Eddie Van Halen on the album too emotional for fans: “It was over the top”
Not everyone is ready for what their favourite artists have in the can whenever they release a new record. The biggest draw is the mystery of seeing whether they can capture the magic of what they did on their last project, but the real game-changers are the albums that spend years in hibernation and manage to deliver by going in a completely different direction than what a band was known for. And despite most people knowing what to come to a band like Van Halen for, Eddie felt that some songs may not have been released at the right time for people to hear them.
Granted, any group can find themselves on the right side of history but the wrong side of the present. The Velvet Underground were one of the finest alternative rock bands ever to exist despite getting a clubbing by the critics, and even bands like Rush have stood the test of time while having to dodge a million different critiques about how they didn’t fit into the norm during their glory years.
But Van Halen was never that kind of “misunderstood” band. They would have the odd album that didn’t have as many hits on it like Fair Warning, but even those are either considered fan favourites or underrated pieces of their catalogue thanks to the sheer fireworks show that Eddie put into every single guitar part.
While they managed to keep things moving at every turn with both David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar, the 1990s were not all that kind to the group. For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge started everything off on the right foot, but as soon as people finished with Balance, they realised there were some issues in the band that had been festering over the years. Those things might get smoothed over, but once Hagar was out the door and Gary Cherone was brought in, people started to get nervous.
I mean, another singer? Van Halen had already managed to pull off a new singer when they were on a high, but since they had started to fade from relevance in the age of grunge and alternative, bringing in the singer from a hair metal band was already on shaky ground. And as far as transitional albums go, it doesn’t get any more messy than Van Halen III.
“As for the change in direction, I think there were too many different emotions there for some people. It was over the top.”
eddie van halen
The album may have been torn to shreds by both fans and critics, but Eddie figured one of the best parts about the project was his ability to be more emotional than usual, saying, “I’m still very proud of it, just every other record. It’s another child of ours. And it is different. As for the change in direction, I think there were too many different emotions there for some people. It was over the top. This might sound arrogant, and I really hope people won’t take it that way, but I had to play what I felt moved by and enjoyed.”
No one should judge the kind of emotion Eddie put into the record, but considering the bar they set for themselves, this feels like a cheap imitation of Van Halen in some spots. ‘Without You’ might be the closest thing to a good song on the album, but looking at the rest of the project, the amount of bloat and lyrics to songs like ‘One I Want’ should have been a bad omen that things were heading in the wrong direction.
Van Halen III still deserves the right to exist as a document of Eddie’s emotional struggles, but it’s probably for the best that they regrouped to make A Different Kind of Truth with Roth later down the line. Because since Eddie was taken from this world at a relatively young age, having something like Van Halen III as his swan song would have felt unbelievably sad.
