The classic song Van Halen made up on the spot: “The best parts of our music”
The fact that the David Lee Roth era of Van Halen pumped out as much material as they did feels impossible. Even though there are definitely some records that don’t stack up as well as others, the run between their debut and 1984 would be a towering achievement for any rock band, let alone one that had been touring nonstop in between albums. While Women and Children First seemed to be the most fleshed-out album of their early years, Roth admitted that little to no time was put into ‘Everybody Wants Some’.
Compared to every other Van Halen release, their third outing feels the most indebted to heavy metal. Despite people who complain that Van Halen doesn’t belong in that cultural conversation, those days opening up for Black Sabbath must have paid off with Eddie, whose riffs on ‘And the Cradle Will Rock’ and the segue ‘Tora Tora’ are absolutely ferocious.
Before Roth even comes in, though, ‘Everybody Wants Some’ sounds like it’s being played by rock giants. The production had gone up a notch, and their heroes seemed to be people like Lemmy Kilmister and Tony Iommi much more than they were Jim Dandy of Black Oak Arkansas.
As for the song’s construction, Roth admitted that half of the track was made up on the spot, telling Musician, “All the best parts of our music are just made up on the spot. The reason there’s so much pressure that makes us produce so well is we wait until the last minute…This song is full of that fast, impromptu, off-the-wall lyrics. And that’s definitely an attitude of ‘Everybody Wants Some.’”
You can really tell that they didn’t put much thought into it, either. That’s not to say that the song is bad by any means–in fact, it might be one of the songs of the Roth era. It’s more about the presentation, with Roth sounding like he’s singing the first thing that pops into his head half the time. There is even one line in the track that he completely screws up, and yet no one bothered to actually fix it because the attitude was there.
If anything, that kind of mentality might be closer to punk than anything else. Considering they were putting a lot more attitude into their sound on tracks like ‘Loss of Control’, hearing a song that’s nothing but pure rock and roll debauchery is exactly what you want to hear from a group of guys who spent the last few years conquering the world.
That’s not to say that the instrumentation isn’t clean. Eddie always seemed to be incapable of playing a wrong note in the studio, even on a good day, and while his solo is far from the flashiest thing he had ever played, hearing him bounce off Roth half the time is a thing of beauty once they lock in on a groove.
Regardless of whether or not the group put that much thought into the song, ‘Everybody Wants Some’ seems more like a reminder from Van Halen to their fans. They had been gone for a little while, and this was the wake-up call for the party to start all over again once this song came on.
