CATALOG CRAWL: VAN HALEN, Part 2 (1981-1984)
The second half of Van Halen's "Roth Era"delivered three albums that doubled as testaments to the mighty battle of willsgoing on behind the scenes for the band's destiny between guitar whiz Eddie VanHalen and frontman David Lee Roth. However, turmoil within a band often createsenough pressure to transform dysfunction into memorable music. That's exactlythe case here as the warfare resulted in an artistically revered fan favoriteand two high-charting albums, both of the high-charters also producingnoteworthy hit singles. This installment of Catalog Crawl takes you throughthat bumpy terrain to point out all the hard-rocking wonders within it...
FAIR WARNING (1981): The dark horse of the catalog and the hardcore fan favorite all at once. It sold slower than the others but it's fiery, full of ideas and a darkness that represented the growing tension between Eddie on one side (who wanted innovation) and the Roth/Templeman team (who wanted hits and live-sounding production, respectively). As a result, music and lyrics went in a grim direction: the coiled, almost fusion-esque "Mean Street" sets the ominous tone, the atmospherically sleazy "Dirty Movies" has a prom princess becoming a porn queen and the ominous, slo-mo funk rock of "Push Comes To Shove" uses romantic breakdown as a metaphor for the fraying band relationships. Even rock radio favorites "Unchained" and "Hear About It Later," wrap hooks and barnstorming riffs around a sense of despair. Only "So This Is Love" has the joyous swagger of old. Despite the omnipresent darkness, it's a killer listen with some of Roth's finest lyrics and vocals - he's as tough as the music here - and Eddie, who snuck in after sessions to do overdubs behind Templeman's back, creates an array of guitar tapestries both melodic and bludgeoning as well as some edgy synth textures.
DIVERDOWN (1982): And here's an album that was a big hit yetremains a subject of debate for the band's fans. Backstory: the label waspressing the band for more commercial fare after Fair Warning, especially when a sleazed-up hard rock cover of"Pretty Woman" cut as a between-albums single became a surprise hit.Thus, Roth and Templeman led the charge in the studio for a quicklythrown-together album that supplemented just four Van Halen originals with fivecovers and three brief instrumentals (two of them intros). Despite its randomconstruction, it's a fun listen that manages to be cohesive thanks to theband's distinctive approach. All the originals are strong stuff, particularlythe rhythmically complex "Little Guitars," the instrumental stuffadds atmosphere and the covers are intriguingly eclectic, including a radicalre-arrangement of "Dancing In The Streets" built on a polyrhythmicsynth/guitar blend and the charming pre-rock pop of "Big Bad Bill," aJudy Garland cover (!) with Van Halen dad Jan contributing some jauntyclarinet. In retrospect, the covers and genre-hopping make this a dry run forRoth's solo career - and that didn't help the Eddie/Roth tension. Forgottengem: "Secrets," a smooth downtempo cruiser silkily crooned by Roth.
1984 (1984): The power imbalance of Diver Down reversed polarity here, with Eddie hosting sessions at his home studio to keep Roth and Templeman on a short leash. Luckily, Eddie's tightly-controlled venture turned out to be the most polished and commercial album of the Roth era. His biggest innovation here is pushing synths to the front of the arrangements on a few tracks and racking up hit singles: exuberant electro-AOR/hard rock hybrid "Jump" took its barrage of hooks to #1 while model obsession ode "I'll Wait" twisted its keyboards in a darkly symphonic way that went top 20. Elsewhere, "Panama" ditched the keyboards to deliver a thrill-a-second rollercoaster of a guitar-driven arrangement that provided another top-20 hit and MTV fave "Hot For Teacher" is like speed metal if it was fun and had hooks, also throwing in cool Gene-Krupa-goes-metal drumming by Alex. Even the album tracks have frills that linger in the memory, like the chiming guitar passages of "Top Jimmy," the strip club-worthy grind that fuels "Drop Dead Legs" and the tension-and-release theatrics of "Girl Gone Bad." The excellent end result couldn't keep ego battles from sinking Van Halen but at least it sent them out on top.
To read Part 1 of Catalog Crawl for Van Halen, click here.