Van Halen!

Randy Rhoads was guitarist in some of that early Quiet Riot FYI. I know Chris Holmes from WASP is in that documentary and he knew all of them as a teenager.

https://www.amazon.com/Inside-Metal-Pioneers-L/dp/B0797BSFMS?ref=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=c196e9b2-17c8-40da-9a98-e5dd083b2273

this is an amazing no budget doc about the pre hair metal LA scene that goes very in depth

This is the QR doc.

https://www.amazon.com/Randy-Rhoads-Reflections-Guitar-Icon/dp/B09Z2RFS2D/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?crid=2H022YSRG4XSQ&keywords=quiet+riot+documentary&qid=1681607314&sprefix=quiet+riot+doc%2Caps%2C937&sr=8-2

Drop Dead Legs has great rhythm … all those unrealized ghost notes are wonderful

That live Hot for Teacher is the best medicine rn

I've thought about bands I'd want to see if someone invents time travel and peak Van Halen would probably be in the top five

i have this exact thought very often. well, almost. i don't have a ranking.

This is peak Van Halen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn8APTMyKsg

That's peak anybody. Who's out there delivering that kind of live energy now?

Michael Anthony is 98% energy, 2% bass playing.

lol

though I will say I think a busier bassist would have been totally wrong for VH

Michael Anthony is pure, concentrated joy. Someone should bottle his essence and sling it as an antidepressant.

That's peak anybody.

concur.

Watching the ‘84 Montreal show…right at the beginning when EVH starts Unchained, lone spotlight and then the band kicks in and DLR does the splits off the riser….I got goosebumps just watching the grainy YT footage, can’t imagine what the front row was like

Paraphrasing what someone said in the comments but if I was 13,14 with a ticket DLR would have been some kind of comic book superhero shit to me

though I will say I think a busier bassist would have been totally wrong for VH

I'm listening to the albums on Tidal and I feel like they might have been remixed slightly during the last round of remasters, because I can hear a lot more of Anthony now and on some songs, like "Everybody Wants Some," he plays his ass off and has a really disgusting-in-a-good-way tone.

pretty sure if i had been at that oakland coliseum show it would be the single best show i've ever seen.

my first gig was Van Hagar at the nassau coliseum in... 1994? was i in the right place at the wrong time or what

listened to 1984 in full yesterday, it's as thrilling as rock music gets

Hell yeah
I saw them in NY on the ou812 tour

Quiet Riot (VH’s rival band)

This is news to me.

QR was Randy Rhoades original band, and iirc along with Ratt had kind of been humping it out in LA for years (like VH) until the success of VH opened the door.

I don't remember Quiet Riot having anywhere close to Van Halen levels of success. I can definitely see the potential for a Randy Rhoads/Eddie Van Halen rivalry, but of course the former's life and career were sadly cut short.

Metal Health sold 6 million!

https://www.amazon.com/N%C3%B6thin-But-Good-Time-Uncensored/dp/1250195756?ref=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=8a5eb27e-7659-4772-aad9-774c298d7ace

good overview of the development of the LA scene

xp And I saw them at the Colorado State Fairgrounds in Pueblo at the height of their success lol

Per Van Halen Rising, one of the reasons it took them forever to get signed is that everyone thought metal (or what passed the metal) was dead. VH jumpstarted its "comeback" just in time for MTV. That part of the story is where that hair metal oral history picks up.

I remember buying the first album when it came out because Dave looked like Robert Plant. I put it on and realized I'd never heard anything quite like it before. It didn't sound like metal, but it also didn't sound like much else.

I would have loved to see them open up for (and mop the floor with) Sabbath.

Yeah they had the attack of metal but not the viscosity. it's like they freed it from the sludge.

They were just so much fun, none of that vein of evil that many (most?) metal bands had running through them. They formed as a party band and stayed that way.

DLR doing mad dash big expressionistic brush strokes, all those breathless exultations, meaning beyond language,

The weirdest aspect of the Van Halen saga, from start to (first) finish, is all the people shit talking DLR as a terrible singer. Like, by what standard? By the standard of all the silly operatic metal castrati? Sammy is a great singer, but he is proof positive that that means next to nothing compared to what Roth brought.

Like, live, sure, I can imagine his relative limitations might have been more apparent, and of course he made up for it with all his energy. But it's not like you can hear him doing the splits in the studio, and all those records still rule.

Diamond Dave was one of the great front men of the era. I completely lost interest when Hagar replaced him. I still can't listen to those albums.

They're extra dire when you consider Sammy was largely brought on to give their songwriting a boost.

iirc, the “party band” tag became something of an Achilles heel for Eddie. He really wanted VH to be the next Zeppelin, but Dave’s constant “HOW’S EVERYBODY DOIN’ TONIGHT?” and his solo EP destroyed (in Eddie’s view) any deep mystery that might elevate the band to Zep levels.

(Just want to point out that I love DLR VH, and DLR’s exhortations re: the audiences’ feelings about how they felt on a particular evening were both welcome and, significantly, the antithesis of, say, Kiss’s stiff, unswinging, calculated YOU WILL BE ENTERTAINED BY US directives.)

Eddie's categorical mistake was that Zeppelin was also, in fact, a party band.

That Rising book really underscored that were it not for Dave the Van Halen brothers would have stuck to pretty generic boogie and butt rock, and possibly just faded away. They lacked the spark, or were too shy or naive, and it took Dave to admonish them into getting the crowd dancing.

They're extra dire when you consider Sammy was largely brought on to give their songwriting a boost.

― Josh in Chicago,

I thought his ability to play more than credible second guitar was a factor too?

That as well, but obviously EVH had been doing fine by himself.

I mention it only because during live clips I've seen recorded in 1986-1987 EVH is serious about playing synths, which forced Hagar to play guitar.

I think the backlog of demos and ideas was running low, exacerbated by hard drinking. Iirc even stuff like the Right Now piano part had been sitting around for years, but EVH was having trouble actually finishing anything, which is where Sammy came in.

He came to resemble Eddie, the mascot of Iron Maiden, more than the young man in the videos above.

Eddie wanted Patty Smyth to replace DLR as the lead singer of VH, but she declined. That might've ruled. I remember Smyth saying in an interview that she doesn't regret turning down the offer because if she had said yes, she never would have written 'Baby Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough'. We might have been spared that tune and Sammy Hagar, plus treated to a VH mach II fronted by Patty Smyth.

DLR's first 2 solo albums with Steve Vai >>>>>>>>> all the Van Hagar stuff.

This is not the Quiet Riot of 1983, more when they were rival cover bands playing parties in the mid 70s.

Lots of those 80s metal bands had literally been around for over a decade as cover bands. An interesting flip to how that scene worked is in the Twisted Sister documentary, which they were doing for well over a decade before they got a record deal.

also 67% of all hair metal dudes had been in the band London at some point

The early part of that Twisted Sister documentary was really interesting talking about the cover band scene of the early mid 70s.

All those guys in Motley Crue, Dokken, GNR, Ratt, Wasp etc had earlier bands same time as VH and Quiet Riot.

This is the Twisted Sister movie. I thought the first part about the East Coast cover band was interesting.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Are_Twisted_Fucking_Sister!

twisted sister doc is really good imo

Here's what your bassist is supposed to sound like when your band doesn't have a rhythm guitar player.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu8RpcChZrw

Renoff made a spotify playlist comprised of every song VH is known to have played before Ostin and Templeman came calling (I deleted Spotify so I don't have a link) … indeed, Edward and Alex's interest were exclusively in shit-hot licks "player's music," and didn't much like it when DLR brought in Kool & the gang, Isleys and JB as stuff that girls like to dance to… so there is Queen, Kiss, Grand Funk, Aerosmith, ZZ top, Santana, as well as the Black Sabbath and Cream selections that the brothers liked… Eddie also liked Tommy Bolin, so they played whatever the monster shuffle song on Spectrum is called… he also liked a lot of 70s hard rock with hot licks bands that are not well known, like a band called Stray Dog? Anyone? Almost as soon as VH hit, Eddie lost interest in what was going on in music, apart from Holdsworth, and he did like Nirvana (upon meeting KC, he drunkenly begged "please let me play with you! Let me play the Mexican's guitar!" —more accurately, the german/mexican's guitar). He many many times said that the last record that meant anything to him was Peter Gabriel's So.

Guitar mag journalists who interacted with Eddie know that it isn't LZ that he emulated; it was Clapton (although he admitted that his playing and composing resembled Page more). Despite being the undisputed titan of the guitar from 1978-1992, upon whom several industries depended, he was insecure…Clapton was classy and had the respect of the music industry establishment that EVH craved: he distanced himself from the Sunset Strip/ hair metal milieu as quickly as he could… when Sammy comes into the band, they presented themselves sartorially as little like Ratt and the Crue and all the acts they had set the table for as possible…whereas Kiss and Aerosmith were eager to associate with the bands they had inspired alongside VH. Similarly, DLR went along with the hair-metal movement with Eat em and Smile through 91, probly out of fealty to market based rationales more than pride in the rock idiom he, Los Bros VH, Kiss and Aerosmith had more or less created…at the same time, he was always intellectually engaged and curious in not not only music but all kinds of experiences, far more than the incurious Los Bros VH.

Also: Sammy is often blamed for the occasionally ponderous synth-heavy likes of "Love walks In" or "When it's Love." but the driver of that shit was Eddie. He wanted to show that he was more more sophisticated and classy than the acts he had inspired, and Sammy, who would be more sympathetic to such aims than DLR would (scoffing in ways that drove EVH nuts), obliged.

I love his love for all that unfashionable boogie heavy rock stuff like Cactus, Ten Years After, Beck, Bogart & Appice etc

"Hot for Teacher" is totally based on that stuff

i don't think anyone is blaming Sammy for the synth-heavy ballads, we're blaming him for, like, the lyrics to Poundcake.