“That was crazy”: The one song Eddie Van Halen sounded better live
Eddie Van Halen was born to play his guitar at every single opportunity.
The fact that he started on drums is almost an afterthought in the grand scheme of things, and even when he was still finding his footing on the fretboard, there was no doubt that he was going to make millions of fans happy once he discovered how tapping worked on some of his signature tunes. Most people couldn’t believe what they were seeing, but Eddie felt that a lot of the stuff that ended up on record only managed to get better when they started to perform the tracks.
Then again, the appeal of a Van Halen show meant a lot of different things to a lot of different band members. The chemistry they had together was second to none every time they performed, but even with guitar’s answer to Bach or Beethoven on one side of the stage, it was almost impossible to ignore the antics David Lee Roth would get up to. It was equal parts spellbinding, electric, and a little bit obnoxious, but Eddie could usually swallow a bit of his pride whenever ‘Diamond Dave’ took the mic.
But when looking at their records, that’s usually where they came alive to a certain degree. Some people would have called the band a one-trick pony if they heard the first two records back to back, but albums like Women and Children First were the first real sign that things were moving in a different direction. They wanted to be up there with the greatest bands of all time, and on Fair Warning, Eddie had a field day showing everyone why he was one of the greatest guitarists in history.
That was the record by and for guitar nerds, but Diver Down held a bit of a different place in Eddie’s heart. He was still proud to have another record under his belt, but since the band were practically rushed into the studio, they didn’t exactly have time to write the kind of record that they wanted. The whole thing feels more like a mixtape than a proper record, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t have some great songs.
‘Secrets’ is one of the few mellow tunes from the Roth era, and their covers of ‘(Oh) Pretty Woman’ and ‘Where Have All the Good Times Gone’ are decent enough, but ‘Hang ‘Em High’ was a bit of a missed opportunity for him. The song sounded great, but there were more than a few moments on the record that made him feel like the song didn’t see the full potential that it should have whenever he started performing it live.
The song itself is already built around the energy of playing live, and Eddie felt that it took a few more months before the song started to feel a lot better onstage than it did in the studio, saying, “That was crazy. It was loose and fun craziness. I play it better every night than I did on record, but who gives a fuck? It has feeling.” But for someone known to be eerily precise, making a song that was a little looser was actually what the band needed.
If you think about it, the whole track is one of the nastiest shuffle grooves that the band had ever built a song around, and while that involves you being on your toes at every single turn, getting a solo out of it is actually a lot more fun than you would expect. In fact, the whole thing feels like a sister song to the track ‘Loss of Control’, complete with the same kind of groove that sounds like Motorhead if they were given a healthy dose of caffeine.
Their limited time in the studio wasn’t going to give them as much to work with once they came up for air, but Eddie seemed to always come alive a lot better onstage anyway. Because if ‘Eruption’ managed to sound better and better every single time they played, what was stopping him from having a song like this become a staple as well?
