
- [74:55]
Sean Trende
Like. So there's, like, mysterious 20 seconds at the. Anyway, you know, it's got some. Unchained, I think, is one of their classic, like, all time classic. Eddie, that. That riff in Unchained, and it's a good song. It's got some of the humor, his little back and forth with Ted Templeman in the middle.
- [75:16]
Scott Bertram
Of.
- [75:18]
Nothing Stays the same I change and you hit the ground running Change Ain't nothing stays the same I change yeah, yeah Hit the ground running.
- [75:42]
Change Nothing stays the same.
- [75:47]
Yeah, yeah Hit the ground running change nothing stays the.
- [75:52]
Sean Trende
Same.
- [75:58]
It's got weird, like Saturday Afternoon, the Park, that synths thing, I have no idea what that.
- [76:04]
Sam
Is. That, to me, is like a huge, huge whiff. I mean, there are quite a few great Van Halen instrumentals, right? And in fact, the next album has a number of them, as it'll turn out. This one, I just don't understand what it's doing.
- [76:17]
Sean Trende
There. No, I just have to say and I'll turn it over. I, I, I know I could do this entire podcast for, like, two hours. I love this band so much, but. So this is Love is just a really underrated song. It's the guitar solo in the outro. Just, just. I love this.
- [76:33]
Scott Bertram
Album.
- [76:44]
Check me out on the good side here. When my baby's on the corner and she's looking so fine Put one on, one together and it blow my mind up man needs love to live I'm a living proof Catch that smiling eye at the groove Big double take my cheap I Walk it out I'm in love.
- [77:04]
Once over I'm over.
- [77:07]
Jeff Blair
The.
- [77:23]
I yeah, so this is Love is. Yeah. Underrated. Sean actually picked up on a lot of stuff. I'd say Unchained, I think, is one of. It's just Straight Fire. That's such a fantastic, fantastic riff. And. And, you know, everything centered around that. Roth gets to have fun, do his Templeman bit, you know, One break coming up Unchanged is. Is, again, one of those just signature Van Halen songs.
- [77:50]
I think.
- [77:53]
I think Dirty Movies, that second.
- [77:54]
Scott Bertram
One.
- [77:54]
Jeff Blair
And. And, you know, Sean had mentioned the. The idea of him tapping like a funk bass player. There are a couple songs here that have that funk funk feel. Mean street, certainly Dirty Movies, Push Comes To Shove, has that sort of almost not disco, but sort of disco funk kind of feel to it. It's just. It's a darker, dirtier, nastier album from start to finish. Three Months of Cocaine might do that to you. A point I wanted to make around this time as I listened album after album after album. Is that by fair warning to me, it's crystal clear that Eddie Van Halen is really the only person in the band with any kind of musical ideas. Like, he's not getting any help from Alex in composing, writing songs. He's not getting any help from Michael Anthony in bringing new ideas to the band. David Lee Roth has some ideas, but generally they're kind of Ice Cream man or, you know, Big Bad Bill, Sweet William, and those are ideas, and they work okay in the confines of the.
- [78:56]
Sam
Context. Yeah.
- [78:57]
Jeff Blair
Right. That's not what Eddie's trying to do. So much of Van Halen is simply Eddie working things out. Whether it's a new guitar tone or a new approach or crafting this riff. I can't think of another mega band in the way that Van Halen is a mega band. So.
- [79:19]
Completely reliant on one guy creatively, like, to the point that no one else is really bringing any ideas to the forefront here. It's all on Eddie. And this. This would be a source of conflict when the other guys start saying, no, we don't want to do the thing you want to do. And after Eddie's like, what in the hell are you talking about? I'm doing everything. I want to play the synth. Let me play the frickin synth. But. But on Fair Warning, I think that begins to become sort of at least obvious to me. Like Eddie is driving every single thing this band is doing at this point. I think it still works.
- [79:56]
Sean Trende
On.
- [79:56]
Jeff Blair
On. On Fair Warning and actually on the next album too. But. But yeah, this is it. This is. This is all Eddie Van Halen.
- [80:02]
Scott Bertram
St.
- [80:24]
Now who's that babe with a B Shadow.
- [80:29]
So what seem like to me it don't matter.
- [80:35]
Her movies get down like you won't find in my hometown they won't believe it when they see what they're seeing Go see baby.
- [80:47]
Sam
Now.
- [81:00]
Okay, so I think that you're right about that assessment and that's probably why I. I see the strange show up on this. You guys said pretty much everything I would have said anyways. Yeah. Unchained to me is clearly the best thing on this record. So this is Love is also really good. I think. Push comes to shove. Nice little slinky number. And that there he's playing two guitars simultaneously, one against the other in different channels. That's all really nice, but again, this. Nothing really just jumps out to me on this album. Maybe if I spend more time with it, it will eventually emerge as the Dark Horse favorite. But I'm about to be controversial two times in a row because the next record is one I think the fans don't like. And I know the band doesn't like it that much either. But I'm going to just lay it down straight right here. There's a very good chance that Diver down makes my top two at the end of this episode. 1982's Diver Down. And I did actually find the story about this one. They didn't want to record a record. What happened is that they wanted to record a Single. So somebody said, hey, you know, with the old Roy Orbison song Pretty Woman, it actually kind of would be a really good fit for David. As it turns out, it was. They recorded a really fun version of it. Right. But then because the single was so successful, all of a sudden we got to have an album to go with this. And they ended up just continuing to. And they came up with Diver down.
- [83:03]
Which has like two or three instrumentals, has three, three cover tunes. It clearly seems like it's kind of a get me across pitch in terms of the amount of material on the album. As you said there, you know, if Eddie has to do this all by himself, well, at this point, he's flagging, clearly, because there just aren't as many songs. But I'm going to tell you, the songs that are there are among my favorites of Van Halen's. And discovering them for this episode again has been great. The covers, you know, I think where have all the Good Times Gone? Another King Kinks cover. It's probably my least favorite on the record, just because I don't think they actually add too much to it. They only add David's attitude, which is.
- [83:40]
Jeff Blair
Something. It's a Kinks cover, but as I discovered in our Bowie episode, they're actually covering the Bowie version of the King's version. They're not covering the Kinks version. So it's a cover of a cover. Yeah, they're doing.
- [83:49]
Scott Bertram
Pinups. Yeah.
- [83:58]
Daddy didn't need no little toys.
- [84:02]
Mommy didn't need no little boys.
- [84:07]
Won't you tell me where have all the good times gone? Where have all the good times gone? Where have all the good times.
- [84:19]
Jeff Blair
Gone?
- [84:34]
And.
- [84:35]
Sam
It'S. It's a fine song because you can't ruin the song. You actually can't ruin that Bowie version either, but it's probably the least exciting one. Oh, Pretty Woman, though I love their version of Pretty Woman. That is David Lee Roth. His attitude, his charisma just amped up to 11. That's the appeal of DLR on a van Halen song. And it isn't even one of their own. But the other one I really love is the Dancing in the street cover, which I thought I'd hate. That one was new to me for this episode. I had no idea that they'd done a version of it. And I thought, well, this is something that could really be lame. I love that weird forward sounding guitar riff that Eddie comes up with on that thing. That is nothing that I would have expected from a Motown cover. And they get me a Poof punk. They get me a new wave sound out of.
- [85:18]
Scott Bertram
It. I think it's really good.
- [85:20]
Sam
Sat.
- [86:06]
So you get to the original material. And I'm just going to say right now, Little Guitar is probably my single favorite original Van Halen song of all time. And I don't know why it isn't on their greatest hits. I don't know why I never heard it on the radio. I don't know why I did not know that song. But it is incredible melodic power rock, a fantastic verse, that repeater guitar tone that he gets, that Eddie gets on it. But then the chorus is just one of the maybe the most riffingly great melody ideas that Eddie Van Halen ever had. This is not about shops. That is about him writing a great set of chord changes and a really great guitar or arrangement. That is the one that I wanted to focus on first. Now, what do you guys think of Diver Down? Do you love it as much as I do? Am I out on an island? Am I a diver.
- [86:49]
Scott Bertram
Now.
- [87:05]
There's exceptions to your.
- [87:07]
Jeff Blair
Love.
- [87:27]
I, I got to jump in. Little Guitars is also going to be in my final five for any era of this Van Halen. And it's interesting you say that you, you know, wasn't a hit, wasn't on the radio. It's true. But the reason I found Little Guitars was at my very first radio internship. One of my jobs was finding songs that were exactly four minutes long to cover. We couldn't sell enough commercials, so we had to cover a break from the satellite feed of. Of rock music. And so we had to find these exactly formatted songs. So I was going through the. They would have these things, they were called gold discs. And they would market to radio stations where there were songs that were ready, ready for air. Like, if they had to be edited, they were edited. If there were words had to be taken out, right, Everything, they were ready to go. They're gold discs, only the best stuff. And I found Little guitars on this gold disc, which meant at some point someone. Someone did pluck this off of Diver down and said, you know what? This would make a good song for a classic rock radio station. It didn't really happen because, yeah, I mean, that song is not played very much. But I found out about it only because it was on this gold disc disc at the radio station. And since the very first time I heard it, it's been one of my absolute favorite Van Halen songs. I love everything. I love the way that that guitar dances on top of the melody and that quick. It's quicker, quicker. And then, you know. Cat jazz catch. Cat jazz catch. Can that part where David Lee Roth is going crazy. The very end, when it ends with just him playing that staccato guitar melody. Just those notes.
- [89:45]
And then even the intro is. The intro is great. The intro is like a flamenco version of. Of.
- [89:49]
Sam
Erupt. Yeah. The instrumental that begins it. Right. I always think of it as one.
- [89:53]
Jeff Blair
Song. Song, Yeah, I think. Is it. I don't even know if it's credited differently on the album. I think it. I think it.
- [89:58]
Sam
Is. No, it is. It's split up into two tracks. I know that for.
- [90:01]
Jeff Blair
Sure. But, I mean, clearly it's one thing. I mean, Eddie's the.
- [90:03]
Sean Trende
King. Intros, it is all one.
- [90:05]
Sam
Piece. Yeah.
- [90:06]
Scott Bertram
Yeah.
- [90:06]
Jeff Blair
Right. So, I.
- [90:07]
Sam
Mean. Yeah. Anyways, I'm gonna say.
- [90:09]
Jeff Blair
This.
- [90:09]
Sam
Just. I don't think there are any bad songs on this album. The other two instrumentals, the Cathedral is just like this really interesting guitar tone that he gets, and he gets kind of a churchy organy sound out of it. But then in Intruder, Intruder is actually almost as good as the Peter Gabriel song called Intruder. And if you know how much I love Peter Gabriel 3, that is high praise of all things. It goes into Pretty Woman, and I wonder if that was, like, Eddie's statement. He's like, okay, we're doing this hack single. It's, you know, it's a cover. You've heard it before. It's a crowd pleaser. And then he puts this really frightening instrumental right in front of it that sounds kind of like the Light Pours out of Me by Magazine. That's what a bomb.
- [90:46]
Thumping bass sounds like. It's really heading somewhere dark. And then all of a sudden, it turns into a happy little tune. Pretty Woman. I love this album, and I. And I don't understand why fans and the band treat it as a real disappointment. Although I guess I can see because it's a lot of covers and there's a lot of instrumentals, it.
- [91:02]
Sean Trende
Works.
- [92:09]
You know, it's funny, as I go through the track list, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's a great song. That's a great song. That's a great song. For some reason, the albums just never worked for me. But I think we should step back and just kind of marvel that in five years, this band has recorded five albums, all of which are classic classics. And not only that, this is not the Beatles, like, holding themselves up in the studio like they're going on these major stadium tours at the same time, you know, like, they're one of the biggest rock bands in the world. And. And it's just like the output and the, the consistent quality is amazing. You know, I, I don't have too much to add. I think you all have hit the highlights. But I do want to say on little guitars, he is actually playing that entire guitar part himself in one take. And it took me forever to be able to do this. But he's tremolo picking that little. That's him picking the open B and E strings. And then he's taking his left hand and tapping that dun dun, dun dun dun dun dun dun. He's doing that with his left.
- [93:22]
Sam
Hand playing counterpoint and the melody line at the same time. That's just amazing, Amazing skill, you know. By the way, we haven't mentioned Van Halen's live act at any point throughout the conversation yet. I guess one reason for that is that it's very curious that there are no albums. Van Halen never released a live album from their David Lee Roth years. Now, maybe that's because he wouldn't want to hear David Lee Roth singing live. You know, maybe. I mean, they, they had a rap of sometimes giving you a pretty shady show show. But these guys really did dominate, like the latter half of the 70s, the first half of the 80s, as a concert proposition. They were where you go, if you wanted to have fun, you wanted to have excitement, and does anybody want to. Is it. Has it become too cliche, but. Or should we do the no green M M's.
- [94:10]
Sean Trende
Story?
- [94:12]
I think it's worth.
- [94:12]
Sam
Doing. All right. Who wants to do their favorite version of it? Scott, do you know the, the legend of.
- [94:17]
Jeff Blair
This? Well, I, I mean, I know it as well as I think I should know it. I mean, so a band comes to town and plays a venue and they're going to send you a writer in advance. And the writer says, we are going to arrive at 4 o' clock and we need five parkings places. And when we get there, we're going to sound check at exactly this time. And this is the kind of, you know, if we need extra amps or we, you got to provide us this. Or we need a grand piano, we're not bringing our own grand piano. And in the dressing room we need four. Four packs of. Of beer and six packs of Marlboro Lights and, you know, all the stuff that you need to provide for them as the talent. And so Van Halen was infamous famous for having a writer in the contract that said, you know, gonna provide us with a bowl of M&M's. But no green M&MS. Can't have any green M and Ms. In the big M, M and M bowl. And it's. At first you say, well, that's ridiculous. Why would someone ask for no Greenman M and Ms? They all taste the same. It's just a big rock star thing to get on your horse and say, don't give me green M. So Van Halen says, and it makes sense to me, which is they include that portion of the writer, the no green M and Ms, to see if the person responsible has actually read the writer. So they get to the dressing room and they look at the M and M bowl, and there's no green MMs. They can sit, say, okay, these guys actually read what we wrote. We can be reasonably certain that things are going to go well tonight and we'll be taken care.
- [95:47]
Sam
Of. They were particularly worried about their concert stack. Like the amplifiers they had to use that were really heavy, you know, had to be put up on risers, had to lab a lot of work to make sure they didn't tumble over and kill people.
- [95:58]
Jeff Blair
Basically. But if they, you know, they got in the dressing room and they saw green M and Ms. Or no M and Ms. At all, then they knew there might be problems. You got to double check this. You got to make sure that's secure. You got to make this. Make sure this is in place. So it was just a. An indicator, a signal as to how much they had to be concerned about the way that night might unfold. And that brings us to the album named after the year it was released. Very early in that year, 1984, Van Halen releases the album of the same name. And, you know, there are so many memorable, not just memorable, indelible tracks on this record. Massive, massive success. Success. And what we need to. I allude to this a little bit earlier. So by this point, Eddie is trying to branch out. Eddie is trying to do something different. Eddie was a. Again, classically trained. I don't classically train, but a great classical piano player. He knows how to play that sort of thing. And he wants to begin bringing in some of those elements into the band. Synthesizer and then things like that. And Ted Templeman and David Lee Roth are telling him, you can't do that. We're a rock band. That's not Van Halen. You shouldn't use keyboards. And Eddie, by this point, by 1984, essentially says, all right, he sort of acquiesces them for a while. That's kind of how Diver down ended up with so many covers, but by 1984, he's like, all right, forget it. We're doing this. We're doing it my way. It's my name, I the band. I have the musical ideas. I'm playing some synths, and that's how you get to a point where jump and I'll wait with these synths on the, on the record are so prominent. And yet, and yet, and yet the other songs on the record, I'll just point out. Is this a synth album? It's not. It's not. That's a synth album. It's as heavy as anything they've ever done. But there's something.
- [97:55]
Sam
Else. We have to point. There's something.
- [97:57]
Jeff Blair
Else. Yes, I know what you're gonna say. Go ahead, go.
- [97:59]
Sam
Ahead. Something happens in between the release Diver down, the release in 1984 that I really do think also alters the trajectory of Van Halen. And that is, of course, something that if you don't like Van Halen, you still know this. You still know Eddie Van Halen's guest spot on Michael Jackson's Beat it, which took place in 1982 after the sessions for that album, I believe. And, you know, he just walked in basically off the street, kind of half rewrote the song, you know, playing that infamous guitar solo on.
- [98:30]
Scott Bertram
It.
- [98:31]
Sam
SAM.
- [99:16]
But also think about what Beat it is. That is a song that really heavily depends upon, since it plays to a lot of the modern pop tropes, and it is the first, first place for basically the great majority of America. The kind of people in America who weren't into, like, hard rock, heavy metal, David Lee Roth, California stuff. They heard Eddie Van Halen playing Eddie Van Halen guitar on the biggest song on the planet, and that gave him the opportunity to call his shot on the next.
- [99:43]
Scott Bertram
Record.
- [99:49]
Sam.
- [100:15]
And nothing gets me down.
- [100:19]
You got it tough I seen the toughest around.
- [100:26]
And I know.
- [100:29]
Baby, just how you feel.
- [100:34]
You got to roll on with the punches and get to one trio.
- [100:41]
I can't you see me standing here I got my back against the wrecking machine.
- [100:48]
I eat the worst that you see.
- [100:51]
How can't you see what I.
- [100:53]
Sean Trende
Mean?
- [101:02]
You know, it's funny, he told, he tells the story that, and I, I think it's hard. I didn't appreciate the importance of the Thriller album growing up because I didn't realize that there weren't really crossovers from black music, R and B and soul, because all those songs are big now from the 70s, but they weren't really then, like, it was it was really the first kind of Motown crossover to white America. And Eddie tells this story. They had a, they had a no side project rule. And Eddie got called up to do it and he actually thought, okay, this is like a Motown album. Who's going to even know I did.
- [101:35]
Sam
This?
- [101:37]
Of course everyone's gonna know this. You sound like nobody.
- [101:41]
Sean Trende
Else. And it ends up being like the best selling album of all time.
- [101:47]
This is a great album and it's one where I feel like I shouldn't like it. And I have to remind myself that it only is overplayed because it's so great. I think there's kind of two things about it I wanted to talk about. The first is we've talked a lot about how Eddie has classical influences, but he's really in the Yngwie Malmsteen genre. And you listen to Hot For Teacher and it's so fast. It sounds like a hard rocking, like fast song, but when you slow down the, the riff, it's actually.
- [102:25]
It's a jazz, it's like a blues jazz riff. It's the same thing. I'm the one I, I, I can't play that riff, I never could. But it's.
- [102:33]
Da da da da da da da da da. Like it's got all the syncopation and it's a boogie woogie song. So what makes Eddie so unique with his guitar playing is that he's basically doing like boogie woogie just at an incredibly fast pace. The other thing I have to throw out is that by this time Eddie is listening to a lot of a guy named Alan Holdsworth who is a jazz fusion guitarist and just an insane, insane, insane jazz fusion.
- [102:59]
Sam
Guitarist.
- [103:01]
And I only know him from his work with like Soft Machine in the mid to late 70s. And I know he's done so much else, but he never really like recorded his own stuff. He was just a great player with a lot of other famous.
- [103:13]
Sean Trende
Artists. He's an amazing, amazing guitarist. But so I always say that the writing's on the wall that this band is going to implode on this album. Not because of the keyboard, so that's part of it, but on the other side songs, Eddie's solos don't fit in. And I think it's him acting out. Like if you listen to the solo of House of Pain and Girl Gone Bad, even Drop Dead Legs and I'll Wait, it's Alan Holdsworth stuff that Eddie is just like throwing into this otherwise like rock song. He's bored. Yeah, he's bored and Even Top Jimmy. Like, if you listen to the solos with that in mind that they do not fit the song. And it's the first time that that's true. I think you can see, like the collapse coming.
- [103:59]
Sam
Baby.
- [104:30]
Actually, I can now go back and listen to it with that in mind. Especially without Holdsworth in mind. That's a connection I didn't make. I. I'm familiar with him, as I said, but I did not actually draw the line. And now probably going to hear it in an entirely different way. But as for me, though, and I'll just throw my two cents in before I give it to Scott. This is the beginning of my youth. I mean, this is the record. This is what I knew Van Halen for. I went back and I heard the original famous radio songs from the debut album, you know, on the radio when I got into my teenage years. But as a kid, watching my dad's videotapes, boy, we knew Beat It. We knew Jump. We knew Hot for Teacher, which my mom hated it. Fact that I was able to watch the video for Hot for Teacher, you know, I'm my. She's like, John. My dad's name was John. She'd be like, john, why have you taped that? You. Jeff can't watch that. That's filthy. It's so hilarious. You know, a couple years later, we'd be like provoking my mom with NWA so it would only get worse from there, you know. Highway to Hell with AC dc we had found a lot of great ways to get up my mom's nose when we were kids by listening to rebellious rock songs. But this, this was the beginning of it. And I just have to the two things that come to mind most. First of all, I love the COVID of this album. This, to me, is just one of the finest covers of a rock album. The spirit of Van Halen is perfectly encapsulated in that little cigarette smoke. And Pooty, the little mischievous cherub with a smile on his face. You know, all the girls in college had those. Those little cherubs. They'd have that little, like, you know, poster they put on the wall of Renaissance art. It was always the little baby, like angels. Meanwhile, I put up Van Halen's 1984 On My Wall because I was like, yeah, I'm the guy who's like, you know, smoking cigarettes and telling tales out of school. That missed mischievousness. That, to me, was just perfectly encapsulated by that album. And of course by Jump. Jump, to me is. It's a cliche. It's the most famous Van Halen song of all time. But maybe it's actually accurately rated in this one case because it has everything that they brought to the table. It has David Lee Roth's charisma. It has the video where he's doing, you know, forward somersaults and the splits and he's smiling. They're all poking their heads into the camera. They look like they're having the greatest time of their lives. But then you also, you got everything that Eddie got bring to a song. He has the fantastic keyboard bass of that song. The keyboard solo is as good as the. As the guitar solo. The guitar solo comes first. And you think, okay, there's your Van Halen moment of flash. But the Van Halen guitar solo fades into the Van Halen keyboard solo. And this might become something that would be a trend for the band later on. But that keyboard solo that Eddie plays, those arpeggiated chords which, you know, just seem to suggest themselves naturally from the sequence of the song, it's a triumphant moment. It's Eddie's stadium rock at its best. It has never become a clich. And I guess the reason it has never become a cliche is because you got the full force of all those personalities. Those four guys on that video alone, you understood what it was that appealed to Van Halen about everyone universally. Everything about that song is them at their best. And I suppose it just couldn't.
- [107:28]
Jeff Blair
Blast.
- [108:29]
Does jump the best here? Is it Panama? Is it Hot for Teacher? Every one of those songs, those, those big singles are just, you know, Mount Rushmore kind of songs. Panama. Panama might be the greatest riff in band history. That's incredible. It's just a mountain of rock, you know, and if I recall correctly that there's a story about some interviewer said to David Lee Roth, all you do is write songs about beer and girls and cars. And David lebron said, that's not true. We haven't written a song about a car yet. And that's why he wrote Panama about a car. But man, that is such a hot tune. The. The way that the bass just sort of idles like a. Like a car in the verses. You've got literally Eddie's Lamborghini revving in the middle of that tune. And when they feel like they.
- [109:17]
Sam
Were listening to ZZ Top and Eliminator, you know, like that kind of a car based song or theme, that's kind of what I get out of Panama. Now, only with the proper context.
- [109:26]
Jeff Blair
That would have been tight time. W. But that was a Year.
- [109:30]
Sam
Before. You're right. Because. Yeah, yeah, you're right. It can't be. It can't be. You're.
- [109:34]
Jeff Blair
Correct. The way that song accelerates back into the chorus after that breakdown, you know, where. Where David Roth's putting the seat back and. But you get, you know, the piston popping. Ain't no stopping now. And they launch back into Panama. That's magical. That's magical.
- [109:49]
Scott Bertram
Moment.
- [109:54]
It will be.
- [109:55]
Jeff Blair
Now.
- [110:25]
And then. Hey, what about Hot for Teacher? I gotta tell you something. I loved the video when I was young, for obvious reasons, I didn't love the song because it, like. It was like a half song, right? It was. It was a little this and then some speaking and this and.
- [110:38]
Sam
That. And.
- [110:38]
Jeff Blair
I. At some point, I just had to, like, give up and just say, that's a great song. And you have to turn it up very, very loud to best experience Hot Teacher from the beginning. The beginning. Alex, drum solo, which is pretty acrobatic and fun. Into that. How that main riff develops and. And. And, you know, it works because it is so stripped down before it plows right back into that. That riff and all the David Lee Roth stuff. Yeah. I think the clock is slow, you know, here. You missed us, we're back. And that line, which is so great, you know, I think of all the education that I missed, but then my homework was never quite like this. It's just a great encapsulation of whatever mood they're trying to get across in Hot for Teacher. And so I. Again, I have completely given up any semblance of saying, ah, you know, it's not quite this. Not quite that Hot for Teacher. Spoken.
- [111:32]
Scott Bertram
To.
- [111:41]
Give me something to ride on.
- [111:53]
I heard about.
- [111:57]
I know about this.
- [112:05]
How did you know the golden rule? I think of all the education that I miss, but that my homework was never quite like.
- [112:15]
Jeff Blair
This.
- [112:26]
And I have to put 5 cents in for I'll Wait, which is a song where Michael Mc Donald from the.
- [112:31]
Sam
Doobie. How did that.
- [112:32]
Jeff Blair
Happen? Okay, they were.
- [112:33]
Sam
Stuck. Doobie Brothers.
- [112:34]
Jeff Blair
Guy. They were stuck. They were stuck. I think it was mostly. Roth was stuck on lyrics. I think they were stuck a little bit on the music, too. And Templeman produced Doobie Brothers, too, and so he called McDonald and said, just help him write a little bit. So I don't know how much McDonald had to do with the final version of I'll Wait, but I've always really loved that tune. I love the synth part. I love. I think it's one of Roth's really great vocal performances. No joke. Like, it's like a really good vocal performance from Roth. And I've always really liked I'll Wait, one of the other, you know, synth songs on the record. But as I said at the top, it's not a synth album. This is hard. You know, Drop Dead Legs and House of Pain, which I think Rush used as a bumper for many years on the Rush Limbaugh program, too.
- [113:21]
One that sticks in my mind. It's still a very heavy record that just has these, you know, a few songs that are synth driven. And they're both great songs. So you. I mean, you can't get after it because you don't like the synth. Those are fantastic.
- [113:33]
Scott Bertram
Songs.
- [113:50]
And while she watches I can never be free Such good photography.
- [113:58]
I wait till your love comes down I'm coming straight for your heart no way you can stop me now as far as you.
- [114:13]
Sam
Are.
- [114:18]
Well, it's really interesting, though, to now go back and listen to Sean's critique and say, okay, if you listen to the guitar solos on a lot of these tracks, it sounds like Eddie is sort of rebelling against the constraints that he's been forced into. So, actually, you know, before we move on, Sean, do you have any last thoughts you want to add about this, their first number one album? The. The huge breakthrough, the one that made them into actual. You know, as opposed to being an incredibly successful hard rock band that could fill stadiums now they are nation number one. You know, they are. They're at the pinnacle. They will. They will never get any higher. And then the band falls apart. You have any final thoughts on 1984? Do we want to get into why David Lee Roth left the band and maybe why it had to be.
- [114:59]
Sean Trende
Inevitable?
- [115:01]
Sam
Mischemistry.
- [115:03]
Sean Trende
Yes. No, I. I think I. I think we've covered that. But even. Even the song Jump, if you listen to the guitar solo, it has a key change, it has a rhythm change, and the guitar part, like, you couldn't play it over any other part of the song. It's. It's completely out of.
- [115:19]
Sam
Place. It really does, actually, because it's come out of nowhere. He just goes to squeal and then it goes right back into the. The original chords and then the synth solo. But that's the one place where it doesn't even feel out of. It doesn't feel out of place. It feels as if it had to be a part of the. That song. Yeah, but you know who didn't have to be a part of Van Halen?
- [115:38]
That was David Lee Roth. Now I'm going to tell you the way I remember this, I remember like 1985. I consider this a Van Halen side project. I had no idea. But all I knew is that David Lee Roth was out there singing California Girls and singing I Ain't Got Nobody. Just a gigolo. I'm just a gigolo and everywhere I go. And I remember the video of him like in a top hat, bare.
- [116:00]
Jeff Blair
Chest. It was just hilarious. It's Dave. And by the way, that's Peter Angelus who should get a shout out here. Peter, Peter Angelus who came and I think eventually was the manager of the band. He managed the Black Crows later and I'm sure has many stories to tell, but he managed David Lee Roth his solo career too. And so Pete Angelis and Roth came up with these ideas for the California Girls video and the Just a Gigolo I Ain't Got Nobody video, which is just simply hilarious. Those videos are.
- [116:25]
Sam
Fantastic. And I thought he was part of Van Halen at the time. I would have been 6, 5, 6 years old. This is my youngest. Musical memories actually involve Van halen as a 20, turns out. And then he was gone and then he was completely gone. And I remember being utterly mystified, as you already pointed out. Scott, why are these bands like breaking up at the peak of their career? Right. Does anyone want to go and to discuss what the, I guess their theories or what the known story is about why David Lee Roth left Van Halen? Was he fired or did he quit? Did he jump or was he.
- [116:58]
Scott Bertram
Pushed?
- [117:02]
More people know the B.
- [117:07]
For every dance Selling is romance O what they say There will come a day when youth will pass away blue what will they say about me when the end comes I know it was just a jig Life goes on when without me Cuz I.
- [117:33]
Got nobody Nobody cares for me Nobody Nobody gets for me.
- [117:47]
Sean Trende
Why does it have to be like either or.
- [117:49]
Sam
Right? I, I, I think a little bit of.
- [117:51]
Jeff Blair
Both.
- [117:51]
Sean Trende
Yeah. It's, it's a little bit of everything. Like he, he, he when a band gets big, you know, it's the, you know, success has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan. You know, everyone in the band thinks that they're responsible for it. And I think there's two.
- [118:11]
Eddie and David Lee Roth who have, you know, Diamond Dave have a claim, have a colorable claim to that. And if you listen to the stories they tell, like they're starting to push each other. Like Dave and Eddie want to do different types of, of music and Dave starts complaining. Eddie always has his guitar solo that he does in the middle of the show, or had, I guess, Roth starts complaining about the guitar solos being too loud or too long, rather like he's not getting the stage time he wants. I think at its core, it's just egos and a lot of simmering things. David Lee Roth is not an easy person to get away along with. He's not a fun guy, and cocaine is a hell of a drug. And at the same time, Eddie, I mean, as we'll really see later on, is not very pleasant either. So it was just.
- [119:05]
It was all coming to a.
- [119:06]
Jeff Blair
Head. Well, Roth wanted to be in a movie called Crazy from the Heat, which is what the EP was named, and he wanted Eddie to score it. And there was just.
- [119:17]
As we mentioned previously, obviously, like, this conflicting and friction. Conflicting visions, in a way, and friction. And I think when you hear. And we won't really talk about Roth's solo career from this point forward, I don't think. But when you hear Edoin Smile, which is Roth's solo record from the same year as 5150, and then hear 5150, it's pretty clear why they couldn't coexist very well anymore. I think. I mean, I think it's fairly.
- [119:48]
Sam
Clear. Okay. Do you know how many times in my notes throughout the rest of these albums I think I actually write is like, could I imagine David Lee Roth singing this? And the answer is almost always.
- [119:58]
Jeff Blair
No. No, because he couldn't sing Sammy's lyrics. I mean.
- [120:02]
Sam
That'S. I don't think he could see his lines. To be fair to Sammy Agar, it's not his lyrics. Sure. But also just his vocal talent is exceptional.
- [120:11]
Jeff Blair
Yeah. Well, I mean, even on 5150, immediately Sammy's hitting notes and doing things that, you know, you wouldn't dre about David Lee Roth doing. But I don't. But we're just talking two different things, I think. I don't hear David Lee Roth singing these songs because they're not in his Persona. They're not in, like, they're totally. And I mean, we're sort of just morphing into 5150 talk here. But, you know, Sammy is really serious about stuff like Roth. You could hear a wink, get a smile, and, you know, he nearly sort of laughs at himself when he delivers some lines. But Sammy's just very serious about all this stuff. He's serious about partying, and he's serious about drinking, and he's serious, serious about.
- [120:47]
Sam
Everything. He's serious about things that realistically, it's hard to take too.
- [120:52]
Jeff Blair
Serious.
- [120:52]
Sam
Yes. Which is. Which is why it seems always vaguely ridiculous from this point onwards. Like, why are you gonna. You listen to how he. His voice, his vocals. Like, I think of him as like, Brian Johnson on AC dc. Like, such effort to hit those notes. That must hurt. Like, I just think your vote. It's like, why are you putting yourself through such pains to sing about Cabo Waba? You know.
- [121:15]
The joys of passing out face down on the. Be drunk on Cabo San.
- [121:19]
Jeff Blair
Lucas. Right.
- [121:20]
Sam
Right. It's like that kind of a thing. There's always a mismatch in terms of, like, the absolute, like. Yeah, right. Dead serious import of what he gives to those vocal approaches and the actual lyrics. Although every now and then, as I'll point out, it matches because he's actually trying to sing about, like, well, just being here right now. Come on. That's your moment. That's what. It's sort of appropriate, Thor, that. That stadium anthemic.
- [121:41]
Jeff Blair
Thing. I do think that that's a reason why. Another reason why the. Why the change probably happened and a reason why Eddie was maybe more com. Comfortable with Sammy. Because.
- [121:52]
I don't want to put words in people's mouths, but it seems like Eddie wanted some respect. Right? They're selling millions of records. But like the interviewer said, you read about girls and beer and cars, and Eddie probably said, look, this band is more than that. And we can do serious stuff. And we can talk about, you know, the world.
- [122:10]
Sam
Hunger. We can talk about dreams and summer.
- [122:13]
Sean Trende
Nights.
- [122:13]
Sam
Right. And how love will walk in inside. Why can't this be love? Right. Serious.
- [122:18]
Jeff Blair
Topic. Talk about US Prime Grade A stamp. Guaranteed beef.
- [122:23]
All those things Sammy wants to talk about are 5,000.
- [122:25]
Scott Bertram
150. Wow. You have great. A SM guarantee.
- [122:33]
Grease it up and turn on the heat.
- [122:39]
You got to throw it down and roll it over once, maybe twice. Then drop. Down, down, down, down.
- [122:49]
Jeff Blair
Down.
- [123:05]
Before we carry on, do we.
- [123:06]
Sam
Want to at least explain how Sammy Hagar found his way into Van Halen? Let's just get. It's. It's.
- [123:13]
Scott Bertram
Hilarious.
- [123:13]
Sam
Every. So David Lee Roth leaves or is fired, you know, as yet.
- [123:17]
Sean Trende
Undetermined.
- [123:18]
Sam
Maybe. Maybe never will be. But then for a period of time, I guess, in 1985, they find themselves sort of out of.
- [123:24]
Jeff Blair
Options. They asked Patti Smith of Scandal, you know, the warrior to be the lead singer of Van Halen, and she, I think, passed probably out.
- [123:34]
Sam
Of. Out of intelligently understanding that the fans wanted a man. But that tells you that Eddie Van Halen wasn't really interested in doing what they had necessarily done before. He was ready to go in a completely different.
- [123:44]
Jeff Blair
Direction. Yes. All right, well, there's a story I don't know going on. What's apocryphal, and maybe Sean, you know, Eddie at some point went to Gene Simmons. I think it was when Fraley was out and Vinnie Vincent was. Was not working out. And I think Eddie went to Gene Simmons and said, hey, just let me come to Kiss and play guitar. Like, I just want to play guitar. And Kiss and Simmons just basically told him, are you out of your mind? You're Eddie Van Halen. You have a band called Van Halen. Go play in Van Halen. But, like. So, yes, he was definitely trying to stretch. He was definitely tired. The way things were going, you.
- [124:17]
Sam
Know, Van Halen might have been in trouble unless Eddie had taken his car in to the shop. And because the story apparently is it's his auto mechanic who said, hey, you know, you should pull up this guy. He used to be in this band Montrose. You heard of Montrose? They were a hard rock thing in the early 70s. Hey, he's out of work these days. He's doing his own thing. As it turns out, Sammy Hager didn't need to work because he made like, a million dollars in the water sprinkler system.
- [124:44]
Jeff Blair
Business.
- [124:44]
Sam
What? Yes, yes, the emergency. The emergency fire systems, you know, like, you know, if the fire alarm goes.
- [124:50]
Jeff Blair
Off. He invested in.
- [124:51]
Sam
It. He invested in it. And so that's how he.
- [124:54]
Jeff Blair
Made. It's in his.
- [124:55]
Sean Trende
Book.
- [124:56]
Sam
Wow. So he didn't really need the money in any event, and he was just doing his own thing. And then. So like, hey, okay, you want to come join Sammy Hagar comes down, sings a couple songs with Eddie Van Halen, and he's like, you're in the band. And it happened actually is easy easily as that. And. And I guess that brings us to the first Sammy album, which did not take a lot of time to come out. I mean, it came out in March, started March of 86. So they had to take time off to, like, you know, transition between David and Sammy. And then this comes out, and it's. You know what? It's not a bad album, but it's not a good album. It's immediately obvious that Van Halen, Eddie, specifically wants to take them in a totally different direction. The first note I wrote in notes here is, well, they're making pop rock love ballads now. I guess this has just happened now. We have those goofy synth sounds that go in the choruses. And they make everything seem nice and radio ready. And I guess the. The quintessential example of this is why can't this Be Love? Which I think was the lead single off this.
- [126:00]
Jeff Blair
Album.
- [126:00]
Sam
Yes. And it's everything that's wrong with Van Hager. There are some good things that are. That I'll discuss about the Hagar era. I don't really hate them. I like some of this music a lot, even though I recognize it has none of that original wild guitar of the. The first part of Van Halen's career. But this is the absolute.
- [126:17]
Jeff Blair
Worst. It's got what it.
- [126:20]
Scott Bertram
Takes. So tell me why can't this be love?
- [126:28]
Straight from my heart oh, tell me why can't this be love? I tell myself hey, the only move right here. Only time will tell if we stand the test of time.
- [126:47]
I know you got to run to win I'll be. Damn. The fog hung up on the line.
- [126:58]
Hey, no, I can't recall.
- [127:02]
Sam
Anything. That's the one that. That has that great line, Only time will tell if we stand the test of time. Which, you know.
- [127:11]
Sean Trende
Yeah. You could. You can almost see like. Like Sammy thinking, wow, this is really good. Like.
- [127:18]
Sam
Wordplay.
- [127:21]
But, you know, I don't hate 5150. I think it's got some interesting musical ideas. It's the problem. I'll even concede that there is another equally gloopy pop song on this record that I like, Love Walks In. I was already making fun of it, but I kind of like. It's about the synths. It's AM Friendly. Although AM Wasn't even a venue for this sort of music at this point in the 80s. It just seems radio friendly. MOR.
- [127:47]
Is the problem.
- [127:48]
Jeff Blair
Here. It's about. It's about aliens. It's about Sammy believing he had multiple contact with extraterrestrial aliens traveling across the Milky.
- [127:57]
Sam
Way. I actually did not get that from the song. I only got the.
- [128:00]
Jeff Blair
Music. Yeah.
- [128:01]
Sam
That'S. That's.
- [128:01]
Jeff Blair
Amazing. That's. That's.
- [128:02]
Scott Bertram
Sammy. And then you sense a change Nothing feels the same all your dreams are strange Love comes walking in Some kind of alien waits for the opening Simply falls A strange love comes.
- [128:24]
Sam
Walking.
- [128:55]
By the way, huge hit. This album went, oh.
- [128:57]
Sean Trende
Yeah. To number.
- [128:57]
Sam
One. It built on the success of 1984. This is by no means like, maybe their artistic peak happened in 1984, but by God, their commercial peak happens.
- [129:08]
Jeff Blair
Here. Well, no, the commercial peak is still 8, 1984. I mean by. By far by thinking, I'll go to number.
- [129:14]
Sam
One.
- [129:15]
Jeff Blair
Okay. They're all number one. But I think sales. Yes, but yes. These now, they have sort of. They have sort of crested the mountain, right. And so they have the ability to stay at the top. And they do, and they craft. I mean, from an artistic standpoint, I would take Roth's Edom and smile over 5150 any day. But this is not, as Jeff said, it's not a bad record. But I think people misunderstand some of the reasons why it's not a great record and why. Further, I think a lot of the Hagar era suffers. One is it's not just Hagar himself or his lyrics, which I'm going to read in a minute. A couple things happen at the same time. So one is that Templeman's gone. Templeman's gone. And if Don Landy comes, comes in and he produces with Mick Jones from Foreigner and they change the way the band sounds. Where Templeman would have Eddie's guitar kind of front and center, front and center, I.
- [130:12]
Sam
Guess. But right off to the one.
- [130:14]
Jeff Blair
Channel high in the mix, off to one side, there was a distinct Van Halen sound that they had developed. So Landy says, forget about that. We're going to put the guitar kind of deeper in the mix and right in the middle of stuff. And so immediately it's a different sound and there's a whole lot more compression. It's less live sounding and more studio sounding. Right. And so the band sound changes significantly at the same time. The recorded sound changes significantly at the same time. Sammy comes in and you also have, I guess it's Eddie. It's not so much 5150, but certainly ou812. And then in subsequent albums, he decides every Van Halen song now has to be at least five minutes long. And heck, let's make him seven and eight minutes long. And I think that misunderstands the core strength of this band, like.
- [131:06]
Scott Bertram
Wildly.
- [131:09]
Sam
An under a point, which I noticed when I was going through the discography, but I didn't mention every one of the first five Van Halen 31 minutes, almost 30. Why is they all 31 minutes? 31.
- [131:19]
Jeff Blair
Minutes.
- [131:20]
Sam
Perfect. Every one of them perfect. And that's the perfect length. It's the perfect length for a record. You don't need a 50 minute long album. And now we're going into that.
- [131:28]
Jeff Blair
Era. All right, so we've barely talked about some of the music here, so let me do a little of that. Hand off to Sean. So I just want to read before I begin the first four lines of lyrics on 5150, which read US Prime Grade A stamp, guaranteed. Grease it up and turn on the heat. You gotta throw it down and roll it over and over and over. Then chow down and down and down. That's how Good Enough begins. And it's a proper introduction to the lyrical sophistication of the Sammy Hagar.
- [132:01]
Sam
Era. As a lyric, it is not good.
- [132:03]
Jeff Blair
Enough. Unfortunately, it is not good enough. Musically, it's not like the worst song in the world. And then Sammy's on top of doing what Sammy does. All right, so there are a couple things. I think Best of Both Worlds is a great song. I really like Best of Both Worlds in part because it sort of brings the Templeman sound back. You have Eddie's guitar very prominent front and center, driving the melody, riffing all over the place. It's not necessarily a synth song, but I don't have a problem with the synths. Best of Both Worlds is.
- [132:31]
Sean Trende
Great.
- [133:18]
By the.
- [133:18]
Sam
Way. You know what I love about the Best of Both Worlds is it absolutely nicks a big riff from Cool in the Gang Song.
- [133:24]
Jeff Blair
Celebration.
- [133:28]
That's true. I had not.
- [133:29]
Sam
Even. Of Both.
- [133:30]
Jeff Blair
Worlds. I had not even considered.
- [133:32]
Sam
That. That's why you like.
- [133:34]
Jeff Blair
It. That's why I like.
- [133:35]
Scott Bertram
It.
- [133:36]
Jeff Blair
And. And then 5150, that's the title track. If it's not Best of Both Worlds, the best song on the record, it's. It's the title track. Wonderful intro. Eddie plays really well. And it's one of the few songs that sound more live on this record. I love those two. Now, Dreams is inoffensive. Summer Nights has dunderheaded Sammy lyrics on top of a decent, you know, Eddie sort of melody. I just think it's. It's a good record. But immediately there are problems in my. In my mind. And immediately there's a step down in quality and I'll just, you know, put cards on the table. You can tell by this point, I know is Roth era or Hagar era better. Van Halen. To me, there's no comparison. It's virtually a different band at this point due to all the things I just discussed and the inclusion of Sammy and the fact that Van Halen begins to sound more like Sammy's solo records from the early 80s. On these future albums, too, they're really. You can't compare them. I mean, you can compare them. I would not compare them. They're very different products in the end. And if you look at them in totality, if you're a pop fan, you probably like the Sammy stuff better, but from a. From a critical artistic standpoint. I mean, it can't hold a candle to those first records. I'm.
- [134:53]
Scott Bertram
Sorry. Free.
- [135:23]
Cause we belong in a world that must be.
- [135:28]
Sam
Strong.
- [135:36]
Sean, you have any Last thoughts on 5150 or do we want to move on to.
- [135:39]
Sean Trende
OU812? Well, I agree with everything I do. I think kind of a big picture thing is that Eddie needed David Lee Roth and David Lee Roth needed Eddie. You know, David Lee Roth goes out and he gets the second best guitarist or best guitarist in the world. You can debate. It's Steve Vai and he gets Billy Sheehan the best bass player and Greg Bisson at an up and coming drummer. And Steve Vai has even said the reason we didn't do as well as. We just weren't the right. Like we were the virtuosos like Eddie, but we weren't virtuosos in the way he was. Like it did. They didn't. They didn't write songs for. With the swing that Eddie wrote and that Roth needed at the same time. Roth's lyrics. The saying is that Van Halen lost a frontman but gained a singer because he could actually sing. But Roth brought that kind of bluesy, fun era air to it. And it's just like the late. The Van Hagar era albums. I think they're sterile is the main thing.
- [136:43]
Like the, the. The Roth songs are sexy and laid back and fun and you could play them at a party and most of them.
- [136:51]
Sam
People. I have the words corporate rock written all over my.
- [136:54]
Jeff Blair
Notes.
- [136:54]
Sam
Yeah. Second half. And I. Thinking of beers and endorsements and stadiums and. Yep. I mean that's clearly the ethos.
- [137:01]
Scott Bertram
Here.
- [137:05]
Wow.
- [137:15]
Summer night in my radio.
- [137:20]
That'S how we leave Baby don't you know we celebrate when the games are here Hot.
- [137:32]
That'S my time of the year.
- [137:37]
We made it through the.
- [137:38]
Sean Trende
Cold.
- [137:41]
Although Eddie's guitar solos on 5150 now fit the song again because he's.
- [137:46]
Sam
Doing what he wants.
- [137:46]
Sean Trende
Now. It's his band. It's his band. But I still. I do love 5150. I do love. I love summer nights. Although I. I think this alternative also says a lot.
- [138:00]
The first song that. So they come in stadium and they have the music written for summer nights and they play it. And Sammy Hagar again, he, he. He isn't necessarily self aware. He says, like this is a great thing. He's like, yeah, they started playing it and I just did the songs and the word. I just Started singing and like right there on the spot, I just sang Summer Night and I'm like, I.
- [138:19]
Sam
Believe. Yeah, it sounds like.
- [138:21]
Sean Trende
It. I believe you.
- [138:24]
But you know, and I think like Roth has his like fun little. Oh, I reach down between my legs and ease the seat back. And a lot of his sexual innuendo is playful and innuendo. And Sammy's just like, I love my baby's pound.
- [138:36]
Sam
Cake.
- [138:39]
Again, you draw analogies. And this reminds me of AC DCs. Like David Lee Roth was like Bon Scott. It's very playful, kind of like a lot of big balls sort of jokes. Right. Meanwhile, Brian Johnson was a little bit more straight at the point and.
- [138:53]
Jeff Blair
That'S Sammy Hagar and Sean. I think one of the other great examples is in the very next record which we're going to transition to. But Black and blue. Black and Blue. Sammy wants to say we're going to do it till we're black and blue. Which sounds one of the most unappealing things I can think of. When you're trying to be sexual. It's like.
- [139:11]
Sam
Ridiculous. So we're really not going to enjoy this by the time it's finished. Okay, but here we go. By the way, I guess this brings us to ou812 and I really do think of these two in the similar bucket that they both have a couple of interesting songs, but I don't like them. They went to number one, but they're not great albums. OUA 12 might as well be 5150 to me. Even though it was a three years later. This one comes out in.
- [139:36]
Jeff Blair
1988.
- [139:36]
Sam
2. Yeah, but I'm going to have to embarrass myself by admitting that the absolute best song on this album is called Cabo.
- [139:45]
Jeff Blair
Wabo. I think you're.
- [139:46]
Sam
Right. I know, I know. And of course this is the one I was talking about earlier, which is about Sammy. Sammy's love of hanging out in Baja California. Cabo Sandler, just getting face drunk, falling asleep on the beach. Beach, you know, like wrestling a fish out of the ocean and taking it to the grill would be cooked for him. That kind of, you know, hedonic pleasure. And I don't care. It sounds like a Sammy Hagar song and not a Van Halen song. But it's a great Sammy Hagar song. There's a pre chorus in that thing that is just fantastic. It goes into that little bouncy course. It feels again, it feels more like. Like a Sammy Hagar Montrose kind of a tune. And then the playout's.
- [140:23]
Scott Bertram
Fantastic.
- [140:26]
You know I wanna.
- [140:36]
Dance.
- [140:44]
Come on, let me take you down.
- [140:50]
I will show you.
- [140:52]
Sam
All.
- [141:09]
That, to me, is the one highlight on the record and the other one that comes pretty close to after it, which is embarrassing, but it feels more like classic Van Halen than anything else in the OU. 812 is probably source of infection. Apparently they were drunk as skunks in the studio recording this. And that's probably why it lacks a little subtlety. But honestly, Van Halen kind of needed a little more. A little less subtlety at this point in their career. So just because it's the only one that sounds like they're actually a rock band anymore. I like that one as well. But again, this one might have gone to number one, but it really just means nothing to.
- [141:42]
Sean Trende
Me. Yeah, I will say mine. All mine has a really cool guitar part, but it also is just ruined by the lyrics. Like. Like, he's got that line, you've got Allah in the east, you've got Jesus in the west. Christ, what's a man to do? And even. Even as.
- [141:58]
Sam
A. You know, we thought that that was.
- [142:00]
Sean Trende
Brilliant. No, even as a fif. Well, he might even as a 15 year.
- [142:04]
Jeff Blair
Old.
- [142:05]
Sam
Yeah. I was like, he was terrible proud of that lie. He was probably so proud of that. He's like, Allah in the east, God in the west, Jesus in the.
- [142:13]
Jeff Blair
Middle.
- [142:13]
Sam
Perfect. I'm a. I'm a.
- [142:15]
Scott Bertram
Genius.
- [142:18]
See, Claiming victory. Oh, but that's not me.
- [142:25]
Give me, give me something real. I just want to feel like it's mine. All mine.
- [142:38]
Really mine.
- [142:42]
Come on, get me some something.
- [142:47]
Something that's mine. Oh, mine. Oh.
- [142:51]
Jeff Blair
Man.
- [142:57]
Not my favorite record here, guys. This is really. This is 51 minutes long. So now these songs are now pushing 4, 5, 6 minutes. Even Cabba Waba was 7 minutes long. You know, to. To. To Jeff's point of. About Cabo Wabo. Like, this is the. Again, another different. Like David Lee Roth's about, like drinking is a way to get the girl. Like, it's like there's a. There's a mission. And for Sammy.
- [143:21]
Sam
Drinking. This is like a spiritual mission for.
- [143:23]
Jeff Blair
Sammy. Is it? The mission is to drink, right? That. That is. That is the end all and be all. It's a, you know, different goals in mind. I don't like the single. I've never. I've never liked when it's Love, which is way too long. It's six minutes. It just lasts forever.
- [143:41]
I already mentioned don't like Black and Blue. It's such a plotting rhythm and horrible Lyrics. The few things I like here, I like. It's another synth tune I like. Feel so good, I do. And I don't know if Sammy's cribbing from the Police when he's singing about sending a message in a bottle and then. But then you call the tune. Feel so good. But I really like that synth riff.
- [144:05]
If you do like it, it's based entirely because you like that synth riff. Like, that's. The whole song is. Do you like the way that Eddie's playing this synth? I.
- [144:12]
Scott Bertram
Do.
- [144:29]
I'll send the message in a bottle I'll send the message and pray for the mercy of the sea.
- [144:39]
Stormy weather.
- [144:45]
Waiting for love to rescue me.
- [144:51]
Hey Feel so good, so.
- [144:54]
Sam
Good.
- [144:57]
And.
- [144:57]
Scott Bertram
It feels so nice, so nice when love comes around I feel good, so.
- [145:05]
Jeff Blair
Good so good, so good.
- [145:08]
And the other single, Finish what you started, which is this countrified sound. It's different in a good way. It's acoustic and has a little bit of, like. It's not steel guitar, but, like, steel sounding. And I like that track too. Finish what you started but the rest of it is just starting to get. And it's very. It does feel and sound a bit more late 80s. The synth tones are a little different. And even when they try to rock, I don't think it works out very well. This is not a good.
- [145:40]
Scott Bertram
Album.
- [145:56]
I like to love the long run. I like to take each step one by one. Right on time. You will arrive by keeping the dream alive in it's alive let's kick out inside of me.
- [146:18]
So come home, baby.
- [146:22]
Sam
Please.
- [146:27]
Any last thoughts, Sean? Or do you want me to surprise the entire.
- [146:30]
Sean Trende
Audience? Oh, no, go ahead and. Go ahead and surprise.
- [146:33]
Sam
Us. I'm going to argue that For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge is a good album. I. I actually have to say this is by far 1991's F U. Okay.
- [146:45]
Yeah, we're not going to use the shorthand for this one. Which is the most trivial, querile pawn on the planet. I think they. They had a. Got a suggestion from a boxer or something like that to, like, name it.
- [146:56]
Jeff Blair
This. And Sammy wanted to just call it.
- [147:01]
He just wanted to call it. Wanted to have profit. He was like, censorship sucks, man. We just gotta call this album.
- [147:07]
Sean Trende
Sammy. Oh, my God, we're gonna do.
- [147:09]
Jeff Blair
It. And. And of course, everyone's like, what are you silly? We can't. We're trying to sell records here. We can't have that on the record. And Ray Boom Boom Mancini says, hey, you know what that stands for? That stands for For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. You should call that record that. And Sammy was all about that. So that's how the record got its name. Even though it doesn't. It's not true at.
- [147:27]
Sam
All. But listen to me. I got to admit, I will. There's some bias here. This one again, was part of my childhood. I I mentioned it earlier. I was in sixth grade in middle school. The Diet Crystal Pepsi theme song was everywhere. That piano on the radio for right now is everywhere. But I never actually listened to the album. I only finally got around to listening to this thing when we rebooked the show. And I'm going to admit it, for generic Van Hagar era Van Halen, this is by far the best they had to offer. Pound Cake. I'm going to embarrass myself again by saying that I like the song Pound Cake. Look, it's stupid, it's a stupid title. It's even stupider lyrics. That song has nothing but a head full of rocks. But the thing is, there are rocks and this thing actually rocks. I think it's one of the best Agar era anthems for this.
- [148:17]
Scott Bertram
Band.
- [148:58]
After.
- [148:59]
Sam
Nice.
- [149:18]
And There are. There's a lot of generic material on F U C K. There's spark. There's this song called in and.
- [149:23]
Jeff Blair
Out Song about phone sex in 1991 by a 1900 spanked call her up on the spank line. Thanks, Sammy. That's good.
- [149:31]
Sam
Stuff.
- [149:33]
How about in and out, which, you know, you don't even have to have the context of. I think we know what that one's about. We're back to Hagarville, but it's actually a pretty good steady groove. It's perfect music to have on in the background while you're drinking beer out of a red solo cup in a dingy frat basement. Which I guarantee you I heard that song while I was doing that. But then again, this entire thing is actually better sequenced than any Van Halen album from this era has a right to be. It's way too long, cut out three or four songs. But man, between right here and right now, Right, right here, right now is Jesus Jones. But between right now and then Standing on Top of the World, you've got the best of late, period. Van Halen, basically, in this one album.
- [150:14]
Scott Bertram
Al.
- [150:24]
But just out of reach. W Here we go. Round, round, round.
- [150:36]
Here we.
- [150:36]
Sean Trende
Go.
- [150:49]
So they bring back 10 Ted Templeman to produce it. I think that's a big pick, big part. I I I I think it's clearly a step up from ou812 pound cake. I don't know.
- [150:59]
Sam
Dumb.
- [150:59]
Sean Trende
Dumb. But I like dumb lyrics. But, but I don't know what happened. But like, Eddie's guitar on this album is fresh again, like Pound Cake. If you play all the, all the Van Halen song, Pound Cake is nothing like any other Eddie Van Halen guitar.
- [151:14]
Jeff Blair
Part. He's playing a new guitar on this record too, right? Yeah, New design and like, he worked with the guitar maker for him. So this is a new.
- [151:23]
Sean Trende
Guitar. Yeah, that. The evh. Yeah. And I, you know what? I, I will say, like, this is cheesy, but, like, I played 316 for my kids when they were babies. He wrote it as a, as a lullaby for, for Wolfie. And they put it on the album. It's a pretty.
- [151:39]
Sam
Song. So I, I, it's very emblem, by the way. The fact that it's a very tasteful, pretty acoustic guitar solo is just utterly emblematic for this era of Van.
- [151:48]
Scott Bertram
Halen.
- [151:51]
Sean Trende
Sam.
- [152:32]
I think you also have to say, if you, it is impossible, even if you dislike keyboard synth Van Halen, not to get hyped up by right now. It's just an incredible, incredibly well put together build song. And I love.
- [152:47]
Sam
It. You know, one thing I notice about right now, which I agree, I love, it's a triumph. It's a corporate rock triumph. It's too long. Like every other Van Halen song from this period. It shouldn't be five minutes, but it's perfectly manicured. Like, that piano line is to me as signature from my childhood, as the synth line on Jump was. And the other thing that's really kind of. I just noticed coming back to it, it says no guitar on that album. Rather on that song, no guitar almost at all. He's playing simple power chords during the verses and even the choruses. He really only takes one spot. He's completely said that he's made a statement with that song. I said we're. We might be Van Halen, but we don't need guitars to rock. We're doing it with this sort of. It reminds me of Clocks, unfortunately, by, you know, know.
- [153:36]
Sean Trende
That.
- [153:37]
Sam
Yeah. Cole plays clocks. Right. That sort of cold piano sound. But this to me does it much better than that ever.
- [153:42]
Scott Bertram
Did.
- [154:01]
Sam.
- [154:27]
It.
- [154:54]
Why put it on another.
- [154:56]
Jeff Blair
Day.
- [155:01]
This album. So we, we get asked and we're doing our. Ask us anything. And sometimes what's the thing you've changed your mind on most? Or what did you love now you hate? Or hate now you love? When this record came out, I bought it on cassette and I Wore it out. I can't tell you how much I listened to For Unlawful carnal knowledge in 1991 and 1990, 1992, and I've never listened to it again. I've never wanted to go back and listen to it again. And I. I don't think it's aged terribly well. I. Yeah, I think it's a step up from ou812. I would not call it a great record. There's a lot of problems. You know, Again, it's some of the. Some of the Sammy moves actually, are the ones that make the more pop sense. Runaround, which is like a more Sammy than. Than Van Halen sounding. Top of the World has a lot of Hagar influence creeping in.
- [155:53]
I don't think that the album tracks on here are very great. The Dream Is over, which is another great Sammy lyric where he sings over and over again, the dream is over Dream another dream Spank. Not great. Don't like Judgment Day. Pleasure Dome's a bad song and that's seven minutes long. There's a lot of potholes along the way. I can't deny that I still rock out a bit. Bit to Pound Cake. I can't deny that it's so ingrained. But, man, I experienced this so many times in 1991 and 1992, and I never need to go back again because you'll hear right now enough in other places that you don't have to go back to the record to appreciate.
- [156:34]
Sam
It. I have to point out that Standing On Top of the World was a song that was everywhere when I was a kid. 1991 hurt it on the radio. If there was a video, I'm certain that I saw it. And yet I never knew it was a Van Halen song until just two months ago. That tells me. That tells me something, actually. It was the concluding track on this record, and it's great. That riff is fantastic. It's got a great Sammy style, that.
- [157:02]
Jeff Blair
Riff. That riff is from the end of Jump. It's the. It's the riff at the very, very end of Jump that they bring it.
- [157:08]
Sam
Back. Right.
- [157:08]
Scott Bertram
Actually. Oh.
- [157:39]
Nothing's gonna stop it Nothing will scare me oh, no.
- [157:46]
Hey, baby.
- [157:51]
It'S the only way out.
- [157:57]
Come out what's it all about?
- [158:01]
Standing on top.
- [158:07]
For a little.
- [158:08]
Sam
While.
- [158:12]
I. I'm.
- [158:13]
Scott Bertram
Now.
- [158:15]
You'Re.
- [158:15]
Sam
Right. The playout riff, it is. There's a very similarity there. I did not know that this was a Van Halen song. I. I heard it on the radio and it just seemed like, okay, that's A great kind of driving rock song. Of course, at that time I wasn't driving cars at all. I was 12 years old. Right. But it's probably telling that I did not assume, associate it with them because it's generic. It's still a good song though. And I guess that sort of kind of summarizes the appeal for Unlawful Carnal Knowledge for me. It's like it's not the same kind of Van Halen that you knew back in the early 80s, but these are well crafted, well constructed, and actually well recorded songs. I don't think there's anybody in the world who, if Top of the World came on, they would actually change the station. It's just good. It's a fun song to play to. The problem is though, once it's over, you know, there's not much left to hang on to. Not the way there is with right now, which really is the one major keeper from the album. I also like Pound Cake and I guess that brings us to the final Sammy Hagar album of the Van Halen era. And I, I rather. I have really nothing good, to be honest. I have nothing good to say about 1996's.
- [159:20]
Scott Bertram
Balance. Is it.
- [159:22]
Sam
6? Yeah, I think it.
- [159:23]
Jeff Blair
Is.
- [159:23]
Sam
1995. 5. Okay, but I mean, talk about a generic album. There was one single from this that I sort of remember hearing on the radio. Can't Stop Loving you was kind of played a few times. And this is by the way, when I was sort of phasing out on my own radio listening ears. That's okay, but there's nothing on it that would make me think it was anything other than just like another long haired guy bellowing into the speakers with a kind of catchy corporate rock tune underneath it. The sound of beers being.
- [159:50]
Scott Bertram
Drank.
- [160:10]
Splash that holy water on me Drop my.
- [160:13]
Sam
Faith.
- [160:36]
Yeah, I have nothing else good to say about balance, folks. And if either of you do, then please go.
- [160:42]
Jeff Blair
Too. So here's a quick balance story, which is it was just recently released on vinyl. And so I've seen this in my feed, I've seen this in my feed where Sammy and Michael Anthony, who are still in good terms and they play in the same band, sort of go back and reminisce. They did this with Foreign Law for Colonel Knowledge. Like go back and say this is a great record. And I remember doing this, remember doing that. And Balance comes out and they're sitting on a couch and Sammy takes out Balance and he pulls it out and everyone's so serious. Everyone's serious. And you look at Michael Anthony. And it looks like the guy off camera just told Michael Anthony that he was going to have to personally shoot his dog in the head. He is the. Like he does not want. Tensions were so high during the recording of Balance, which could not have helped the outcome. Like, Eddie was pissed at Sammy. Sammy was pissed at Eddie. Eddie and Alex were pissed at Michael Anthony. Tell him how to play things. Didn't like his bass playing. Like, everyone hated everybody. During the Making a Balance, Sammy had to go to Canada to record his. His. His. His vocals for this because he couldn't be in the same room or anywhere near Eddie while he was doing some of the vocals. Like, there's so many bad vibes all over Balance. They brought in Bruce Fairbairn to produce, who's, like, producer for some of the awful Aerosmith, you know, and Bon Jovi and all this stuff from that, like.
- [162:10]
Sam
Pump. Get a.
- [162:11]
Jeff Blair
Grip. Like the really corporate stuff even further into the future than that, which means even worse than that. That's what he's responsible for. And if you ever wanted to hear Van Halen try to do their version of I Don't Want to Miss a Thing, it's on here. It's called Not Enough, and it sucks.
- [162:27]
Can't stop loving you Again. It's weird. Like, the More Sammy stuff is the stuff that actually works these days. Can't Stop Loving you is a very Sammy Hagar song, and it works. And it's a very poppy. It was apparently huge in Japan and overseas.
- [162:44]
That's one of the better songs.
- [162:45]
Scott Bertram
Here.
- [163:04]
Yeah, yeah. Hold on.
- [163:10]
I'm holding on, baby Just come on, come on, come on I just want to hear you say I can't stop loving you and no matter what you say or do you, you know my heart is true I can't stop loving.
- [163:36]
Jeff Blair
You.
- [163:38]
But like, Amsterdam. So the guys write this song, and it's an old riff. There's video of Eddie playing it, like an 87. And it's a good riff. I like this Amsterdam riff. And Sammy goes and writes lyrics for a song called Amsterdam, where these guys were born. And Sammy believes that the only reason you go to Amsterdam was to smoke a lot of pot. And so he writes a song about smoking pot in Amsterdam and the Van Halen. Like, that's we were born there, dude. And so he takes this really great riff and. And writes Amsterdam all over it. Big Fat Money is a bad song. There's a drum solo. There's a guitar solo. Like, what is going.
- [164:15]
Scott Bertram
On?
- [164:23]
Looking good through the window.
- [164:28]
Shining red blue Light.
- [164:33]
A little thick in the bottom but still looking all right yeah.
- [164:44]
Got a pocket for money.
- [164:50]
Got me alone out ahead.
- [164:56]
Quick Stop by the Bulldog Storm is on the head of my red.
- [165:01]
Sam
Yeah.
- [165:17]
I, I really get almost nothing out of this record, though. Maybe Sean does. What do you have to say.
- [165:21]
Sean Trende
Sean?
- [165:23]
No, no. So I, I think, you know, one thing that was that you think of with for Unlawful Carnal Knowledge is that comes out in June of 1991. It came out right before I went to college. And that's like the end of the rock era, right? Like a few months later, Nirvana comes.
- [165:40]
Jeff Blair
Out. Yeah, it's like four months.
- [165:41]
Sean Trende
Afterwards. Yeah. And like kills off the. It's. It's like the Cretaceous extinction. Right? Like, like Kurt Cobain kills the career of thousands of rock guitarists and singers. And it's a shame he didn't knock Van Halen like out along with, along with like Tesla, because they didn't need to record this album. You know, it's one of those things where you got. They had to know it was over. Everything you read about it says that knew it was over. But Van Halen is such a massive money making corporate machine. No one can walk.
- [166:16]
Scott Bertram
Away.
- [166:17]
Sean Trende
Right. And so they just, they, they put out this album and it's slop. And that's really all I have to say.
- [166:22]
Sam
About.
- [166:46]
I mean, I, I completely agree. And I actually think this is more or less where we can wrap up the discussion. Although we should, we should talk for a little bit about the weird afterlife Van Halen. I think the, the Van Halen afterlife that's probably most worth mentioning is their Greatest Hits, which came out a couple of years later. Late.
- [167:03]
Jeff Blair
90S. Yeah. Well, there's a couple, a couple things. Let me just sort of move. So after Balance comes out, everyone hates each other and they're like, we gotta stop. Let's not do anything for a bit. And to Sean's point, Van Halen is too big of a money making machine to actually stop. So they're asked to do music for Twister. The movie.
- [167:24]
Sam
Twister. That was what I was going to mention, Scott, is.
- [167:26]
Jeff Blair
That. But that happens before the greatest.
- [167:29]
Sam
Hits. It's on the greatest hits. That's why I remember. Remembered from.
- [167:32]
Jeff Blair
There.
- [167:32]
Sam
But. Okay, so this is the one reason you really need to get the greatest hits. Greatest Hits. You know, it's kind of like one of those late 90s money taking op operations. It's adequate. But it includes this song from Twister called Humans Being, which is insane. It's like, where was this Van Halen for the past decade, it is old school rock chaos. There's this explosive midsection where it sounds literally, sonically like a tornado. And most telling of all, Sammy actually sings, or more rather, he grunts. That song, the way David Lee Roth might have, this feels like an old school like version of Van Halen. And I, I listen to this song. It's fantastic. And I asked myself, where was this band? Why was this band not doing more of this music? And even if they were only able to come together for one song, which was actually a great.
- [168:20]
Jeff Blair
One.
- [169:26]
They barely came together. That song ended Sammy Hagar in the band. So again, Van Halen too big to stop. They go do Twister. They get offered Twister. They're like, there's a ton of money to be made. Sammy's wife is about to have a baby. He's like, I don't want to do any of this. I want to go to Hawaii and have a kid and whatever. And the manager convinces him, there's so much money to be made, you got to come and do. Do these songs for Twister. So they are given the job. And originally they say, so do you want the songs to be about tornadoes? And the guys, the movie guys are like, no, no, not narrative. Nothing like that. And so at some point, Sammy is trying to figure out how to write, and he's like, hey, can you give me a. Can you give me a cut of the film? Whatever it looks like, I want to see what it looks like. So they write some lyrics. And then apparently he gets a list of phrases that are used by tornado hunters. And he writes this set of lyrics that has lines like, headed for the suck zone. Which is something that you do when you're chasing tornadoes, but it also.
- [170:26]
Sam
Sounds like a Sammy.
- [170:27]
Jeff Blair
Hay. And so the brothers see this and they flip out, and they've already been on him. They made him change some lyrics on balance, which he was unhappy about. And they see the lyrics for humans being or whatever you call it at that point, and they're like, sammy, no, no, no. And he's got a rewrite and his wife's pregnant and they're in. They're in California. He's in Hawaii. He's flying back and forth. Finally, he moves his. His wife to California so he can finish this song. And the relationship is just past any salvation at this point. But you get humans being where everyone is so pissed at each other that it actually sounds like it's full of energy. And I agree with Jeff. It's one of the great, great late era Van Halen songs. So you do get that on the Twister soundtrack and the Greatest Hits. I don't mind the two new David Lee Roth songs on.
- [171:17]
On the Greatest Hits record because they sound like they came out of Fair Warning. Like that sort of dark, deep, dirty. Can't, can't get this stuff no More In Me Wise Magic. I, I like both of them.
- [171:26]
Scott Bertram
Actually.
- [171:31]
You're thinking it's easy to see.
- [171:36]
I know what you're dreaming I have no second dream.
- [172:23]
Through my.
- [172:26]
Sean Trende
Magic.
- [172:31]
Yeah, I, I, I completely agree. Like this, this, these two songs, Me Wise Magic and Can't get this Stuff no More is like a flash to what might have been if Eddie hadn't been a lunatic and David Lee Roth hadn't been a cocaine addict. Like, David Lee Roth goes on like they have a press conference. And I shouldn't say that I know he is at this point because that's liable so on information, information and belief.
- [172:56]
But he gives us press conference like, yeah, the band's back together making a new album. And he's like, we never agreed to that. And the whole thing just blows up. And it's really tragic because it was.
- [173:07]
Jeff Blair
Good. Yeah. And that leads us, we can kind of slide by some of this. Gary Sharon, the lead singer for.
- [173:13]
Sam
Extreme. So what do we talk about? Van Halen 3. Remember, there was the original Van Halen album, then there was Van Halen 2, and now finally after all these years, here's Van Halen 3. My only thoughts on this is that I know what band this absolutely reminds me of. Scott. Do.
- [173:28]
Jeff Blair
You? I.
- [173:30]
Sam
Don'T. It's.
- [173:32]
Jeff Blair
Genesis. Oh, I wouldn't all people, it's.
- [173:35]
Sam
The band Genesis who survived replacing Peter.
- [173:38]
Jeff Blair
Gabriel. Not musically, but. Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [173:43]
Scott Bertram
Yep.
- [173:43]
Sam
Yeah. You know where I'm going here. They survived replacing Peter Gabriel with Phil Collins. And yeah, maybe they got a little less arty and a little more poppy, but boy, they sure seem to conquer of the charts. Well, Bill Collins wants to leave. What are you going to do now? Let's get Ray Wilson, let's get calling all stations here. Genesis, their one shot terrible mistake album they immediately regretted, everyone hated it, was roundly rejected. They actually came around, came out around this exact same time. And this is Van Halen's version of it. They got the guy from Extreme, Gary Sharon, the lead singer from Extreme. And I will confess to you that I remember seeing this in the stores all over the place and people laughing at Gary Sharon. And I'll admit the reason I laughed at the idea of this guy as a lead singer for Van Halen is because the only two songs I knew by the band Extreme were the ones that were played on the radio when I was a kid. And one of those is More Than Words, a sweet acoustic, tight harmony ballad. And the other one is Wholehearted, a sweet, acoustic, tight harmony ballad. So I'm like, this guy just sings dippy acoustic songs. Why is he now singer for Van Halen? I didn't know about Extremes, other music at the time, but it turns out I really didn't need to because this album sucks. I've listened to it exactly 1.5 times in my life. I have nothing intelligent will say about it. Do you.
- [175:00]
Jeff Blair
Scott? Well, there's only two things. One is this is essentially an Eddie Van Halen solo record. Michael Anthony is pushed out of the band by this point. He plays, I think, on three tracks and Eddie plays bass on everything else. And unbeknownst to everyone at the time, Alex is also not on this record. Alex is credited with playing drums, but it's Eddie playing drums on all these tracks on Van Halen 3. And of course he writes the songs too. Essentially an Eddie solo record. And I guess we understand why he never did a solo record because it is bad. Here's my one hot take, the single, the one song you might know without you. It's better than anything on balance, I'll tell you that much. It's better than most of Foreign Lawful Carnal Knowledge. I don't mind that track at all. Without you. It's too long. Everything at this point is too long in the band. But it's not a bad song. It's not a bad song. And Sharon as a lead singer, it's like whatever the material. Terrible.
- [175:55]
Scott Bertram
Right?
- [175:55]
Sam
Yeah. It's the material's fault. It's not.
- [175:57]
Jeff Blair
His. It's not his fault. But this was a. A big.
- [176:00]
Scott Bertram
Turd.
- [176:14]
Help you?
- [176:40]
I.
- [176:40]
Sean Trende
Think.
- [176:58]
I feel bad for Gary Chiron because he gets pulled out of actually a pretty good band that it had some success, right? It had, had some, some great, great, some good hits. And he gets. I, I can, I can just see him like telling the. Telling Nuno Betancourt like, yeah, man, I'm sorry, I gotta go. And he being all starry eyed like, I've made it. I'm going into the biggest rock band in the world. He gets there and it's just a dumpster.
- [177:24]
Sam
Fire. Well, he gets there and it's just one man. It gets back to your point about how difficult Eddie Van Halen was as a personality at this Point, you know, he's basically. He's faking it. He's a one man band, you know, because he can't get along along with anybody.
- [177:37]
Sean Trende
Else. Yeah, I mean, that, this. I don't know if this is when they made Michael Anthony give away.
- [177:43]
Jeff Blair
All of his royalties a little bit later.
- [177:46]
Sean Trende
On. Okay. But like that's, that's just. That's Eddie. Yeah, like that, that's. That's. He's a genius, an absolute genius, but just.
- [177:56]
Not a great.
- [177:56]
Jeff Blair
Person. So from, from here, Van Halen, three stiffs and then it goes gold. Half Million Hustle, which is nothing, right, compared to number one albums right. In the past. And so Sharon's a one and done and Ben's kind of on hiatus very quickly. Here they come back in 2004 with Sammy Hagar and that's apparently a complete disaster. Wolfgang, Eddie's son, comes in to play bass. At this point. Michael Anthony is gone, so Sammy goes away. That ended acrimoniously. Then David Lee Roth is brought back in for a tour. People have been pining for years for the original lineup to reform. It didn't because Michael Anthony's not there, but Roth is there and Eddie's there, and that's close enough. The tour goes well and they decide they're going to put out a record. And it comes out in 2012 called a different Kind of Truth. And this is, as Jeff alluded to way earlier in the episode, basically a majority. I think 7 of 13 tracks are all old, old riffs, old songs that Wolfgang dug through all these tapes at 5150, the recording studio and said, let's try doing this one. Let's bring this one back. Now this means that all these, these seven songs are all things that were determined to be not high quality enough to use on previous records. And so it's spotty, it's hit and miss. But that there is a magic there. I can't deny that hearing sounds.
- [179:21]
Sam
Very different from the earth, from Van.
- [179:22]
Jeff Blair
Hagar. It sounds the way it's supposed to sound and they give Wolfgang a little more responsibility. There are songs like Tattoo where the bass is very high in the mix because they actually like the bassist. Now there's a song, I think it's one of the all new songs called you and your Blues, which. It's a good Van Halen song. It's a good Van Halen song. They tend to sort of lean back and want to be hard and heavy and bash a little bit too much. One called Bullet Head and Honey Baby, Sweetie Doll. Which is like too aggressive for them. It's at this point, but, you know, every now and then, Big River's nice. I think Tattoo's okay, but you can hear that this is how the band's supposed to sound. This is Van.
- [180:06]
Scott Bertram
Halen.
- [180:22]
Woman.
- [180:25]
Suffer from a color.
- [180:29]
I suffer because of you.
- [180:33]
Now everybody suffer.
- [180:37]
I'm done with coexistence this is heavy lifting of my growing co dependent over you and maybe while we at it, how that is with your blues.
- [180:59]
The.
- [180:59]
Sam
Way I like to think about it is that they. Van Halen as a group, as a surprisingly easy discography to master. They just have their albums. There are no B.
- [181:08]
Jeff Blair
Sides.
- [181:09]
Sam
Right. There are no outtakes, there are no singles, non album singles. It's just the records. This is as close as, in a weird way as you'll get to a Van Halen and outtakes.
- [181:18]
Scott Bertram
Album.
- [181:19]
Sam
And. And because of that, because it's classic Van Halen updated for the modern era, it still sounds pretty great, but I don't think it's a patch on any of those original five records. Oh, that's also.
- [181:29]
Sean Trende
Obvious. Yeah, yeah, it's. It's. You're exactly.
- [181:33]
Jeff Blair
Right.
- [181:33]
Sean Trende
It's. It's a. It's a Van Halen B sides. It's like Shenanigans for Green Day or. Or any of these. The. All they needed was like five covers and it would be the perfect.
- [181:42]
Sam
Outdoor. Yeah, that's right. You know, okay. That's one of the things that Van Halen really missed in second half of their career, by the way, is good charismatic covers that showed the van off to good advantage. They just disappeared with David Lee Roth and that could have helped this album.
- [181:59]
Jeff Blair
Too.
- [182:01]
And from this point forward, there's another Roth tour. And then we have, I mean, the unfortunate early passing of Eddie Van Halen. And, you know, as we've mentioned throughout this episode, Willie, hard to have Van Halen without Eddie. Eddie is Van Halen and Roth is still out there trying to do some splits and kicks occasionally and sounding not so great. Although, you know, people going to de Roth shows in 2025 and complaining about his vocals, what did you expect.
- [182:31]
Sam
Right? He wasn't singing to a Dylan show and saying. He just sounds really raspy. Don't you.
- [182:36]
Jeff Blair
Realize? Yeah, Roth was out of key. You really sort of missed some of those notes. Yeah, same thing in 1981. What think do.
- [182:42]
Scott Bertram
You.
- [182:42]
Jeff Blair
He. What do you.
- [182:43]
Sam
Want? 1977, I actually went. I went back and listened to some early Van Halen live shows. He was singing off pitch back then, too. I can guarantee you.
- [182:51]
Jeff Blair
That. And that's, again, it's the end of the road. But, guys, I think we did do a better job this time, I gotta.
- [182:59]
Sam
Say. Well, I mean, we did. Not only that, but I think, you know, at this point, I have a proper understanding what Van Halen brought to the table. And it was obviously focused on Eddie's guitar work. That guitar work, which, you know, Sean, actually uniquely among the three of us. Yeah, he probably has more of the chops to appreciate than I would, but, boy, you can hear a singular sound. And what was more important is he wasn't just a virtuoso. He wasn't just about his technique and his flesh. He was a songwriter. And he kind of almost ruthlessly, at some points, just pursued his vision. It's the only thing he knew how to do. And it gave us a hell of a lot of great.
- [183:36]
Jeff Blair
Music. Music. All right, there we go, the political beats. Look at the music and career of Van Halen. We come to the part of the show where we give you the two albums you must own from Van Halen and five songs you really need to hear. If you haven't previously. Sean Trendy from Real Clear Politics, the new podcast Stubborn Things with our pal J cost Sean your two albums and your five.
- [183:59]
Sean Trende
Songs. So for me, three is easy, two is hard. But I'm going to pick 1984 as my second. And then, fair warning, I just. I love that album so much. Those are my two.
- [184:17]
Sam
Now. Your five.
- [184:18]
Sean Trende
Songs. Okay, so this is one that, again, was hard, because I think there's two that, at least for me, have to be on there. They're my number two and number one. But then you have all these fantastic songs to choose from, and I wanted to do honorable mentions, but I know that's not in the spirit. So number five for me is I'm the One.
- [184:37]
Easily, easily the hardest Van Halen song to play. Just absolute monster of a riff and two amazing guitar solos. I actually am going to put 5150 in at number four. Partly, I feel like there has to be something from Van Hagar, and it is just. It is another one that just is.
- [184:58]
Monster riff, monster guitar solos. It's the best of Van Halen. Number three for me is Women in Love. I just. I loved that song when I was a guy. It is what I think Van Hagar wanted to be. It's poppy, it's melodic, but it still has David Lee Roth's soul and his kind of sense of humor embedded in the sexuality. Right. If Sammy Hagar had written a song about being a girlfriend, leaving him for another woman. I think it would be very, very.
- [185:27]
Sam
Very. There would be anger and resentment as opposed to just a sense of.
- [185:31]
Sean Trende
Humor about the whole thing and graphic descriptions.
- [185:35]
Dear all right, number two and number one I don't need to comment on. I can just say, for me it's. It's Panama and Unchained. We've talked about those songs, and I think they're. They're the best Van Halen.
- [185:46]
Sam
Songs. All right.
- [185:47]
Jeff Blair
Scott. All right. My. My albums are very obvious, but I just think very true. The debut, Van halen and in 1984. Because, as we said, it's not a synth album and the album tracks themselves hit as hard as just about anything else from the era. Those are my two albums, five songs. I disagree with Sean. There doesn't have to be anything from Sammy here. No, there's no. No. So Feel your Love Tonight from the first record, Feel your Love Tonight. I. I think Beautiful Girls from two is like the essence of all that early Van Halen squeezed into three and a half minutes or so. So Beautiful Girls, I went back and forth on a bunch of these, but I'm going to say Mean street from Fair Warning for sure is on this list. I got a double up, Unchained. I know Sean mentioned it, but that's just a monster track, and I'm going to forego stuff from 1984. Everyone's heard hot For Teacher, so that nearly made the list. But my fifth one is what I mentioned previously. Man, it might be my favorite little guitars from Diver down is so fabulous and people probably haven't heard it before. So track that one down, those are my five.
- [186:58]
Sam
Jeff. All right, so my two, my top two albums. The way I've taken to doing these things nowadays is that I'm going to choose two albums and then I'm going to choose five songs that aren't on those two albums. So for my first record, it's Van Halen, the debut album. You just need the whole record. There's like five, six instant classics on that record alone. There's no point in mentioning them in my five favorite songs. But yeah, don't worry. I love Running. I love Running with the Devil. I love, you know, Ain't Talking About Love. These are some of the greatest songs they ever did. My second album would be Diver down, which is underrated by the band and by, I think, fans alike. I think those covers are all excellent. The original material on it is fantastic. Scott already mentioned little guitars. That's to me, the highlight of the record. But that's the one Van Halen record where I literally can say I'm looking forward to hearing every track on the album. And the whole thing flows. Sean says it doesn't hang together for him, but I, you know, I'm new to it in some ways in a way that he will never be because he's been listening to it since the early 80s. To me, it hangs together beautifully. As for the five songs, a lot of these have already been mentioned, but I'm going to just say Women in Love from Van Halen 2. Absolutely. And you guys are already covered its virtues. Could this be Magic from Women and Children First. I love it. This is them. Them taking a little side alley and going into that country folk thing. Very bluesy. And again, those great group vocals. That, to me, is part of what Van Halen was about in the early years. From 1984. Panama. How could it not be? I never got to mention this, but the real reason I remember Panama is because the invasion of Panama in 1991, when George H.W. bush. Bush sent us in Conquer Noriega. That song was playing on the radio every morning as we were driving to school. So you have to imagine an entire school bus of children just going.
- [188:51]
And like, you know, air guitarring out to the guitar music. It was timely in a wonderful way back then. Number four. I'm gonna have to name a Sammy song. I have to go into the Sammy era here. And I want to say right now from. From For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. And you know, I want to say the forward to shorten that, but yeah, Right now is actually probably the greatest song that the Hagar era Van Halen came up with. And precisely because it actually sounds like a Sammy song, but he's not singing about, you know, hunting poon. Finally, finally, humans being off of Van Halen's Greatest Hits or the Twister soundtrack. It was the song that was the end of the Van Hagar era precisely because he didn't want to be involved with this irascible guy who was insisting on taking the band into synth rock. Instead, they recorded an old style Van Halen song that just doesn't sound like anything from the Sammy Hagar era. And, you know, Sean, you said that you weren't in the mode for honorable mentions, but I'm the host, so I get to exercise host prerogative. Track six, of course, it would be the one from my childhood, the one that made me aware of this band in the first place, the one that gave me so many happy moments when I was a little kid pretending that maybe one day he. He'd be a rock star. It's Jump. It's jump from 1984. It's just one of the happiest, most ecstatic songs that was ever recorded during that era. And it captured a side of the band that, you know, maybe it never existed. Maybe that kind of bone, homie, that sort of camaraderie between these four goofballs playing this really happy song, maybe that was all fake, but, boy, it seemed real to me back then. And basically, that's what I've always.
- [190:26]
Jeff Blair
Thought of when I've thought of.
- [190:27]
Scott Bertram
Fans. Might as well.
- [190:29]
Jeff Blair
Jump.
- [190:59]
There we go, the political dates. Look at the music and career of Van Halen. We think for a second time to correct past wrongs. Sean Trendy with a senior elections analyst at Real Clear Politics, visiting scholar at aei, and the new podcast with Jay Cost, Stubborn Things. Sean, thanks so much for joining.
- [191:17]
Sean Trende
Us. Thank.
- [191:18]
Sam
You. Hey, maybe we'll have you back again, but this time actually, actually for a different.
- [191:22]
Sean Trende
Band. I'd love to. I'd love to be great. We could do the Dream Theater episode.
- [191:30]
Speaking of long songs, it's amazing that.
- [191:35]
There was almost no overlap in our top five songs, and at the same time, there were none. Where I look at it and I'm like, ooh, that was a bad pick. Any of those songs could have been in my top five. And I don't know that there's many other bands, if any, that you can say that.
- [191:49]
Sam
Of.
- [191:50]
Jeff Blair
Yeah.
- [191:50]
Sam
Yeah. Well, thank you so much.
- [191:52]
Jeff Blair
Jeff. We are. We. We condensed schedule in this month of December, so exclusive content and then another new episode before the end of the year. We're.
- [192:00]
Sam
Squeezing. Hey, Santa's trying to show up early for you guys. Ho, ho, ho. We're gonna have something under the.
- [192:05]
Jeff Blair
Tree. Find Jeff on x at esoteric CD on there at Scott Bertram. Remember patreon.com political beats to help us and help the show. You can get anything you want with the upper level best friend level. Access patreon.com politicalbeats subscribe to the feed for new episodes. Find more@nationalreview.com we're on X@politicalbeats. You can join the conversation there. This has been a presentation of National Review. This is Political.
- [192:35]
Scott Bertram
Beats.
- [192:42]
Sam.