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Losing Eddie Van Halen this year was certainly a blow to the millions who were huge fans of Van Halen — not only when the band was in its prime through the late seventies and the entirety of the eighties, but the many people who discovered the band thanks to the wonders of the internet. It has become easier than ever to become a super-fan of almost any artist or genre, knowing all of their obscure cuts as well as their hits.
It should be said that Van Halen is one of the best-selling groups of all time. Their albums have shipped over eighty million units, and you don’t get that by just having a small niche of fans. Read on to find out what made them popular and why their legacy will definitely endure.
They Made Heavy Metal Fun
Before Van Halen, the genre of heavy metal was pretty dour. Black Sabbath’s name said it all. Low bass rumbles, intense drumming over hard pounding riffs and vocal wails about death and the devil. Even bands like Deep Purple which didn’t go as dark in their appearance still played seven or eight-minute epics. Led Zeppelin may have only flirted with the sonic density that came with the genre, but even then they were super-serious about it most of the time.
Van Halen repackaged heavy metal for the even greater masses. Their first six albums all had radio-friendly songs that were full of hooks that rarely went past five minutes. However, because of Eddie’s amazing ability to have soaring hooks as the base with amazing solos in the same song, it wasn’t just for head-bangers. David Lee Roth was a frontman cut from the same cloth as Mick Jagger, with all the sexiness and swagger. He’d be singing about women and partying the way Ozzy went on about the four horsemen. Even ‘Runnin’ With the Devil’ isn’t about the devil! The wild and crazy nights Dave sang about were about things you need to visit escortrankings.uk to experience!
Going to a Van Halen concert in the seventies or eighties was like going to a massive party of ten thousand people. Heavy metal music obviously sold well through the seventies, but Van Halen blew it wide open by selling tens of millions of copies of their self-titled debut and 1984 (you don’t have to guess what year it came out). They even had a number one single of that latter album: ‘Jump’. It was proof that the band could embrace synthesizers while still being heavy.
Diamond Dave or Sammy Hagar?
Tiring a bit of the straight-ahead hard rock/heavy metal sound, Eddie Van Halen wanted to stretch out and explore more with his music, which went against the wishes of David Lee Roth. While 1984 was a bit of a compromise, balancing out the guitar and synthesizer tracks, the cracks in the relationships just grew and grew, and Roth left the band in early 1985 to start a solo career. He would be replaced by Sammy Hagar and initially, the band would have the same success as before, with a mix of keyboard-centric rock tracks and ballads replacing the heavier and harder style of Roth.
Considering these changes, it’s no surprise that some fans were divided between the two frontmen. Post-Roth tours featured very little material from his time with the band, so some fans were already disappointed. Some argued that Hagar had a voice much better suited for the current music, and while no one could deny his fun stage persona, it was hard to hold a candle to Roth, who had a bizarre up and down career following his exit. In addition to releasing solo material that consisted of jazz standards, he also became a professionally trained EMT, moved to Japan, and did a Vegas lounge act with exotic dancers (he certainly seems like the type of person who would make a pretty penny investing in interactive sex games).
Hagar would come and go through the nineties, but Roth returned to the fold full-time for the 2007 reunion tour, which wasn’t exactly accurate because founding bassist Michael Anthony was replaced by Wolfgang Van Halen at this time. In this sense, a true reunion of the original four was never going to happen.
The Brown Sound
While it is important to give credit to Van Halen’s rhythm section (Alex Van Halen on drums, and Michael Anthony on bass and backing vocals until he was replaced in 2006 by Eddie’s son Wolfgang), and point out that David Lee Roth is a quintessential rock and roll singer, it is hard to deny that Eddie Van Halen’s guitar heroics stole the show.
Not since Jimi Hendrix could a guitarist come up with amazing songs in addition to being able to churn out mind-blowing solos that combine (un)natural finger dexterity and lightning-fast improvisational skills. Eddie credits his learning of the piano at a young age as a way to help him take an unorthodox approach to the guitar.
His finger-picking technique was so unique when he started it that he would play with his back towards the audience so no one else could steal it. The short solo ‘Eruption’ on their debut album solidified his place in ‘the greatest pantheon’, although Eddie himself was fairly low-key about it, and called the particular sound he got out of his instrument as ‘the brown sound’.
Some websites have made it a scholarly pursuit. Part of Eddie’s tricks of the trade was just the amount of time he took designing his own guitars. He would have no issues with taking them apart and reassembling them as he saw fit. There’s a reason his most famous guitar was nicknamed the ‘Frankenstrat’.
