“True to what I am”: Eddie Van Halen on the most authentic Van Halen album
Most Van Halen albums weren’t going to come out unless they had Eddie Van Halen’s seal of approval. Even if one album sounded nothing like the next, it all made sense so long as it had Eddie behind the keys or pulling out the greatest tapping licks that he could think of. Despite his fingerprints being all over his catalogue, the guitar maestro felt that only one of the band’s albums captured the most accurate version of what he heard in his head.
Because even in a band named after the guitarist, there comes a point where everyone needs to compromise. As much as Eddie could write endless amounts of great guitar riffs, David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar helped transform them into songs rather than spending time jamming for minutes on end and hoping that the magic would strike.
Despite that breeding tension, that’s normally why both iterations of the group sounded so different. Roth had the showmanship of three different frontmen at his disposal, but when listening to Hagar’s songs like ‘Right Now’, they started to get much more thoughtful with their lyrics and realised that there was more to life than strictly writing about sex and drugs.
Even around the time that Roth was in the band, though, it was never easy for Eddie to get a handle on things. The first two Van Halen albums were still pieces of what they would be playing at their live shows, but listening back to Women and Children First, they had finally found the muscle they had been missing for so many years, complete with songs that edge closer towards Black Sabbath than their signature party-band image.
Since Roth was more interested in pop-oriented music, he was firmly checked out when Eddie started working on Fair Warning. But even if they had one token classic with ‘Unchained’, the majority of the album features some of Eddie’s most imaginative playing, whether that’s hearing him playing his guitar like a drum on ‘Mean Street’ or working out his chops on the keyboard on ‘Sunday Afternoon in the Park’.
Even though Eddie was strongarmed into making a more pop-centric album later on Diver Down, he still felt Fair Warning was the most authentic version of the band, saying, “Fair Warning’s lack of commercial success prompted Diver Down. But to me, Fair Warning was more true to what I am and what I believe Van Halen is. We’re a hard rock band, and we were an album band. I was not a pop guy, even though I have good sense of how to write a pop song.”
Looking at where Eddie would go from there, 1984 felt like the kind of miracle that should have never turned out as good as it was. He and Roth had finally reached a breaking point, and even though Eddie planted the flag for keyboards on ‘Jump’, the fact that the album still managed to get people grooving to ‘Hot For Teacher’ and ‘Panama’ left all the other hair metal bands in the dust.
Fair Warning might not get those same accolades, but it’s still revered by any guitar fan who wants to hear the more zany side of what Van Halen was all about. It was never destined to be a pop darling, but even outside the charts, no one could ignore a song like ‘Mean Street’ if they tried.
