How Van Halen managed to sneak profanity onto the radio
When metal was still inventing itself in the 1970s, Van Halen was the gateway drug for most passive rock fans. Although there is a contingency of people who contest that the band were more hard rock than metal, the sheer force behind songs like ‘Ain’t Talkin Bout Love’ and ‘Atomic Punk’ was enough to get the usual hard rock crowd acquainted with heavier fare. While Van Halen may have been lighter than their contemporaries, they weren’t always radio-friendly.
Throughout their first two records, Van Halen had a set formula for most of their approaches to songwriting. Looking to capture the sound of their live show for their debut, most of the album is full of slapdash arrangements of soon-to-be classic songs, making the whole album sound like one big party from beginning to end.
Since the band had virtually no time to write in between the next album cycle, most of Van Halen II comprised songs that dated back to their original demos, resorting to performing a cover of Linda Ronstadt’s ‘You’re No Good’ to open the record. When it came time for a proper follow-up, Van Halen hunkered down and got in touch with their heavy side.
Throughout Women and Children First, Eddie is flying off the handle on every track, creating spellbinding riffs bordering on the sounds of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. While the album didn’t benefit from that much single airplay, one of the few fondly remembered tracks on classic rock radio was ‘Everybody Wants Some!’.
Gaining a reputation as a staple of the group’s live show, the song is far more avant-garde than anything the band had done before, featuring a heavy verse dominated by Alex Van Halen’s drums before the band screams into the chorus. Just because they had new songs to work with didn’t mean they skimped out on the exciting bits in the studio.
When recording the track, David Lee Roth had two vocal takes going simultaneously. The first was for the main vocal, which captured the blown-out sounds of the verses, and the other was used to record the various conversational parts of the track where we can only assume Roth is talking to a lady friend of his.
As the song faded out, though, Roth let a certain four-letter word slip while the tape rolled, being heard saying, “Come on, I’ll pay you for it, what the fuck?” before all of the faders were pulled down. Although the band released the song as a single, the radio never found the hidden swear word on the record.
Since it was buried underneath so much distortion combined with the faders, it became a tidbit for fans to listen for towards the end of the record. While it can be called a screw-up by some, there’s a good chance that Roth overlooked errors like that, thinking that the time to re-record was better spent on stage.
There are even a few unintentional blemishes on the final recording, like when Roth starts the second verse only to forget the words, which come out as complete gibberish for the first half of his phrase. Despite the hangups that certain radio programmers may have had with Roth swearing, it didn’t stop Van Halen from kicking ass and taking names worldwide for the next decade.
