The one Van Halen song they played over 1000 times
The entire appeal of Van Halen always came down to the spectacle of seeing them in the flesh.
It’s one thing to listen to Eddie annihilate every single lick he played on record, but it was almost as if you needed to see what he was doing to truly comprehend the kind of genius on display every time he played. But even with all of the great tunes in their arsenal, sometimes the best ways to get the crowd going are the ones that don’t always need to have the licks that can break your hand.
After all, it’s not like David Lee Roth was claiming to be the best singer in the world whenever he sang. He was simply putting on an act for every crowd that happened to turn up, and as long as there were a lot of people who were shouting at the top of their lungs whenever they tore into ‘Panama’ or ‘Runnin’ With the Devil’, that was fine by him. But it’s not like anything Eddie ever did was exactly easy.
Even when he was playing the most rudimentary things, there was no one else in the world who was going to play them exactly like he did. Tunes like the instrumental ‘316’ are far from the most challenging thing any guitarist can get their hands on, but the beauty comes from how he approaches every single chord. The tone might seem to come from the amps, but it’s really all in his hands.
And that’s why Van Halen’s music sounded so different whenever they covered other people’s material. ‘You Really Got Me’ was the beginning of garage rock that got infused with musical steroids thanks to them, and is there anyone in the world that’s listening to the Linda Ronstadt version of ‘You’re No Good’ that didn’t have their DNA changed the minute that they heard Eddie play through every single line?
Although Eddie was cursed to only play like himself most of the time, that didn’t mean he couldn’t experiment a little bit. He knew that there were ways to make his guitar sound a lot more ratty than it actually was, and after coming out of the beginning of their debut record, ‘Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love’ was the first time they started playing music that was even remotely heavy.
Even though Eddie called it their send-up of punk rock, the joke did have a lot of staying power over the years. Out of all the original Van Halen songs without the drum and bass solos, ‘Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love’ became their only tune to see over 1000 live performances, being performed a whopping 1230 times. Then again, for a song that Eddie didn’t seem to put that much thought into, how come it gets the crown of being one of the most important live staples of their catalogue?
Well, it mainly comes from the fact that it works so well with the crowd atmosphere. Eddie can stretch out when he wants to since the original solo is so easy, but whenever it came time for Roth to start playing up his smooth frontman schtick, the breakdown was also perfect, especially towards the end of the song where you can practically hear the audience in the background screaming ‘HEY-HEY-HEY’ right along with them.
The crowds hadn’t come yet when they first recorded it, but rarely has any band managed to call their shot and actually delivered on it. It’s a tricky thing for any rock act to pull off being the best live show in Los Angeles, but when looking at the rest of West Hollywood, was there really any competition when they gave Eddie a guitar and a spotlight?
