Did Eddie Van Halen illegally record ‘5150’?
There is no doubt that Sammy Hagar saved Van Halen. The Californian group might have been at the forefront of the metal wave of the early 1980s, but the creative and personal schism with original frontman David Lee Roth, which culminated in him acrimoniously departing in 1985, threatened to kill the band off for good.
As they grappled with superstardom and electronic instrumentation fast becoming the mode, the group were on the precipice of a chasm from which they would not return after Roth left. With their backs against the wall, and perhaps in a sign of utter desperation, they even offered pop star Daryl Hall the role of singer, but he turned it down. Things looked utterly bleak for the ‘Jump’ group until a stroke of luck would provide them with a clear route out of the mire.
That year, when still pondering what action to take, the band’s leader and guitarist, Eddie Van Halen, was introduced to former Montrose frontman and hit solo artist Sammy Hagar by their mutual Ferrari mechanic. He’d enjoyed a stellar 12 months, kicked off by 1984’s ‘Can’t Drive 55’, and while his blues-infused hard rock as a solo artist and in Montrose was spiritually and musically distinct from Van Halen’s glittering metal sound, they did share a producer in Ted Templeman.
Hagar admits he was initially unsure about joining Van Halen because of these stylistic differences, with him a completely different frontman from Roth. However, the band’s first rehearsal together quickly dispelled his misgivings. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did, and the group fell about laughing, blown away by their collective sound. They knew it was right. So did Warner Bros president Mo Ostin, who reportedly said, “I smell money” when he heard the music they were working on.
Ostin and the band were correct. Their first album with Hagar, 1986’s 5150, named after Eddie’s home studio, shot to number one on the Billboard 200. The record’s contents were vastly different from what came before, noted for including love songs and ballads, and this, in tandem with the absence of producer Templeman, split the group’s fanbase. This led some to derisively dub the new incarnation ‘Van Hagar’, which resulted in Warner Bros asking them to consider changing their name, which they steadfastly refused.
What most people don’t know about 5150, though, is that half of it was illegally recorded, meaning that their great strife to continue had more significance and that they were never going to give in to fans’ demands because of it. When speaking to MTV Japan in 1986, Eddie revealed: “We actually recorded, or wrote and recorded half the record, before he was legally in the band, because he was contractually still tied to Geffen Records.”
Of the skullduggery, Hagar added: “I snuck down to their house, to Ed’s house. Seriously, we were doing an illegal thing. We were actually working on a record before it was legally supposed to be done.”
Drummer Alex Van Halen explained that David Geffen, the man whose label, Geffen, had released Hagar’s solo work, sensed that something excellent was happening with Van Halen, so he graciously allowed Hagar to leave his contract. He even sent them a bottle of champagne to congratulate the record going to number one. The band would then release four more albums with Hagar, three of which also went to number one. It shows that sometimes, with a bit of grit and determination, even perhaps a bit of illegality, bands can prove fans wrong.
