The one hit Eddie Van Halen wasn’t allowed to release for years
Not everyone can see a hit record the moment it’s played in front of them for the first time. Most people need time to process what they’re listening to, but if Eddie Van Halen had a good idea for a song, he was going to fight tooth and nail with whoever was in the band to get it over the line in the studio.
Then again, Eddie shouldn’t have had too much of a problem when promoting his group. After all, his name was on the sign every single time they made a new record or went out on tour, and while David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar made brilliant records with them, nothing was going to get off the ground unless it had Eddie’s seal of approval. But what Eddie wanted wasn’t always what the radio wanted.
Sure, the band were selling droves ever since their 1978 album came out, but there was no reason for them to think that they were a pop band. Their contemporaries at the time would have been KC and the Sunshine Band, and listening to how Eddie sounded, would anyone have been able to handle him playing along to any disco track?
Even if Eddie had his own niche as a guitar player, he knew there was room to expand when he wrote ‘Jump’. He had already begun working the piano into his work all the way from working on the song ‘And the Cradle Will Rock’ from Women and Children First, but that’s not what Roth wanted. He knew the band was better as a laser-focused hard rock outfit, so there was no reason to throw in the keyboards into everything.
But Eddie stood his ground when it finally came time to release ‘Jump’ on 1984, saying, “I mean, it’s like I’d written ‘Jump’ at least two and a half, three years before it was allowed on the record. It might’ve been not quite that long, but it was at least an album before or two. ’Cause I remember in Fair Warning, I already had ‘Jump’ and then we did Diver Down and then I built my studio and I said, ‘This is going on record whether you like it or not.’”
And for a band like Van Halen, that was bound to be a bit of a gamble. Most people would have been fooled into thinking that some of the keyboard parts on their last albums were nothing but affected guitar parts, but as soon as the needle hit the groove on 1984, hearing the overture track open up sounding like something out of a futuristic sci-fi movie, everyone knew they were in for a swerve.
Even though the band weren’t getting along around this time, you’d hardly hear it in the music. ‘Jump’ may have been their catchy pop single, but ‘Panama’ and ‘Hot For Teacher’ were still insanely fun rockers for the time, and ‘I’ll Wait’ was proof that the band could make the pianos work in a rock context, even if they did happen to steal a bit of it from Michael McDonald in the writing process.
1984 is often looked at as the point of no return where Eddie started to become more in love with keyboards, but the fact that it sold in droves is a good reminder of why every musician should follow their instincts. Some of them might be misguided, but every now and then, a tune comes along that completely turns the world on its head.
