An appreciation of “1984” as Eddie Van Halen turns 60

I was late to the party known as Van Halen.

Throughout most of their vintage period I listened to the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, top 40 radio. I saw the classic “Fair Warning” concert videos in the early ’80s on MTV, but the music didn’t stick; hard rock wasn’t yet part of my musical palette. 

The gateway drug was “Jump,” Van Halen’s only number one record. Released as a single and a video at the tail end of 1983, the song opened my ears to the band. 

By spring, “1984” was the high-adrenaline soundtrack that got my blood pumping before I walked out on the court as a freshman on the varsity tennis team. My doubles partner, a drummer on the side, had the bug too: he expertly mimicked Alex Van Halen in a pair of air band contests. The growing success of the

Eddie Van Halen flying high in 1984
with his first number one single

  album paralleled the excitement of a season in which we won the conference title.

By May, Van Halen was my favorite band. A cassette of “1984” or one of its five predecessors was in regular rotation on my $20 boom box. Filled with the zeal of the newly converted, I scrawled the boss Van Halen logo on notebooks, the inside of bathroom stalls, the back of desks, anywhere I had the time and space to spread the Gospel. 

It wasn't long before VH invaded my household. When we got our first family dog, I started calling the unnamed beagle Eddie. My parents initially agreed to the name as a placeholder only, but it ended up sticking.

That summer, my younger brother (at left) got in the act. With black hair, natural six pack abs, and boyish good looks, he was a fitting stand-in for Eddie Van Halen as he launched off our ottoman with a cardboard guitar. (Years later, he still had the bug, using “Panama” in a video shoot with his friends in Africa.)

In July of 1984, the circus came to town. The Velcros opened the concert; they’re still bragging about opening for Van Halen thirty years later. Amid a spectacle of lights and stage mounts and stimuli, David Lee Roth told us we were the best audience he’d seen in the last 99 shows. Out on the floor, I had my first kiss with a girl who invited me back to her hotel after the show, the same hotel name-checked on the back jacket of Van Halen II.

Nine months later, Roth left the band. The party was over.    

***

Decades passed. Other than a brief revival of Van Halen infatuation in the early ’90s (during a period of intense devotion to the electric guitar) the band mostly fell off my radar as my

Business time.

tastes veered toward ’50s and ’60s jazz, Frank Zappa, Funkadelic, Laura Nyro, soul, baroque classical, instrumental world music, an ongoing dose of ’60s/’70s rock. As my listening habits changed, my six-string sensibility gravitated away from the technical playing that dominated the ’80s to the electric blues (Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan in particular). Even so, I slowly acquired the first six Van Halen CD’s—just in case.

The separation ended in 2013, during an especially challenging time in my life. As if dipping my toes in the water, I put just a handful of tunes from each Roth album on my iPod.

Soon I was hooked all over again. For months the band provided aural therapy as I crossed San Francisco sidewalks, the music mainlined into my ears loud and clear. With 25 years of electric guitar under my belt, I appreciated Eddie’s innovative sound(s) in a way I hadn’t before.

I’ve been a born again fan ever since. It feels like we never parted, as if we've been joined

in a continuous line running from the moment I cracked the plastic on my "1984"

cassette up to the present. Looking back from the vantage point of 2015, the final album with David Lee Roth represents a crossroads for this listener. Working from his home studio

and freed of the shackles of hit-centric producer Ted Templeman, Eddie created an entire album’s worth of original material, a major achievement in itself and a big step up after the covers-heavy “Diver Down.”

And yet, the synthesizer-based tunes on "1984" not only sound dated (in the way that ’80s production values sound dated), but they remind me of the sappy, formula pop songs the band did with Sammy Hagar which made me lose interest in Van Halen.

I love “Panama” and “Hot for Teacher.” They’re kinetic, well-crafted songs that have stood the test of time. But like "Stairway to Heaven" or "Layla," I’ve heard them too many times to count. 

What remains freshest in my ears are The Big Four: four guitar-oriented album tracks which connect me with the life force that put the mighty in The Mighty Van Halen.

Closing side 1 of “1984” in grand fashion are “Top Jimmy” and “Drop Dead Legs.” Before I knew who the real Top Jimmy was, I thought the song might be a veiled ode to the virtuosic Eddie, who makes his mark from the opening with ethereal harmonics counterpointed by a slashing riff, as a volume swell trills in the background. The verses have a swing that could only exist in the Roth era. The solo opens with a patented Eddie whale shriek and ends with a quivering tremolo dive that sounds like it’s falling down a mine shaft.

Recently accused of helping cause Ebola, “Drop Dead Legs” has a lumbering beast of a main riff (modeled on “Back in Black”) that is pure Van Halen strut. The MXR Phase 90 tone Eddie opens with is pristine, the drumming simple and powerful. The last minute-and-a half—tacked on after the rest of the song was already recorded—is a singular outro inspired by Allan Holdsworth. After vamping for a spell, Eddie breaks away from his typically disciplined pop-length solos with a smorgasbord of shapes and colors and sounds, a rare display of Van Halen's free-form side.

The other two tunes on my active playlist are the closers on side 2, “Girl Gone Bad” and “House of Pain.” The former, which Eddie wrote in a hotel closet while Valerie Bertinelli was sleeping in the room, is an advanced composition that clocks in at 4:30. The wealth of ideas begins with Eddie tapping harmonics high on the neck while holding chords (with the same notes) at the low end as Alex taps insistently on the hi-hat, then the ride. The verses are short and to the point and transition—with Roth’s Tarzan yowls—into a fresh interlude at 2:16. The rest is gravy: following a soft landing from the solo into Eddie’s arpeggiated lines, the opening theme re-appears en route to another pass through the chorus. Alex brings down the curtain with a sweeping flourish that drops into a Rototom-and-kick drum stomp. 

My favorite tune on “1984” is “House of Pain,” a song with distinctly Rothian tongue-in-cheek lyrics. The crushing main riff alone is worth the price of admission. Transitioning from the opening riff into the first verse, Eddie maintains the hard edge with a propulsive rhythm guitar line. The solo proper is merely a prelude to the outro solo at 1:42, introduced with a screeching pick slide capped by a taut snare hit. What follows is a heady demonstration of the musical telepathy a drummer and guitarist working in tandem for 15 years can generate. Over Alex’s driving beat Eddie conjures a wicked assortment of squeals, howls, dive bomber sounds, and serrated blues licks. He comes out of the squall into a boogie blues riff doubled by a vocal line, a final dance with Diamond Dave before Eddie, Alex, and Michael Anthony march one of posterity's most kick-ass rock ‘n’ roll bands over and out for the last time.  

A lot of the music I listened to in the ’80s seems like a guilty pleasure now, but Roth-era Van Halen still feels vibrant. And no one since has re-calibrated the sonic possibilities of rock guitar the way Eddie Van Halen did. As a player, I haven’t found a way to incorporate his space age techniques into my straight ahead blues style, but as a listener, I remain in awe.

Happy 60th, Eddie. 

*** 

         Follow Dan Benbow on Twitter            

                                              More Van Halen at Truth and Beauty

                                       Eddie Van Halen's "Fair Warning":  an appreciation

                                   Great Guitar Solos, #4:  Dweezil Zappa Nails "Eruption"

                              Eddie Van Halen, Jan Hammer, and Tony Levin—on One Stage 
                                           features live footage of Eddie doing "Cathedral" (solo) and 
                                          "Hot for Teacher" with two fusion virtuosos 

                                Avery Molek. Seven-year-old drummer. includes performance
                                    videos of Avery doing "Hot for Teacher" and "Girl Gone Bad"      

Eddie Van Halen, Jan Hammer, and Tony Levin—on one stage

Many years ago my first guitar teacher loaned me a VHS recording of a concert tribute to Les Paul called "Les Paul & Friends."

Among the highlights were Les Paul's demonstration of his "little black box," a sweet, subtle rendition of "Georgia" with Paul on lead and jazz guitar phenom Stanley Jordan on rhythm, and a blues cutting contest between David Gilmour of Pink Floyd and Jan Hammer of the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

The high-energy peak of the show for me was the video below, featuring Eddie Van Halen—who was then the gold standard of rock guitar—with two highly esteemed musical collaborators. 

After giving the audience a taste of his vast sonic palette with the instrumental "Cathedral," Van Halen was joined by an all-star line-up for this instrumental version of "Hot for Teacher." On keys was Jan Hammer, a longstanding member of jazz fusion royalty. Tony Levin, a member of King Crimson with an astonishing catalog of side work, ably handled bass. 

The performance was novel on many levels. It was a rare opportunity to see Eddie Van Halen at the peak of his powers with world-class musicians whose chops were several notches above the average rock 'n' roller's. In his namesake band, Van Halen did the solos and emitted all of the fireworks, but here the virtuosic Jan Hammer held his own (and produced musical ecstasy faces to match). The Hammer-Van Halen point-counterpoint solos  and climactic low-to-high, guitar-and-keys unison run before the closing main theme all point up the singular potency of jazz finesse married to the raw power of amplified rock. 

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                                               More Van Halen at "Truth and Beauty":

                                       Eddie Van Halen's "Fair Warning":  an appreciation

                                   Great Guitar Solos, #4:  Dweezil Zappa Nails "Eruption"

                                                   Avery Molek. Seven-year-old drummer. 
                                                  [includes performance video of Avery doing 
                                                     "Hot for Teacher" and "Girl Gone Bad"]

Eddie Van Halen's "Fair Warning": an appreciation

"Eddie Van Halen ruined guitar!" yelled the drunken ROTC guy standing just inches from my face. House party. 1991.

The conversation had been very civil up to that point. I'd started with hey, we went to the same high school. That was all I had, as we were several years apart in age and had only met once before—a brief introduction through a mutual friend by the nickname of "Jamestown." Plus, I was a humanities student; he was in Business. I was a liberal longhair; he was a crew cut conservative. So I reached for the universal and asked what kind of music he listened to. He liked the blues. I liked blues too. Did he play guitar? He did. So did I. More progress. What guitarists did he like? 

Things were headed in the right direction until I asked him what he thought about Eddie Van Halen, one of my favorite guitarists. As we stood with cups of watered-down keg beer in hand and a loud party going on all around us he foamed over, blaming all the ills of '80s hyper-technical guitar playing on the virtuosic Eddie. He hated Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Eric Johnson, not to mention the legions of Eddie's hair metal imitators. 

I let him vent to his heart's content; it was obvious he was a blues purist. Still, I was a little surprised by the venom. I loved old school blues guitar too, but...Eddie was the most innovative rock guitarist since Jimi Hendrix. And he was an accomplished composer/arranger. And, like Jimmy Page, he was a studio rat who was integral to the production process, the very sound of his band. And he sang sweet background vocals. And he was a humble team player; he played to the song and had no need to hog the spotlight. And rather than choose between Stratocasters and Gibsons like most mortals, he crafted his own hybrid guitars.

And ultimately, The Mighty Van Halen towered over all the other acts who'd copied and

Eddie's arsenal, 1980

diluted Eddie's gifts. Blaming Van Halen for guitar shredders with no feeling or originality would be like blaming Steven Spielberg and George Lucas for every piece of shit big budget epic that employed the marketable formulas of "Star Wars" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark" without any of the creativity or directorial skill that made those movies so entertaining. Bum rap.

Apparently some people just weren't grabbed by the mystique of the brown sound.

Two years before this diatribe I'd sat in an apartment right across the street as a friend of a friend plugged his guitar in. I'd just started playing at the time; my capabilities began and ended with a few major chords, stumbles through the Pentatonic scale, and the opening riff of "Purple Haze." But what I lacked in skill, I made up in enthusiasm; I was very excited about electric guitar. 

The guitarist was tall and thin with long blond hair and glasses. He wore jeans and a t-shirt. No nonsense. I asked him if he knew any Van Halen. As I looked on with rapt attention he played the introduction to "Mean Street" virtually note for note, performing a miracle before my eyes. 

25 years later this moment in time still stands out, as does "Fair Warning," the album "Mean Street" appeared on. "Fair Warning" was the dark Van Halen album. The dreary

brown and black cover art features a figure running head first into a brick wall and a man in a yellow shirt pinned to the ground as he gets pummeled. The album contained no hits; there were no soft, radio-ready songs, no honey to attract the faint of heart. 

Rumor has it that "Fair Warning" was Eddie's angry album. In addition to the push-pull between introvert and extrovert, Eddie and David Lee Roth fought over creative control.  Eddie wanted more time in the studio and more clout for his studio companion, Donn Landee, the band's sound engineer. Roth was allies with the producer, Ted Templeman, who focused on singles and didn't fancy Eddie's desire to tinker and experiment in the studio.

Within a few years, Eddie would win this battle by building a studio in his home, but at the time "Fair Warning" was recorded, he had to make do. The result was the purest, edgiest Van Halen release with the most intense guitar fireworks. 

"Mean Street" opened the album and set the tone. And it showed who was the boss on "Fair Warning."  

There is much for the practicing electric guitarist (or astute listener) to appreciate in this song. The tapped notes in the introduction come in quietly at first, as if rumbling up from under the surface, then increase in volume. I've always loved the counterpoint between the fierce tapped notes and the bright harmonics, all capped by the prehistoric whammy bar-with-feedback sound which howls then fades out in stereo, opening a chasm which is filled on the left channel by the opening riff.  

And what of the main riff? As a friend once said, it's "like a chainsaw ripping through a sequoia." The main theme backed by Alex's swinging drums are sinew with swagger. 

Then there's a tasty bridge at 2:06. Roth's words "dance, baby" are a perfect complement to the slinky, phasered rhythm guitar line. 

Eddie ladles more gravy on after the solo-verse-chorus, at 3:22. As the band brings things down, he fills the space with subtle volume modulations, then leads the march to the finish with his patented blood-curdling pick slide. The sound sculpture outro is yet another example of what set Eddie apart from his peers. 

"So This Is Love?" is the first song I heard off of "Fair Warning." In the early '80s, when MTV exclusively played music videos, I saw a live version of "So This Is Love?" At the time, I wasn't into Van Halen, but something about the energy of the performance stayed with me. 

Fast forward to the summer of 1984. By this point, I'd discovered Van Halen through the release of their most commercially successful album, "1984." I was a rabid fan; Van Halen was my favorite band. I was eager to see live footage of the band, but there wasn't much available in the pre-Internet days.  

One fine summer day I was watching MTV at a friend's house. For a teenager, Jamestown had a seriously tricked-out space—a basement with plush carpeting, nice furniture, a color television, cable, a quality stereo, a refrigerator stocked with cold A & W cream soda. And his parents almost never came downstairs. 

Jamestown was a huge Van Halen fan too, and a huge fan of music in general. He was big into metal and hard rock, but seemed to see everyone live; he had a closet full of concert jerseys. 

The rock video we were watching ended and MTV flashed the song credits in white print. We waited. A few seconds later, the opening shots of a concert audience came on, followed by footage of David Lee Roth hoisting  a bottle of whiskey. Could it be?

It was the long lost concert video of "So This Is Love?" 

Jamestown, 13 at the time, stood on an Ottoman and whooped. My consciousness was totally immersed in the music and images for all 3:45 of the video. I wouldn't see it again for almost twenty years, until the invention of YouTube.

The closest thing to a hit on "Fair Warning" is "Unchained," which has the party spirit many people associate with Van Halen. The opening is textbook VH:  start with a jagged riff, add drums, mix in an "all right!" from David Lee Roth, a pulsating bass line, and off we go, with some Tarzan yelps for good measure. Below is a live version from 1981. Alex Van Halen's ring of fire, lit during the crescendo at 3:54, inspired a couple of clean-scrubbed, middle-class kids in the neighborhood to try a similar trick at home. The result? One casualty (a detached garage, in ashes), lessons learned, a timeless conversation piece.

My favorite part of "Fair Warning" is the two-song medley which closes the album. 

"Sunday Afternoon in the Park" is an instrumental that features some of Alex Van Halen's heaviest, most primal drumming. And in stark contrast to the bright, cheesy pop sound of the synthesizer explorations on future Van Halen albums—saltpeter to the legendary Van Halen virility—the synth tones on this tune are so dark and ominous that you can cut 'em with a butcher knife.
  

"Sunday Afternoon in the Park" leads directly into "One Foot out the Door." After the deep-pocketed, sluggish beat of "Park," "One Foot out the Door" sounds as if it has been shot out of a cannon, reflecting the immediacy in the narrative. The drum fill before the second verse (at 2:22) is brutal and the tempo change-up just before the solo, at 2:51, is one of those delectable little touches that come when an artist is at the height of their powers.

As if he's dumping out all of the additional musical ideas he wants to fit onto this masterpiece, Eddie re-asserts his ownership of "Fair Warning" with the epic, minute-long outro solo at 2:53. Eddie dispenses with simple and clean note articulation in favor of a heady blend of tapping, wide bends, stutter-step blues phrases, watery scale runs, and whammy-bar magic in the form of shrieks, dives, and assorted whale sounds. The final minute of "Fair Warning" is an exclamation point to an album's worth of the most innovative, bad-ass electric guitar since Hendrix left us. When it comes to sonic invention, no rock guitarist has equaled it since. 

***

Other "Truth and Beauty" guitar hero essays:

Click here for "The heaviest New Year's Eve guitar jam ever: Hendrix does 'Machine Gun'"

                                    here for "The Second Coming:  Stevie Ray Vaughan," a first-hand                                                                                account of Vaughan's final concert

here for "It was 70 years ago today:  an appreciation of Jimi Hendrix"

                       
  here for "Link Wray's 'Rumble'"       
                  

here for "Great Guitar Solos, #1:  Eddie Hazel (Funkadelic)"

here for "Great Guitar Solos, #2:  Frank Zappa"

here for "Great Guitar Solos, #3:  Hiram Bullock" 

here for "Great Guitar Solos, #4: Dweezil Zappa Nails 'Eruption'"

here for "Great Guitar Solos, #5:  Alvin Lee"

 here for "Great Guitar Solos, #6: Neil Young's 'Hey Hey, My My'"

and here for "Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar - The Six-String Wizardry of Frank Zappa, Part II"

Great Guitar Solos, #4: Dweezil Zappa Slays "Eruption"

"He might as well have had the smoke machines following him, and the lights...'cuz that's all I saw...like a superhero walked in the house..."

-Dweezil Zappa, on meeting Eddie Van Halen


In the early '80s, every budding lead guitarist wanted to play "Eruption" by rock guitar's last major sonic innovator, Eddie Van Halen. 

The release of this 1:42-long instrumental in 1978 drove thousands of kids to their rooms for countless hours to master the weapons in Eddie's arsenal:  finger tapping, pinch harmonics, screaming pickslides, and whammy-bar dives/assorted whale sounds.  

One of those kids, Dweezil Zappa, was lucky enough to know Eddie Van Halen personally. Van Halen would produce Dweezil's first record (at right), help him with a talent show, and offer timely condolences at a very difficult moment.   

In the video below, Zappa relates his star-struck wonderment when he met Van Halen, who stopped over in his "bonafide superhero" jumpsuit (pictured above, from the back cover of "Women and Children First") to check out Frank Zappa's in-home studio. At the time, Van Halen's studio hours had been limited by the stingy suits at Warner Brothers, who expected the band to come in well-rehearsed and bang an album out in short order. Eddie wanted a home studio of his own to tinker around in to his heart's content and wrest creative control of the band away from David Lee Roth, a move that would ultimately produce "1984," Van Halen's biggest (if not best) album. 
 
After paying a debt of gratitude in his spoken introduction, Dweezil lets his fingers do the talking. Armed with a black-with-yellow-tape-striped guitar modeled on the axe Van Halen used early in his career - and later placed in Dimebag Darrell's casket - the Dweez opens "Eruption" at 5:14. 

Dweezil spent a couple years woodshedding to learn his father's complicated arrangements for the first Zappa Plays Zappa tour, and his studiousness shows in this interpretation too, as he nails both the technically demanding phrasing and the famous Van Halen "brown sound." 

This spot-on rendition is the closest live approximation to the original vinyl recording you're likely to find on video, as Van Halen has played only heavily-improvised versions for years. 

The second song, "Somebody Get Me a Doctor," is a raunchy rocker from "Van Halen II," the too often overlooked follow-up to the classic "Van Halen I." This version is also true to the original, down to the singer's blond mane, snug spandex, and Tarzan shrieks (courtesy of one of Zappa Plays Zappa's fun-loving roadies).

More Zappa on "Truth and Beauty"

Frank Zappa's Public Debut

Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar - The Six-String Wizardry of Frank Zappa, Part II

Great Guitar Solos, #2, Frank Zappa

Matt Groening: Frank Zappa was my Elvis

Other "Truth and Beauty" guitar hero essays:

          Click here for "The Second Coming:  Stevie Ray Vaughan," a first-hand             account of Vaughan's final concert

here for "The heaviest New Year's Eve guitar jam ever: Hendrix does 'Machine Gun'"

 here for "Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar - The Six-String Wizardry of Frank Zappa, Part II"

here for "It was 70 years ago today:  an appreciation of Jimi Hendrix"

                       
  here for "Link Wray's 'Rumble'"          
                  

here for "Great Guitar Solos, #1:  Eddie Hazel (Funkadelic)"

here for "Great Guitar Solos, #2:  Frank Zappa"

here for "Great Guitar Solos, #3:  Hiram Bullock" 

here for "Great Guitar Solos, #5:  Alvin Lee"

and here for "Great Guitar Solos, #6: Neil Young's 'Hey Hey, My My'"