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May

Van Halen – Diver Down (LP) (1982) – €10,00

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Diver Down is the fifth studio album by American rock band Van Halen and was released on April 19, 1982. It spent 65 weeks on the album chart in the United States and had, by 1998, sold four million copies in the United States.

Five of the twelve songs on the album are covers, the most popular being the cover of “(Oh) Pretty Woman”, a Roy Orbison song. In retrospect, it turned out to be one of the Van Halen brothers’ least-favorite albums, with Eddie stating “I would rather bomb with my own music than be the world’s biggest cover band.”

Fair Warning was such a dark, intense record that Van Halen almost had no choice but to lighten up on their next album, and 1982’s Diver Down is indeed much lighter than its predecessor. In many ways, it’s a return to the early albums, heavy on covers and party anthems, but where those records were rough and exuberant — they felt like the work of the world’s best bar band just made good, which is, of course, kind of what they were — this is undoubtedly the work of a finely honed band who has only grown tighter and heavier since their debut. As a band, they might be tight, but Diver Down is anything but tight.
It’s a downright mess, barely clocking in at 31 minutes, cobbled together out of five covers, two minute-long instrumentals, and five new songs.

However, at the time while he admitted to the pressure the band was put under to record it, he was able to tell Guitar Player (Dec. 1982) that it “was fun”:

When we came off the Fair Warning tour last year [1981], we were going to take a break and spend a lot of time writing this and that. Dave came up with the idea of, ‘Hey, why don’t we start off the new year with just putting out a single?’ He wanted to do ‘Dancing in the Streets.’ He gave me the original Martha Reeves & the Vandellas tape, and I listened to it and said, ‘I can’t get a handle on anything out of this song.’ I couldn’t figure out a riff, and you know the way I like to play: I always like to do a riff, as opposed to just hitting barre chords and strumming. So I said, ‘Look, if you want to do a cover tune, why don’t we do ‘Pretty Woman’? It took one day. We went to Sunset Sound in L.A., recorded it, and it came out right after the first of the year. It started climbing the charts, so all of a sudden Warner Bros. is going, ‘You got a hit single on your hands. We gotta have that record.’ We said, ‘Wait a minute, we just did that to keep us out there, so that people know we’re still alive.’ But they just kept pressuring, so we jumped right back in without any rest or time to recuperate from the tour, and started recording. We spent 12 days making the album… it was a lot of fun.

In addition to this, two of the original songs were around long before the album was made. “Hang ‘Em High” can trace its roots back to the band’s 1976 bootlegs as “Last Night”, which had the same music but different lyrics. “Cathedral” was played in its current form throughout 1981 with earlier versions going back to 1980. Additionally, “Happy Trails” had been recorded for their 1977 demos.

Side one

Where Have All the Good Times Gone! – 3:02
Hang ‘Em High – 3:28
Cathedral (Instrumental) – 1:20
Secrets – 3:25
Intruder (Instrumental) – 1:39
(Oh) Pretty Woman – 2:53

Side two

Dancing in the Street – 3:43
Little Guitars (Intro) (Instrumental) – 0:42
Little Guitars – 3:47
Big Bad Bill (Is Sweet William Now) – 2:44
The Full Bug – 3:18
Happy Trails – 1:03

Notes
Release: 1982
Format: LP
Genre: Hardrock
Label: Warner Bros. Records
Catalog# WB 57003

Vinyl: Excellent
Cover: Excellent

Prijs: €10,00

Apr

Van Halen – 5150 (1986) (LP) – €10,00

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5150 (pronounced “fifty-one-fifty”) is the seventh studio album by American rock band Van Halen. It was released on March 24, 1986 by Warner Bros. Records and was the first of four albums to be recorded with lead singer Sammy Hagar, who replaced David Lee Roth.
The album was named after Eddie Van Halen’s home studio, 5150, in turn named after a California law enforcement term for a mentally disturbed person (a reference to Section 5150 of the California Welfare and Institutions Code). The album hit number 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.

Van Halen had considerable difficulty finding a replacement for the popular David Lee Roth, until July 1985, when Eddie was referred to former Montrose singer Sammy Hagar by a mechanic working on Eddie’s Lamborghini. The pair hit it off, and the new singer and band immediately began work on new songs. Van Halen went to work on the album in November 1985; it would be finished in February 1986, just one month before its release.

The album 5150 was notable for a number of love songs and ballads, a contrast of the straightforward rock of the original albums. Many called the new incarnation “Van Hagar” (derisively or affectionately). The nickname was so ubiquitous that, as Hagar points out in his book, Warner Bros. asked them to consider renaming the band as such; the Van Halen brothers.

Bolstering criticism was the absence of Ted Templeman, who having produced every previous album for the band, left to helm Roth’s solo Eat ‘Em and Smile. Templeman would return to produce Van Halen’s For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge several years later, for which Andy Johns had originally been tapped. Donn Landee took over producer duties for 5150 after serving as an engineer on previous albums. Foreigner guitarist Mick Jones was also brought in as a producer.

The production on this album was markedly different from their albums with Templeman. The guitar, previously high in the mix and frequently pushed to the left channel (to simulate a “live” sound”), now sat equal in the mix and its overall sound had changed. This may have been Landee’s doing, as he was not a fan of the “live mix”.

Side one

Good Enough – 4:00
Why Can’t This Be Love – 3:45
Get Up – 4:35
Dreams – 4:54
Summer Nights – 5:04

Side two

Best Of Both Worlds – 4:49
Love Walks In – 5:09
“5150” – 5:44
Inside – 5:02

Notes
Release: 1986
Format : LP
Genre: Hard rock
Label: Warner Bros. Records
Catalog# 925394-1

Vinyl: Excellent
Cover: Excellent

Prijs: €10,00

Apr

Van Halen – Van Halen II (LP) (1979) – €10,00

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Van Halen II is the second studio album by American rock band Van Halen. Released on March 23, 1979, it peaked at number six on the Billboard 200 and spawned the singles “Dance the Night Away” and “Beautiful Girls“. Critical reaction to the album has been positive as well, with The Rolling Stone Album Guide praising the “feel-good, party atmosphere” of the songs.

It’s called Van Halen II not just because it’s the band’s second album but because it’s virtually a carbon copy of their 1978 debut, right down to how the band showcases their prowess via covers and how Eddie Van Halen gets a brief, shining moment to showcase his guitar genius. This time, he does his thing on acoustic guitars on the remarkable “Spanish Fly,” but that temporary shift from electrics to acoustics is the only true notable difference in attack here; in every other way, Van Halen II feels like its predecessor, even if there are subtle differences. First, there’s only one cover this time around — Betty Everett‘s “You’re No Good,” surely learned from Linda Ronstadt — and this feels both heavier and lighter than the debut. Heavier in that this sounds big and powerful, driven by mastodon riffs that aim straight of the gut. Lighter in that there’s a nimbleness to the attack, in that there are pop hooks to the best songs, in that the group sounds emboldened by their success so they’re swaggering with a confidence that’s alluring. If the classic ratio is slightly lighter than on the debut, there are no bad songs and the best moments here — two bona fide party anthems in “Dance the Night Away” and “Beautiful Girls,” songs that embody everything the band was about — are lighter, funnier than anything on the debut, showcases for both Diamond Dave‘s knowing shuck and jive and Eddie‘s phenomenal gift, so natural it seems to just flow out of him. At this point, it’s hard not to marvel at these two frontmen, and hard not to be sucked into the vortex of some of the grandest hard rock ever made.

Side one

You’re No Good – 3:16
Dance the Night Away – 3:06
Somebody Get Me a Doctor – 2:52
Bottoms Up! – 3:05
Outta Love Again – 2:51

Side two

Light Up the Sky – 3:13
Spanish Fly (Instrumental) – 1:00
D.O.A. – 4:09
Women in Love… – 4:08
Beautiful Girls – 3:56

Notes
Release: 1979
Format: LP
Genre: Hardrock
Label: Warner Bros. Records
Catalog# WB 56616

Vinyl: Excellent
Cover: Excellent

Prijs: €10,00

Apr

Van Halen – Women And Children First (1980) – €10,00

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Women and Children First is the third studio album by American hard rock band Van Halen, released on March 26, 1980, on Warner Bros. Records. Produced by Ted Templeman and engineered by Donn Landee, it was the first to feature only compositions written by the band, and is described by critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine as “[the] record where the group started to get heavier, both sonically and, to a lesser extent, thematically.”

The opening track, “And the Cradle Will Rock…” begins with what sounds like a guitar, but is, in fact, a phase shifter-effected Wurlitzer electric piano played through Van Halen’s 1960s model 100-watt Marshall Plexi amplifier.

Like its 2 predecessors, Women and Children First was recorded in Hollywood at Sunset Studios, within 2 weeks time. Yet, the album is somewhat different from the band’s first two albums in the way that it features more studio overdubs and less emphasis on backing vocals, partly because two of the songs, In A Simple Rhyme and Take Your Whiskey Home had already been written and recorded in a 1974 Cherokee Studios demo, before Michael Anthony had joined them, albeit both with some differences lyrically and musically. “Could This Be Magic?” contains the only female backing vocal ever recorded for a Van Halen song; Nicolette Larson sings during some of the choruses. The rain sound in the background is not an effect; it was raining outside, and the band decided to record the sound in stereo using two Neumann KM84 microphones, and added it to the track.

The first single from the album was the keyboard-driven “And the Cradle Will Rock…” Although it was not a success like previous singles “Dance the Night Away” or the cover of “You Really Got Me“, the album itself was well-received, went platinum within a year and further entrenched the band as a popular concert draw. The song “Everybody Wants Some!!” was also a concert staple through the 1984 tour, and continued to be played by David Lee Roth after he left Van Halen.

The album contains a track at the end of “In a Simple Rhyme”, a brief instrumental piece entitled “Growth”, which begins at 4:19. While “Growth” faded out on the original vinyl LP and cassette, it was given a cold ending at full volume on the compact disc. At the time the band was toying with the idea of starting what would become their next album, Fair Warning, with a continuation of “Growth”, but this did not occur. “Growth” was a staple of the band’s live shows with Roth and often used as the start of their encores. Several outtakes from these sessions exist, including an unreleased instrumental often referred to as “Act Like It Hurts”, which was the title Eddie Van Halen originally wanted for “Tora! Tora!” “Act Like It Hurts” also provided a riff for “House of Pain”, released on 1984.

“Everybody Wants Some!!” was used in the 1985 comedy Better Off Dead, during a sequence featuring a singing, guitar-playing claymation hamburger. A nod is given to Eddie in the animation, as the hamburger’s guitar sports the Frankenstrat design made famous by him. “Everybody Wants Some!!” is also featured in the 2009 film Zombieland and the 2016 film Everybody Wants Some!! which took its title from the song, according to director Richard Linklater.

In the band’s licensed game, Guitar Hero: Van Halen, four of the nine tracks of this album are available for play: “And the Cradle Will Rock…”, “Everybody Wants Some!!”, “Romeo Delight” and “Loss of Control”.

Side one