“My personal favourite”: The best album Sammy Hagar ever made with Van Halen
It’s hard to talk about anything that Sammy Hagar ever did without bringing up his time in Van Halen.
He has had some of the greatest hits that any musician could ask for in his solo career, but even after being one of the best solo acts of the 1980s, chances are he will always be remembered for stepping into the shoes of David Lee Roth when Van Halen decided to break things off with him after 1984. That move could have easily been a death sentence, but ‘The Red Rocker’ wasn’t looking to be a ‘Diamond Dave’ clone. He wanted to leave his mark on things, and so began the greatest second act in the history of rock music.
While Hagar’s time with the band can still be divisive for everyone who preferred to hear Roth’s voice on those classic songs, they were willing to do everything they could to make songs that would leave their old era in the dust. You have to remember that Roth had an extremely limited vocal range, and having Eddie’s riffs next to someone who could belt like Hagar could mean that they were going to become an entirely different group when they came out with songs like ‘Summer Nights’.
But even though 5150 was a roaring success, there was still a lot more ground to cover. Hagar wanted to have the chance to truly collaborate with Eddie, and since most of the riffs that the guitarist had lying around were still from the Roth era, OU812 should have been the moment where they hit the nail on the head. That is, as long as they had the right producer guiding them towards what they wanted.
Since no one ended up showing up to produce the thing, though, ‘Van Hagar’ needed a lot more to work with, and when looking at their third record, it felt like everything clicked for the first time in a while. For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge definitely had a lot more ballads than some fans were used to, but even if ‘Right Now’ was one of their biggest songs, it never suffered from the millions of times it was played on the radio.
And looking back on his time with the band, Hagar always considered For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge to be his definitive Van Halen record, saying, “I think For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge is the best record, that’s my personal favourite. The only problem with that record was that we were a little bit lazy – we had so much success, and we were having such a good time. So the reason that record took so long was mainly because of that, but it was a great record in the end.” But as much as people loved the ballads, the band didn’t forget about bringing the muscle on the record.
‘Judgement Day’ is still one of the heaviest tunes that they made during the Hagar years, and while some of the lyrics are a little bit questionable, it didn’t matter so long as the riffs were still great. Considering every other song is about exactly what the title implies, this is definitely the horniest record that Hagar ever made with the band, but it turned out they may have been having a little too much fun.
Because by the time they got to Balance, all of the fun seemed to be officially over. The band weren’t on the best of terms when putting the record together, and since Hagar ended up leaving the band hanging and recording his vocals somewhere else, it’s not like they were communicating properly, especially when Eddie found out about the song ‘Amsterdam’ well after the fact.
But that was a long way away from then, and for as long as For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge is, it’s still a good time from back to front. There are many more songs on their later albums that you can pretty much skip, but this is one of the few records in their catalogue where listing out your favourites indirectly means listing almost half of the record.
