Eddie Van Halen on the only Van Halen songs that sounded right: “I did most of the work myself”
It’s practically a curse for artists not to get their songs perfect in the studio. Even if they think everything comes alive the minute they take the stage and start jamming, it’s a very different animal when all you have to reflect your music is four walls and a piece of glass with a producer guiding everything along. Although Van Halen usually didn’t need anything too extravagant to sound massive, Eddie had been chasing what Van Halen was supposed to sound like for ages.
When looking at their best work, it didn’t get much better than when they were recorded live off the floor. Their debut album was based around capturing their live set, and since Ted Templeman did very few overdubs on the record, chances are that he knew what gold he had on his hands and wanted to make sure that everyone did their best to give their finest performances.
Going through the Roth era, though, there are moments where things can get sloppy. As much as Fair Warning is any guitar nerd’s dream, it’s also marred by a few production screwups and a lack of attention from the rest of the band. And even if Eddie had more say in the matter with Sammy Hagar in the group, that didn’t mean everything was all sunshine and rainbows when they got back.
5150 and For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge may be fantastic records from back to front, but there are also a few moments where they suffer from a bit of bloat. A record like Balance is already insanely spotty in terms of quality, but while that could have worked as a passable entry in their catalogue, the fact that it went on for over an hour is a good indication of how flabby their tunes sounded.
While Van Halen III is still one of the most egregious examples of Eddie doing whatever he wanted, he did find a spark of creativity when working with Hagar again. The Roth reunion had gone to shit before it properly got off the ground, but listening to songs like ‘Learning to See’, Eddie knew that his band was being done justice now that there was no one to hold him down in the studio.
Being mostly self-produced, Eddie remembered everything coming together a lot better than before, saying, “Throughout my career, I’ve relied on someone else to record my sound, and I can’t say I’ve ever been really happy with the end result. I never really understood why no one could capture the sounds I made on tape, but I never complained. But on those three songs, I did most of the work myself, and I think I got pretty close.”
Then again, there are still some blemishes that are hard to ignore. No band is perfect, and even if the songs sound fantastic, it was clear that Eddie was still finding his feet with Hagar when putting the tunes together, especially with a song like ‘Up For Breakfast’ sounding like a far cry from the heavy tunes that they were used to putting out.
Still, it’s better to have new Eddie material out in the world than to keep them locked away in the vaults. And if this is the only version of the band with Eddie’s production, this is probably the closest we’re ever going to get to see what the inside of the guitar maestro’s mind actually sounded like.
