Van Halen!

Elvis T. sold me on VHR being the next book in my queue.

Dance the Night Away is the uplifting VH song for me. Just pure concentrated joy - DLR's screams are so ott, best Anthony backing vocals, and the long repeat and fade of the chorus is the "May the Road Rise Up to Meet You" of hard rock. I joke with my wife that I want it played as the final music at my funeral service.

Here's (I hope) a minute of my guitar teacher's band of session guys nailing "Dance":

https://imgur.com/a/OXCAwxK

Guess not? This should be the link:

https://imgur.com/a/OXCAwxK

Re: that awful Jump performance.

https://www.guitarworld.com/news/the-true-story-behind-van-halens-infamous-out-of-tune-jump-performance-has-finally-been-revealed

t wasn’t too often that Eddie Van Halen was less than perfect on electric guitar. Which is why, for Van Halen fans, the infamous 2007 Greensboro, North Carolina show-closing performance of Jump – when Ed’s guitar was completely out-of-tune with the keyboard track – remains such a memorable moment.

Over the years, the screwup has largely been blamed on a tech, with many fans positing that the synth track was played back at the wrong sample rate. But now Eddie’s guitar tech at the time, Tom Weber, has cleared up the story.

Weber, along with Van Halen keyboard tech Greg Rule, appeared on Rock Talk with Mitch Lafon and The Jeremy White Podcast, and was asked about the Jump performance. Said White, “Were you there when that whole screwup with the keyboard happened? With the sample rate?”

“It’s not the keyboard sample rate. It had nothing to do with the keyboards. I haven’t been able to address this because it’s a sore spot for Ed. During the guitar solo, which was a couple of songs before the infamous incident, Ed loves to make noises with the guitar, we all know that. Anybody that’s been to a Van Halen show and been there for the guitar solo knows that you’re liable to hear any unearthly sound that Ed can make with a guitar.

“So at one point he took the guitar and literally jammed the headstock of the neck into the stage several times. Normally if there was a situation where the guitar was out of tune, obviously my job is to be ready for him with another guitar, which I was. Ed’s right-hand guy, Matt Bruck, and I were in ‘guitar world’ and it’s like, ‘Oh, crap – he’s knocked the guitar out of tune.’”

Weber continued, “Well, he fine-tunes it some and gets back into playing and I’m holding another guitar over my head so that he can see it and he’s waving it off. He’s still playing the solo, he’s fine-tuned, it’s passable. Well, they go right from that into Ain’t Talkin’ ‘bout Love, that’s the next song on the set list. Wolfgang starts playing and realizes that he’s not in tune with the guitar so he retunes a little bit so they’re in tune.

"So they’re in tune – you have guitar and bass in tune. So they play Ain’t Talkin’ ‘bout Love and Panama and then typically the band, at the end of the show, they come offstage for a minute, I switch guitars with Ed, and they go back on for the encore, which is Jump."

That particular night, however, "they didn’t come offstage," Weber said. "They went around the corner… we had what we call the ‘phone booth’ on stage left, the big ego ramp that went up around to this big cabinet that nobody ever used for anything. But they went around the side of that and Ed didn’t come off the stage to get another guitar.

“So now you have Wolfgang on his bass and Ed with his out-of-tune guitar on a keyboard song that is in tune. Ed didn’t have keyboards in his monitor mix so he didn’t hear that he was out of tune. So that’s where all that went."

As for what happened next?

"The funniest part about it was, he didn’t know that that had happened until a couple of weeks later when somebody was at the venue and showed him the video of it," Weber said.

"So I got called to the dressing room full of people and he said, ‘You handed me an out-of-tune guitar.’ I said, ‘No, I didn’t.’ I said, ‘If you’ll recall, you banged the headstock of the guitar into the stage that night several times and then you didn’t come off the stage to get the guitar at the end of the show for the encore. He said, ‘Ah, that wouldn’t make any difference.’"

According to Weber, Eddie, who had a guitar around his neck at the time, "proceeded to jam it into the dressing room floor, and in front of a room full of people it comes back up and it’s way out of tune. And I said, ‘Just sayin’…’ And that’s the last I ever heard about it.”

god i'm glad they cleared that up, was sick of the EVH fanboys insisting that it was a 'stupid tech who screwed up'

Eddie was wasted a lot of the time wasn't he?

The last time I saw him with Sammy he was a mess. Much better with DLR the next time.

the last tour here I didn't go as people warned me their shows had gotten a bit rough, and there was actually a Groupon for tix to their Tampa show as sales were so poor.

still regret it as I never got to see them live :/

in fairness though I think the reason people told me the shows were rough was Dave

they were both kinda rough

there was this period where Eddie was wearing a good hair in a top knot and wearing like camo cargo shorts and shit like that, he seemed really bad off

his hair not good hair, it was bad hair

He many many times said that the last record that meant anything to him was Peter Gabriel's So.

And the world wept for for a EVH-on-synths cover of "Mercy Street."

Only time I saw VH live was with Sammy but it was an awesome day was at the Monsters of Rock tour which also had The Scorpions, Fokken Dokken and Metallica.

You about cannot get more 1988 than that…especially as the show was in the ‘Hoosier Dome’. Ha!

the only time i saw VH was with cherone 😩

only time I saw him was with Simon and Garfunkel

Hello, teacher, my old friend

I Am a Cock

*spits out tea*

i saw them in 2012-ish with Kool & The Gang opening.
Kool & The Gang was the highlight :/

VH was weird & awkward. Vibes were way off, as the kids say. Dave was super rambly & no one wanted to be there, incl the audience

truly though kool & the gang were awesome & kinda saved the show from being an embarrassing waste of time & money

It's funny, because when that tour was first announced, I thought "this was 100% DLR's idea, and it's kind of awesome, Van Halen and Kool & the Gang are both party bands, though in a very different way"...but when I thought about it for about 30 more seconds I was like, "nope, Kool & the Gang are a highly disciplined show band and Van Halen are a sloppy if showbizzy party-rock act — Kool & the Gang are gonna eat their lunch every single night without fail."

I was just watching the "Best Of Both Worlds" bit from Live Without A Net and thought, I know I've heard this riff somewhere else...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GwjfUFyY6M

TS: The first four Van Halen albums with Eddie's guitar in one channel and Sunset Sound's reverb chamber applied to it in the other vs. the original fake stereo version of The Beatles' first four albums with the with the vocals on one channel and the band in the other.

I saw VH twice, both times touring the FUCK album (in retrospect, my least favorite of the Hagar albums). I don't remember either show being notably spectacular, but solid, professional events. First time the opener was Alice in Chains (!), second time the opener was Baby Animals (?).

pic.twitter.com/OREXxL34aq

— Fisher Protocol-WhoTalk (@FisherProtocol) April 23, 2023

Posting this again to highlight Hagar's strengths (and the rest of them, for that matter):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYUKtW8ayhA

Also, points for sounding undeniably like Van Halen. That snare sound should be my ringtone.

https://i.imgur.com/sD4emLk.jpg

From the Monk book

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtaIh3GIdQM

Not soon enough.

Curio time -- a set of the complete "Star Fleet" sessions that EVH sat in on with Brian May in 1983 is getting a release:

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/news/expanded-boxset-brian-may-star-fleet-project/

(listening to II loud in my headphones on the railroad last night when the conductor comes to take my ticket)

conductor: "Van Halen?"
me: "yeah"
"they're one of my all time favorites"
"me too"
"they were the first concert i ever saw"
"me too"
"what year did you see them"
"1994, a little embarrassing"
"oh, that's when i was born, i didn't see them that early"
"when did you see them?"
"2007"
"was that with Roth?"
"yeah"
(enviously) "awesome"

reading the masculinity thread as Beautiful Girls plays and thinking how DLR's perspective is so unrelatable to me, i have no idea what he's talking about wrt Beautiful Girls and that used to make me feel defective or something, yet it hasn't diminished my enjoyment of this band at all.

honestly i only fuck with II for the last 3 songs, not that the rest of it doesn't rule but i'm putting it on because i wanna hear DOA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72Gqi0B1fYo

spot on

I think I remember that interview from after the MTV Awards!

Biggest moment was Eddie sucking in his cheeks, revealing some DLResque cheekbones, and doing a pitch perfect dead-eyed impression of Roth.

this has all the quotable shit-talking from 1996/97…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IakQI4mWmRI

Boozy boozy bop- ziti bop

My favorite part of Van Halen Rising is when Mo Ostin get's dragged to see Van Halen the first time. He turns to the (A&R?) guy who brought him and says, "they sound like money."

literally otm

Amoeba records in SF has a separate artist tab for Van Hagar

Wow, I've never heard this before:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsdvEQD-qls

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCoedOFRp80

Excellent
Those closing credits sound like Jump (Part 2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OyYP57A5sU

just emerged from a deep dive on account of "I'll Wait", same era, same vibe, apparently Ted Templeman voted against "I'll Wait" even after recruiting Michael McDonald to ghostwrite the thing

which is inconceivable, it's so good, give me all of the roth electro pop, lock van halen, roth and mcdonald in a room for a month and give them all the money and let me hear that please good lord why were these music executives so clueless

music execs are like the police chief in Die Hard when it comes to decision making

the guitar solo on i'll wait -- and the concluding simple drum fill -- has lived in my head for years

despite or becuase of its ernieness

I'm sorry, you can't name yourself Mr. Rock & Roll if you haven't heard Hot for Teacher before.

I don't know if it was the source of the deep dive, but coincidentally the newest issue of TapeOp has an interview with Donn Landee, who engineered all those Van Halen albums. Here's his "I'll Wait" story.

One song that bedeviled the band was "I'll Wait." Eventually, Michael McDonald co-wrote it. Do you remember that episode?

We had recorded the "I'll Wait" track, and Dave said he couldn't come up with any lyrics for it. Ted asked Michael McDonald to have a listen. Mike came into Ted's office, sang along with our tape, and Ted recorded his singing. Ted played it for me in the 5150 control room, and when it came to the chorus and I heard Mike sing, "I'll Wait," I knew that was it! I hit the talkback and said, "Ed! Get in here, you've got to hear this!"

Later he explains why the song became a sticking point, not because no one liked it but because the band was dead-set on calling the album "1984," and the plan was to release the album on January 1, 1984, and "I'll Wait" was (ironically) holding things up:

The record ran late and that caused some friction among Ted, you, and Ed. What happened?

"I'll Wait" wasn't done, and there were a couple little things that needed attention. I remember Lenny Waronker, who was then the label president, called and asked, "What's going on? When will you have it done?" I told him and he said, "Okay, then we can set the release for the first week in January." That was our final commitment, and we did it. Lenny really helped. We were able to have "Jump" come out on January 1st, and the album a week later.