The song that saw Van Halen turn their back on sex and hedonism: “I wanted to get serious”
Sammy Hagar began life obsessed with the folk scene, pining over Bob Dylan’s lyrics and marvelling at the mysticism of Joni Mitchell. Van Halen weren’t quite of that ilk.
Instead, they adhered to the apolitical, all-entertainment Alice Cooper school of thought when the shock rock chicken beheader commented, “I call it treason against rock ‘n’ roll because rock is the antithesis of politics. Rock should never be in bed with politics.”
With that in mind, Van Halen kept things fiercely simple, except when it came to the stunningly show-off musicality. And for a long while, tales of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll kept the group satisfied and scored them a legion of loyal fans. But there comes a time, especially when the mortgage is a thing of the past, where politics refuses to be ignored.
For Van Halen, that moment arose in 1991. The band had a huge following in Europe, and many of their fans were facing great uncertainty ahead as the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. So, in stepped the usual guitar-shredders to serve up a more spiritual sentiment than usual with the song ‘Right Now’.
“I was tired of writing cheap sex songs,” Hagar commented on I Want My MTV. “Eddie and I wanted to get serious and talk about world issues.” While there is an air of Spinal Tap about that notion, the group did indeed dive headfirst into this new line of thought.
The song delved into a sort of quietism that urged fans to try and defy whatever circumstances they found themselves in and strive for joy in the moment. It might have trickled to only 55th in the US charts as a result, but it scratched an itch for greater meaning among the group, and they not only served up a creditable song in the process, but also flourished in the long run.
The raucous disposition would return with greater refinement soon enough, but for a while, ‘Right Now’ completely altered the focus of the band. It was a piece of poetry that Hagar was fiercely proud of, and when it was put to him that the music video should carry a similar ethos, sporting a stream of slogans on safe sex and harmony, he wasn’t happy with the idea that text would distract from his own poignant prose.
As he recalled on Video Killed the Radio Star, “I said, ‘I wrote the best lyric I’ve ever written in Van Halen, I’m trying to upgrade this band’s image with lyrics to where we’re finally not just a party band that can play instruments, and they wanna put words underneath? Why don’t they use the words I wrote? They’re great words. It’s a statement. It’s gonna be confusing!’”
His fears were allayed when plenty of fans reached out with their appreciation for his track and the comforting message therein. As Hagar sang, urging his fans to seek out contentment right now, “One by one, little problems build up, and stand in our way,” but with the right stoicism and optimistic spirit, “[you can] catch your magic moment, Do it right here and now, It means everything.”
Granted, it might not have the same ring as Marcus Aurelius, but it vitally changed the mood in the band.
