Not Enough: The one album Eddie Van Halen was always pissed about
Not every band can get it right the first time they walk into the studio. Anyone is normally still fairly green to the recording process when they get shoved behind the glass for the first time, and most artists tend to push themselves as far as they can and hope for the best whenever they play their first tunes. Although anyone would have killed to have had a sound like Van Halen did right out of the gate, Eddie Van Halen was a little bit pissed off that his brother Alex didn’t get as much of the spotlight.
Then again, to say that Van Halen’s debut record is poorly produced is like trying to argue that Freddie Mercury never had a decent vocal performance. For anyone with functional eardrums, this album shattered everyone’s illusions about what rock and roll was supposed to be and made the heavier side of rock sound like a party.
Although many of Van Halen’s heroes included heavier bands like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, their record feels like walking into a seedy bar in West Hollywood and watching the greatest band on the planet play an intimate show. When talking shop about Van Halen II, Eddie thought that their previous record could have used a bit of work.
When discussing the song ‘Outta Love Again’, Eddie remembered thinking that the drums were a lot better this time around, saying, “I really like that song because it makes the drums shine. That kind of pissed me off about the first album, not enough drums, but on this album, there are a lot more spots where the drums and bass are spotlighted, as opposed to the guitar”.
That’s not to say that Ted Templeman did a terrible job producing their first record. If you listen to songs like ‘Runnin’ With the Devil’ and ‘I’m the One,’ the rhythm is half the reason why Eddie’s guitar solos work so well. They usually fit right in the pocket with the riff, and Michael Anthony puts in work on the high side of his four-string.
But be honest: when’s the last time you listened to Van Halen’s first record just to hear the drums? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Alex Van Halen was certainly a monster drummer and could put together the kind of grooves that anyone could fall in love with, but listening to Eddie’s tapping solos felt like comparing the brightness of a streetlight to the sun.
Fortunately, the rest of the Roth-era of the band saw them getting a lot tighter with the arrangements. Women and Children First had the fantastic drum showcase ‘Tora Tora’, and the minute that you listen to ‘Hot For Teacher’, no one really cared what Eddie was doing for the first few minutes once they heard Alex start that tribal groove that sounded closer to a car engine revving up.
Granted, some of those production issues did turn up on later albums, making it almost impossible to hear the bass on the lion’s share of the Hagar-led albums and rendering most of the parts almost inaudible by the time they got to work on A Different Kind of Truth. A band like Van Halen didn’t really need to worry about production value when they had someone like Eddie in their ranks, but the more time they spent with Roth, the more they hunkered down their ability to create a sound smorgasbord on every track.
