Van Halen!

Lol at the image of EVH interjecting a full Eruption style solo, divebombs and all, into the middle of SOS

Wow. It's almost a shreds video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0y3o3zXFBA

haha half of that solo isn't even in key

Ha, that's an infamous mess.

shades of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkV5XqEd2Do

“Special plans!”

Stephen Thomas Erlewine's reflections on EVH and the band through all its incarnations may be the best yet I've read:

https://sterlewine.substack.com/p/eddie-van-halen-happy-trails

I don't think this gets said enough, but Eddie is a trip on headphones.

I've heard "Hot for Teacher" a few times on the radio recently, turned it up and noticed a few things with the drums I'd never really thought about before. At first I was convinced there was more overdubbing throughout the whole thing, a la the intro, and maybe there was, but then I came across this isolated track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbanpC_K62M

And a commenter made this, er, comment:

The 1st part of the intro is played on a Simmons pad with sticks then you hear the kick drums come in underneath. Everybody thinks the 1st part is his feet but that's actually his hands on a Simmons pad. Then the bass drums come in which are also Simmons pads. 1984 was Simmons pads with a ludwig super phonic snare drum and Roto-toms along with Paiste symbols. No actual real wood drums were used in the 1984 recording. I actually have very rare pictures of 5150 studio when that album was recorded, the Simmons pads were red.

I knew about the Simmons pads, but I didn't realize it was sort of an all-artificial material set, which maybe explains why the whole thing sounds so uncanny valley sci-fi.

One thing I haven't figured out (it's also mentioned in passing in those comments) is the occasional stick-click. It happens two or three times, but I can't tell if Alex is doing it on purpose for effect, doing it on purpose to help everyone's timing (a la Bonham in "Black Dog") or messing up. The last seems the least likely answer, since they would have just done another take, but I'm not sure which of the first two I'm going with.

You can see the set in the background here:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e8/b1/58/e8b1587b73c8f1995332e25eba84a01a.jpg

that intro makes me think of Bow Wow Wow

Good thread on Simmons :

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/albums-where-drummers-use-simmons-drums-electronic-drums.478617/

it can't be his hands at the start on the pads, b/c there's also a tom pattern he does about :12 seconds in, and he obviously does that w/hands

interesting follow up to that comment tho

Ted Templeman said in his autobiography that the first few seconds are actually a recording of the exhaust from Eddie's Laborghini. Donn Landee (the engineer) played with it until it blended with the start of Alex's drums.

exhaust from Eddie's Laborghini.

No way this is accurate. This sounds like the conflation/confusion of several stories, but closest to the revving in "Panama."

Also:

it can't be his hands at the start on the pads, b/c there's also a tom pattern he does about :12 seconds in, and he obviously does that w/hands

It's overdubbed, that much everyone agrees on.

Like, the bulk of the song is fast/exhausting enough, but it's telling that afaict he never did the full intro live. There are, of course, all sorts of mutant drummers now that have figured out ways to do it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GXshVjEVU8

And there's a similar callback here (which is insane, but Meshuggah, you know)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc98u-eGzlc

ah my bad i thought you were stating there were no overdubs

Reminds me of Copeland’s stories, another multi-tracker that people have figured how to replicate

Yeah, he supposedly got a hoot out of watching people play, say, "Message in a Bottle," which takes a few extra arms/overdubs.

Wolfgang Van Halen has released a solo track in tribute to his father. The song is barely there, but the video is worth watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI3aPJkZmNU

Emotional! Thanks

Hot shoe, boinin’ down the avenue

he went for John Fogerty on that one for some reason

Huh. Apparently Eddie and Alex recorded demos of "Christine Sixteen" and "Got Love For Sale" with Simmons. Had no idea.

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

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

It's Two for Tuesday on the local classic rock station. They played Hot for Teacher, so I was pumped, but they followed it with a really shitty Sammy Hagar solo track. That's cheating!

a real #2 all right

You should be able to conduct a citizen's arrest in this situations

They should have played "Just Like Paradise" instead of "Hot for Teacher", as a democratic gesture.

that is a goddamn outrage imo

they should be forced by a court to play "beautiful girls" at least once per day for the next month

I believe that is an FCC violation, iirc, per the Two-Fer Tuesday/Mandatory Metallica/Get the Led Out reauthorization act of 1996.

Yeah, no amount of Breakfast with the Beatles can redeem a DJ essentially cock-blocking a rock block, let alone with the Red Rider.

The shitty song in question was something called "Your Love Is Driving Me Crazy." The classic rock station should have known better, or at least if you are going to play a solo song by human dud Sammy Hagar in tandem with a Van Halen song, pick a "classic" Hagar song and not some blatant stinker. As Genius notes in response to the line "hot, sweet cherries on the vine," "This leads one to believe that Mr. Hagar is not much of a horticulturalist. Cherries grow on trees. It’s a tough spot. 'Grapes' would be an unstressed syllable short, and 'melons' would bear unintended meanings." He's got a point, in that Hagar is such a shitty lyricist that what little meaning his songs have are always totally, thoroughly intentional. When Hagar is singing about aliens, he is not using metaphors.

Sammy loves his fruit, though, as one listen to "Up for Breakfast" on the 2004 Van Halen compilation will indicate.

Hmm having just peruse the lyrics for "Up for Breakfast" I'd wager a single US dollar this song is about sexual intercourse

She put the cream in my coffee (first thing in the morning)
Put that butter on my biscuit (honey to my melons)
Woo, cherries on bananas (you gonna need a second helping)
You know I'm up for breakfast so early in the morning

Is cherries on bananas a sex thing? I've been out of the game too long

it means there's acne on his dick, Woo

they should be forced by a court to play "beautiful girls" at least once per day for the next month

nah, just in the vocal

Only time will tell if cherries wilt on vines... yeah!

"The shitty song in question was something called "Your Love Is Driving Me Crazy"

you strike me, JiC, as a guy what had listened to or at least was present for the AOR era, distinct from classic rock. and the above indicates that you had not heard the above song prior to the other day? That's odd to me… I'm fond of it, in that I often am fond of songs which owe their existence to John David Kalodner not hearing a single among the songs recorded for an early 80s AOR-oriented record and insisting that the artist write some sell out shit…

Is cherries on bananas a sex thing? I've been out of the game too long

― chr1sb3singer, Tuesday, April 13, 2021 3:23 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i don't think there's any reason to read anything dirty into this...sammy's just a foodie, for ex "poundcake"

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/TxLCnR2iwGBHejVGMGbKCK-q09QD-4s1nTGrucEWIiTx5AofIrYdQHn2nIMNvRVOLRxC2IJO7ZlulqOXdS6jeaXbhmuTovXkENX5bWzcbPCTLx5fwlRwiYLW1w

thought that was Bob Plant on the right

L-R: Sam Hagar, Bob Plant

Is cherries on bananas a sex thing? I've been out of the game too long

― chr1sb3singer, Tuesday, April 13, 2021 3:23 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i don't think there's any reason to read anything dirty into this...sammy's just a foodie, for ex "poundcake"

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 14 April 2021 13:44 (one hour ago) link

You are probably right, I doubt Sammy is that crude, it isn't like he would name an album FUCK or anyt-...wait

the "Bob Plant emissions" jokes bookending every trip to the loo must be insufferable.

I need one of those dumb shirts that says:
Sam and
Dave and
Bob and
Guy

"She put the cream in my coffee (first thing in the morning)
Put that butter on my biscuit (honey to my melons)
Woo, cherries on bananas (you gonna need a second helping)
You know I'm up for breakfast so early in the morning"

Also "up": my breakfast

Perhaps there is a cosmic balance between the volume of breakfast consumed by Sammy and the volume of breakfast lost by others as a result

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ6bli9Xir4

Alex killing it

It's one thing to alter the pitch and tempo of two songs, isolate certain tracks, and mash those together. Bill is far and away the best in the business when it comes to that.
But THIS particular mashup... if you're a die hard Van Halen fan, you hear it right away... that's NOT how DLR sang the song! Bill altered the tempo, cadence and inflection of INDIVIDUAL WORDS from the original vocal track, and did it so skillfully that it comes out sounding completely natural and unedited. It's the audio equivalent of a Deep Fake... he turned DLR into a country singer. This is Next Level stuff, even for McClintock.
BRAVO, sir.
P.S. am I crazy, or did I hear like 5 notes from the bridge of And The Cradle Will Rock thrown in there? Genius.