The upside/downside comparison of Van Halen’s April 1981 album Fair Warning can probably explain why it is easily the band’s most overlooked effort in the original David Lee Roth era. Pro: Fair Warning is the most Eddie Van Halen-dominated album until the mega-hit 1984. Con: as AllMusic.com‘s Stephen Thomas Erlewine nails it, “Fair Warning was the first Van Halen album that doesn’t feel like a party.” Pro: three of the best rockers the band ever did are on Fair Warning, “Unchained”, “Hear About It Later”, and the woulda-coulda-shoulda been big “So This is Love?”. Con: those are the only three songs most people can recall from the album. Pro: Fair Warning sold over two million copies, a feat any band today would kill for. Con: at only a little more than two million sold, Fair Warning by comparison was Van Halen’s slowest seller from the original foursome.
Even my guest with Eddie, drummer Alex Van Halen, says regretfully, “I watched while Eddie suffered relentlessy through making that album”, as apparently the pace and Guinness Book-level hedonism of those first four albums and tours were leaving the song tank near empty. Eddie and Alex both weigh in on Fair Warning‘s forty-fifth anniversary. –Redbeard
UNITED STATES – JANUARY 01: Photo of VAN HALEN and Michael ANTHONY and Eddie VAN HALEN and David Lee ROTH and Alex VAN HALEN; Posed group portrait backstage L-R Michael Anthony, Eddie Van Halen, David Lee Roth and Alex Van Halen (Photo by Richard E. Aaron/Redferns)
“To be honest with you, I was NOT interested in jumping into a band,” Sammy Hagar confided to me In the Studio, recalling the circumstances which led to him joining America’s most popular hard rock band then, Van Halen, for their March 1986 release 5150. “I had just gotten to where I’d wanted to be (with the VOA multi-platinum sales and sold-out tour) …When Dave (Roth) left, I’d told my wife at the time, ‘They’re probably going to call me up and ask me to join the band’. And I swear it wasn’t two weeks later, they did.”
In 1985, the shock of David Lee Roth’s announcement that he was leaving the lead singer slot of America’s most popular band, Van Halen, was equaled (but not eclipsed, interestingly) by the band’s announcement that multi-platinum rocker Sammy Hagar had agreed to fill the role. How did that musical merger happen? Why did Hagar, already a platinum-selling solo artist, even consider it? What were the risks/rewards for both? Find out In The Studio in my classic rock interview about 5150 with the late Eddie Van Halen, Alex Van Halen, original bass player/backing singer Michael Anthony, and the Red Rocker himself for their bold multi-million seller, which rapidly rose to the top-selling album in the US because of “Good Enough”, “Hot Summer Nights”,”Why Can’t This Be Love?”,”Best of Both Both Worlds”, and two songs that the original Van Halen could never have pulled off, “Dreams” and “Love Walks In”.
Ever since Eddie Van Halen passed away in October 2020 after fighting cancer for many years, I have been asked by media and fans alike about what Eddie was really like off stage. The answers are revealed here in these incredibly revealing series of interviews from brother Alex, from original Van Halen bass player/singer Michael Anthony, powerfully and honestly from Sammy Hagar, and from Eddie Van Halen himself. (Special thanks to Tommy Nast for additional interview audio). –Redbeard
It always seemed that the Van Halen 1980 third album Women and Children First suffered from “middle child syndrome”. The first and last albums of the original band, the twin pillars of the 1978 debut Van Halen and then blockbuster 1984, have always garnered so much attention, and deservedly so, that we have tended to ignore Women and Children First and its successor, Fair Warning, as career flyover states. And that muted album cover for Women and Children First probably didn’t help matters any, either. Six years later, Bon Jovi would do better for packaging Slippery When Wet with a Hefty trash bag and a spray bottle of water.
My guests in this classic rock interview are original band members singer David Lee Roth, bass player/harmony singer Michael Anthony, drummer Alex Van Halen, and fretmeister Eddie Van Halen reminding of us of a time at the dawn of the Eighties when Van Halen was establishing itself as America’s premiere hard rock band with songs “And the Cradle Will Rock” and “Everybody Wants Some!”. But the pace of almost constant touring, stopping only long enough to make another album, plus the band’s notorious hedonism, were starting to kill the buzz. –Redbeard
The quintessential American hard rock band Van Halen’s 1978 debut probably guaranteed their election to the Rock ‘n’Roll Hall of Fame on the first ballot, quickly becoming a benchmark for every hard rock band ever since. Six years later they even topped that with 1984 , one of the most popular and influential albums ever. Every one of the four Van Halen albums in between, II released in March 1979, Women and Children First, Fair Warning, and Diver Down would all sell a million-plus and chart Top 6 on Billboard album sales.
Yet by Diver Down‘s April 1982 release, Van Halen had become a series of contradictions, and at one point actually eclipsed Pink Floyd as the longest-running soap opera in rock. Original members Eddie Van Halen and Alex Van Halen, David Lee Roth, and original (now former) member Michael Anthony dish on the opposing forces inside and outside of the band during those years. –Redbeard
To this day I remember waking up on New Years Day 1984, flipping on the TV to watch the Rose Bowl football game from Pasadena CA, and whenever the network took a break, they were already playing a brand new Van Halen song, “Jump”, from a new album 1984. That’s how mainstream Van Halen had become.
To truly comprehend just how massively popular this album was, it helps if you actually write it out numerically: more than 12,000,000 copies of Van Halen’s sixth album, 1984, were sold in the U.S. alone in the four decades since it was released. Propelled by Van Halen’s very first #1 hit “Jump”, three million of those were sold in America in the first ninety days! Already America’s most popular hard rock band prior to its release, 1984 propelled the Pasadena quartet of innovative guitar whiz Eddie Van Halen, drummer brother Alex, bass player and unmistakable harmony singer Michael Anthony, and showman extraordinaire David Lee Roth into the stratosphere of rock’s elite with additional songs “Panama”, “I’ll Wait”, “Drop Dead Legs”,” Top Jimmy”, and the video which made even MTV blush, “Hot for Teacher”.ut as any high-flying throttle jockey can attest, the view from the top is exhilarating, but the dizzying height is disorienting and there’s no air up there to breathe. Like water on pavement, celebrity seeks out every crack and crevice in a relationship, and when relations turn from chilly to frosty, the cracks can quickly expand into chasms. The 1984 album and subsequent sold-out tour closed that chapter on the original band, with the Van Halen story becoming a never-ending soap opera that was constantly controversial.
While the facts contained in this interview remain true and accurate over time, the opinions expressed here by Eddie, Alex, and Michael clearly are a snapshot of just one of the many seasons in this saga, at a time before David Lee Roth was invited back into Van Halen, as well as before Michael Anthony was dismissed and Eddie Van Halen would perish from throat cancer.- Redbeard
The list of the most popular debut albums in rock history is a real head-turner, but towering like a giant redwood more than forty-five years after its February 1978 release remains the first Van Halen album. Not since the debut by Montrose five years earlier (interestingly produced by the same veteran sonic sorcerer, Ted Templeman) had hard rock been written, played, and captured this hot, including “Runnin’ with the Devil”, “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love”, “Jamie’s Cryin’”, “Ice Cream Man”, and a scorching cover of The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me”.
The four original members of Van Halen, guitarist/songwriter Eddie Van Halen, big brother drummer Alex Van Halen, lead singer/lyricist David Lee Roth, and ex-bass player/backing vocalist Michael Anthony are all unanimous in their recollections of their unaided efforts before signing their record deal and releasing that now-legendary debut, Van Halen, in February 1978. Just like countless other bands before and since, for five lean years the band members papered fliers on every public blank space from Pasadena California to Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, promoting themselves for untold scores of club gigs while humping their own equipment. But once Warner Bros label president Mo Ostin and A&R head Ted Templeman signed Van Halen and recorded their first album, that all changed. Apparently there was an unprecedented commitment from the label to this untried baby band, a belief that Van Halen was going to break big right out of the box. The first indication of this appeared a full three months prior to the full album’s February 1978 release when Warner Bros distributed one of the coolest, most memorable promotional records ever to U.S. rock radio stations: a four song sampler of “Runnin’ With the Devil”, the band’s electrifying cover of The Kinks’ “Eruption/You Really Got Me”, “Jamie’s Cryin’ “, and an obscure blues song, “Ice Cream Man” in a shiny black 12″ sleeve. This new Van Halen sampler was pressed on bright red vinyl, with a label on one side only of the classic Warner Bros film studio’s Looney Tunes cartoon logo with Elmer Fudd!
Then when the full Van Halen album followed in February 1978, the band rejected the standard record industry practice of skimping on debut album cover photography and artwork (labels had always made the bands pay for the album cover designs out of their production budgets, which is why so many first albums have such lackluster eye appeal). Instead Van Halen’s first volley looks way big time, sleek and sassy with pro photography and effects. Inside, Ted Templeman’s crisp production announced that a new world class hard rock band had arrived. With more than ten million in U.S. sales, it would be another five albums and six years before Van Halen would equal that hard rock benchmark with1984. Eddie Van Halen was very much like Albert Einstein in that both were so all consumed by their respective interests that they would literally forget to eat, sleeping in their clothes. “I made those first four Van Halen albums in that same blue shirt,” Eddie once told me here In the Studio . Eddie did not talk that much about making music, but rather was totally action-oriented. So rather than the Muhammad Ali of music, Eddie Van Halen was the Jerry Rice of rock, simply outperforming everybody while changing the course of his field of endeavor by raising the bar to a new height to which others could only aspire. The reporters all shoved microphones in the faces of prodigal peacock David Lee Roth and later the feisty Sammy Hagar for colorful quotes , but the name of this band is Van Halen, and with all due respect it ain’t because Alex is such a great drummer, OK? Sure, Joe Montana deservedly got all the press conferences and photos, but when you looked for the guy who actually crossed the goal line with the football and put up six points standing in the end zone, it was Jerry Rice. So when history writes the story of the greatest American rock band of the last half century, it won’t be because of Sam or Dave. It was Eddie Van Halen. Just look at that grin! – Redbeard
Warning: NSFW and rated “R” for language, not suitable for minors.
For Van Halen For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge , we present an ultra-rare “fly on the wall” listen to the biggest hard rock band in America over three decades ago unwinding after a historic free concert in the streets of downtown Dallas in December 1991. The late Eddie Van Halen, brother Alex, Michael Anthony, and Sammy Hagar had the #1-selling album on the Billboard chart containing “Poundcake”,”Judgment Day, “Runaround”, “Right Now”, and “Top of the World” when we had this lively conversation. Thanks to Lee Palmer for the inspiration to share it for the first time.
For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge , Van Halen’s ninth studio album, also won a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance. The last twenty minutes of the interview are all four Van Halen band members then captured about an hour after making rock history with a FREE pop up concert in the streets of downtown Dallas on the afternoon of December 4, 1991, a long-promised “make up date” for their 1988 Cotton Bowl performance when singer Sammy Hagar had been plagued with throat problems and vowed to redeem himself. Check out that legendary Dallas free concert here including my jacked stage introduction!
This complete classic rock interview with all four members of Van Halen has never been heard, & it is now quite historic with the departure of Sammy Hagar about five years later, & the passing of Eddie Van Halen in 2020.-Redbeard
The upside/downside comparison of Van Halen’s April 1981 album Fair Warning can probably explain why it is easily the band’s most overlooked effort in the original David Lee Roth era. Pro: Fair Warning is the most Eddie Van Halen-dominated album until the mega-hit 1984. Con: as AllMusic.com‘s Stephen Thomas Erlewine nails it, “Fair Warning was the first Van Halen album that doesn’t feel like a party.” Pro: three of the best rockers the band ever did are on Fair Warning, “Unchained”, “Hear About It Later”, and the woulda-coulda-shoulda been big “So This is Love?”. Con: those are the only three songs most people can recall from the album. Pro: Fair Warning sold over two million copies, a feat any band today would kill for. Con: at only a little more than two million sold, Fair Warning by comparison was Van Halen’s slowest seller from the original foursome.
