The producer Van Halen were forced to fire: “Manipulate the band”
Having a producer in the room during recording is always a double-edged sword. They are usually looking out for everyone’s best interest, but the minute that everyone starts putting in their own two cents about how a song should go, the artist’s intention tends to get neutered along the way. It’s never easy to find that middle ground, but by the time Van Halen started encountering problems with Sammy Hagar, Bruce Fairburn did not help ease the group’s tension.
When looking at their back catalogue, having a good producer at the wheel usually separates the good Van Halen albums from the trainwrecks. Ted Templeman was instrumental in the Roth era of the group by helping them construct their tracks, and even when they first flew solo without Roth, drafting in Hagar as well as Foreigner’s Mick Jones behind the board to work on 5150 is the reason why tunes like ‘Dreams’ work so well.
And by the late 1990s, getting a third party into the mix was needed in the Van Halen camp. Eddie had tried his best to compromise with Hagar on many of the songs on Balance, but no amount of band dysfunction could make that title any less hilarious in hindsight, especially since lyrics like ‘Amsterdam’ were still kept intact.
All they needed was a bit of a break, but once the opportunity to write a song for the movie Twister came up, Hagar started to have problems with Eddie’s dictating of his lyrics. ‘Humans Being’ is still a fine gem from the group’s later career, but when they tried working the same magic on a song called ‘Between Us Two’, things began to fall apart.
For most fans, this tune was bound to be one of ‘Van Hagar’s finest hours, but whereas most people would try to foster that, all Fairburn saw were dollar signs. He had already worked with some of the biggest names in hard rock, like Aerosmith and Kiss, so when we heard he might have a classic on his hands, he sprang into action.
Since Eddie welcomed Fairburn to co-write lyrics, Hagar remembered the band having a falling out when it came time to differentiate songwriting credits, saying, “You have a situation where Eddie is trying to manipulate Bruce, and Bruce is trying to manipulate the band. He thought that by putting a little pressure on me, he could say he co-wrote lyrics to the song, and I’d back him up on his claim. Bruce fought hard on this point and he got fired because of it.”
While they eventually went with Glen Ballard to help fine-tune their songs, the same old issues led to Hagar having enough. Despite leaving the studio to cool out, ‘The Red Rocker’ would be given the musical ‘Dear John’ letter when Eddie called him up to say that his time in the group was over.
And given that Hagar didn’t record much outside of a few songs for a greatest-hits album, ‘Between Us Two’ remains a potential Van Halen masterpiece that never saw the light of day. All the pieces were there to make something classic, but the amount of drama surrounding everything else led to the group going out with a whimper instead of a bang.
