The producer Eddie Van Halen was scared to work with: “He made me kind of nervous”
It’s easy for most artists to get an oversized head after they’ve had one too many hits under their belt. After all, the music speaks for itself half the time they go into the studio, but even if Van Halen had sold the highest amount of records that anyone could hope to sell, Eddie wasn’t prone to getting a little bit nervous when standing on the other side of the glass.
Granted, it’s not like Eddie ever played guitar lines that weren’t up to his usual standard. He had locked in a signature sound with his guitar that no one could ever copy, and even on some of the band’s lesser records, he was still finding new ways to work out melodies on his instrument, whether that was beating the hell out of his guitar or making a song that didn’t have a clear structure to it.
That was normally where people like David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar came in. Sure, Eddie had the basic skeletons of the songs half the time, but both ‘Diamond Dave’ and ‘The Red Rocker’ were the ones responsible for turning them into actual songs. That was all well and good, but by the time that 1984 rolled around, Eddie was done taking orders from people and had a much clearer idea of what he wanted. He needed to express himself, and no one would get in the way of that.
When Hagar came into the picture, though, Eddie managed to become a bit more democratic as the years went by. Not everything that he played needed to be the biggest face-melting guitar solo by any stretch, and even when reconnecting with their old producer Ted Templeman on For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, there was a sense of everyone working together to make sure every single track sounded fantastic.
Right as they went into the next record, Balance, Bruce Fairbairn was a much different kind of producer. He was one to crack that whip more than a few times, and if he had zero tolerance for when legends like Aerosmith screwed around behind the scenes, he wasn’t about to let Van Halen off the hook when they started to slip up.
Fairbairn only wanted to make the best record he could, but that involved Eddie getting more than a little bit spooked when he walked into the studio, saying, “He kinda makes you look at your own music from a different perspective. Also, the fact that he made me kind of nervous playing around him, which was good. It puts a fire under your ass and makes you want to try and impress him and do a little better.”
Even though the process worked, it didn’t exactly soothe the tension in the band, either. No matter how good the band came off during the album rollout, this was the record that broke Eddie and Hagar’s creative relationship, which probably wasn’t helped but Fairbairn getting on their ass about every single note that they played and whether or not they could make some songs sound just a little bit better.
But considering this is the same person who had legendary producer Bob Rock as a protege, it’s not surprising that he wasn’t one to suffer fools. Any album involves a lot of work and putting you nose to the grindstone, and there’s no point in trying to make a record if there isn’t someone willing to push you a little bit.
