Van Halen!

imo "Finish What You Started" is an example of a song where Roth would have done a better job.

I am hearing this in my mind and it is cracking me up.

If this was Westworld and we were programming a host to sing this, we would dial down the Guy Fieri by 50% and increase the Vaudeville by 50%.

Hagar is 72, tequila must keep you young

anyway I think he's kinda underrated? that Montrose record owns

"i'll fall in love again" may be AOR-core af but it's an AOR-core ~jam~, is what it is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7Qf5hJf6Ds

I’ll try again with the montrose album, dunno why it’s never really vibed with me, not even bad motor scooter :(

I think Hagar is underrated too, but DLR's braininess and sense of irony is definitely missed in the Hagar phase of the band

i like Montrose quite a bit, i think Hagar’s style suits 70’s classic rock better idk?

josefa & vg agreed on both counts

DLR is obv his completely own thing that Hagar couldn't touch

I just see people really talk shit about Sammy like he never did anything good is all

I think Sammy is a very good rock singer but I think he’s just too generic a presence for the position of VH frontman; I don’t know what he brings that could be described as uniquely and identifiably his

Red Stuff

Speeding Tickets

¡MAS TEQUILA!

Sammy was really lucky to land in VH right when their Imperial Period was beginning. I mean, they already were a huge band with DLR, but they gained a Pop audience with Diver Down & 1984, which only grew with 5150. Every Van Hagar album debuted at #1 (as did the first Hits comp), they had several Top 40 & Hot 100 singles (plus loads of AOR hits), and they played some their biggest shows/tours with him.

see this Hagar i like, kinda like no-frills Zeppelin
#CamaroMusic
https://youtu.be/RIyt0ulyd4c

van hagar’s more like a hot pink jeep

listening to 5150, sounding kinda awesome tbh

I highly recommend Sammy's book, Red. It's not terribly trashy, but it does explain a bit more about what makes Sammy run, not least that he abstained more or less from drugs and alcohol until the peak of his Van Hagar success, and also how a lot of his confidence stemmed from knowing he was successful *before* he joined Van Halen, which gave him some extra "fuck you" leverage. That, and making something like $100 million when he finally sold his tequila brand. Fwiw, someone I know knows someone that lived by him in Marin and said he was a great neighbor.

This is a good piece my friend (maybe?) wrote way back when, basically about how the guy could be top of the world and bottom of the heap at the same time: https://www.sfweekly.com/news/the-red-menace/

I think almost anyone can understand that Roth could very very hard to take —this is true whether it's 1982-1986, when he is in a league with Prince and Springsteen and no one else as a rock and roll showman, and also from the pot bust through the failed reunion, weird videotape from 2002, the Sam and Dave tour with the dye job or the wig or whatever the fuck that was, to 2007, when it was painful to see him fallen from that height, flailingly attempting and failing to be the same world beater. In both conditions, it seems like he would be hugely annoying when he was on…the polymath aspect, where he's an EMT, living quietly on the Lower East Side, is still mysterious…

Eddie clearly would be relieved to have someone like Sammy come along…evidently, he was embarrassed by the "let's party" reputation of the band… never mind that DLR's version of "let's party" is pretty quantum… but Eddie wanted someone who would supply allegedly serious, thoughtful material like "dreams" "Love Walks In" "right now" "When It's Love" and shit tons of other ponderous, keyboard tunes that I'm not that familiar with. And Sammy had the desire to do that…it's just that he's as you guys put it a Guy Fieri-type, or as the guy who wrote the Pitchfork piece said, "an amiable bro in jorts," and his efforts as such are chowderheaded… it's also that, by all accounts, Hagar is a swell guy and was easy to get along with; not for nothing is it that he and Mike are tight buds. By all accounts, Sammy wasn't the asshole in 1995-96: EVH was.

I know many people who really really liked Hagar in the early to mid 80s, went to see him then, swear by Montrose, but remained outraged by the indignity of not just the Van Hagar music, but that he dared to replace Roth.

man. i love music and i love this board! thanks veronica and everyone else. oh, and i love can halen! that’s a typo but i’m leaving it in

Can Halen: The IPA That Shreds!

Van Leppard IPA

Just imagined Hagar's voice singing, "YOU'RE LOSIN'! YOU'RE LOSIN'! YOU'RE LOSIN! YOU'RE LOSIN' YOUR VITAMIN C! YYEAAHHOOOWW!"

xp

I try once in a while with the Hagar era but it mostly just sounds like crappy Journey to me.

DO RI-I-I-GHT, YA DO IT SO RI-I-I-I-IGHT! *whoops*

Maybe it's the VH brothers as fronted by Holger Czukay on both bass and vox.

Man, Hagar in Can would be awesome, like when Daryl Hall was briefly/almost in King Crimson.

thing people need to acknowledge is that the scenario isn't Van Halen continues with DLR vs. Van Hagar, it's Van Hagar vs. Van Halen breaks up

so if you like any Van Hagar stuff you're already playing with the house's money

also we get Eat Em and Smile, the truest expression of gonzo DLR

^overlooking Van Halen with Holger Czukay scenario

haha that scenario 100% ends in Alex beating poor Holger to a pulp

thing people need to acknowledge is that the scenario isn't Van Halen continues with DLR vs. Van Hagar, it's Van Hagar vs. Van Halen breaks up

Well, the third scenario might have been Van Halen breaks up then gets quickly back together with DLR, though I guess reunions weren't quite a thing yet until the very end of the decade with the Stones and Who and Pink Floyd and the like. Honestly not sure how good Van Halen might have been in the late '80s or early '90s, anyway. Van Hagar was probably the best Van Halen was ever going to be during that era. I dunno, I think it's helpful to think of them as entirely different bands. Kind of like comparing the Pixies pre and post reunion catalogs. Or hell, Wire's three or so different eras.

Well, the third scenario might have been Van Halen breaks up then gets quickly back together with DLR

not likely
agreed they are best thought of as two different bands, though i feel like eddie and alex are the core of the band kinda like mick & keith so maybe it's them and yr granny on bongos

I wonder if any of the 5150/OU812 material predated Hagar? Cuz sometimes it's like he's really trying to do a David Lee Roth thing and it does not work, but I wonder what this could have been w/DLR?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxRm9X4WNUY

intro is fun tho

Possibly? The instrumental of "Right Now" had roots back to 1983.

oh wow had no idea

Eddie maybe is like Neil Young where he had this incredible period of inspiration where he had enough leftovers to parse them out throughout the years

it sure sounds like it

I hear similarities between the piano/key parts in "Right Now" and "I'll Wait" for sure.

re: Hagar, I can't imagine the headspace that would actively turn up the volume for "There's Only One Way To Rock," a song that upsets and depresses me.

I liked "When It's Love" when it came out but I was also in 3rd grade and imo it does not sound quite as dope today. The classics from his era are "Poundcake" and "Runaround."

imo "Finish What You Started" is an example of a song where Roth would have done a better job.
I am hearing this in my mind and it is cracking me up.
Yes, exactly!

I feel like this is the time to bring up little weird things like this...

The intro of "So This Is Love" -- in the 80s I had this on a tape copied from vinyl, and I assumed my tape deck had a little malfunction, but now I'm listening on Spotify and the volume actually descends in the exact same spot. So I guess this was either a bizarre mastering decision, or a mistake, or Alex and Michael did a really good job of playing a lot quieter in unison while tracking. Or a combination of all of these.

I have a tape story as well. The mcmlxxxiv LP is a little over 45 mins, so on my c 90 it would cut off during a guitar run on “girl gone bad”

My mum did some babysitting jobs back in the 80s for a while. One time she babysat for Tommy Vance's kids - UKers of a certain age will remember him from The Friday Rock Show on Radio 1 ("TV on the radio here" etc). Anyway, once she figured out who he was and told him her sons were rock fans he very kindly autographed a couple of LPs that were lying around. My brother got Eliminator and I got 1984, which I still have, albeit with a somewhat faded Tommy Vance sig on the front cover.

And that's my Van Halen story, although really it's more of a Tommy Vance story. Apparently he was very nice.

I liked "When It's Love" when it came out but I was also in 3rd grade and imo it does not sound quite as dope today.

My parents gave me the CD of 'Balance' for my 10th birthday - it had just come out that same week. I think the only other VH i had at the time was the debut, but not real sure. Even at that age, the weaker songs were pretty embarrassing. The stronger songs were fine, they rocked pretty hard, y'know, they did the job. But pretty generic, not a lot of personality. Could have been whatever hard rock band.

Sammy sings the shit out of, for example, 'don't tell me what love can do'. it's almost comical, you know, like he gets so into it on the first verse that there's nowhere to go from there, or at best maybe it sort of plateaus.

I would cop to liking 'Right Now', like, I already knew the song from hearing it on the radio, in the supermarket, maybe the Pepsi ad... but I had no idea it was by Van Halen even though they were my favorite band. I think I got the double live CD with the Jesus lawn ornament on the cover around that time, expecting to recognize Jump because it was this huge hit, but I didn't. Right Now was the song I didn't know I already knew.

So basically I think the thread as a whole is OTM re: Sammy.

Have really enjoyed posts ITT by veronica moser, josh in chicago and everyone else. Really good stuff. I can't remember how 'Runaround' goes but the lyrics to poundcake are *so* cringe, fortunately it's kinda hard to make out all the words.

I can vibe with Sammy only up to ou812

"love walks in" is fun for the unintentionally hilarious alien abduction lyrics

btw Veronica Moser's posts upthread reminded me of this from consequence of sound on Foxy Shazam and the Darkness.

Listening to Clapton is like getting a sensual massage from a woman you’ve loved for the past 10 years; listening to Van Halen is like having the best sex of your life with three foxy nursing students you met at a Tastee Freeze. This is why rock historians and intellectuals feel comfortable lionizing Eric Clapton, even though every credible guy in the world will play Van Halen tapes when his wife isn’t around.

https://consequenceofsound.net/aux-out/i-love-bombastic-rock-bands-whos-with-me/

can i take back my last post?

Listening to 5150 today and I’d honestly forgotten “Love Walks In” & “Why Can’t This Be Love” were this early on

They def have a OU812/F.U.C.K. vibe

^Looking at tracklists, I was surprised "Top of The World" was on F.U.C.K. instead of being one of the first things they put out with him.