The songs Eddie Van Halen hated playing more than anything
There was no point in trying to tell Eddie Van Halen what to do when he walked into the studio.
He already had a clear idea of what he wanted to do on every single Van Halen record, and even if it would lead into a giant ditch at a few points, it’s not like everyone didn’t trust him to come up with something mind-blowing. But when the band started going too far into mainstream territory, it wasn’t like the guitar slinger wasn’t going to call the rest of the crew out on their bullshit when they started working on their next record.
Because when you look at why the band fell out with both singers, it usually came down to Eddie wanting a different outlook on their music. Sammy Hagar may have been given the cold shoulder the minute that he was told that he couldn’t be in the band anymore, but it didn’t exactly take a rocket scientist to figure out why David Lee Roth wasn’t going to be in the band anymore either.
His larger-than-life personality was bound to get annoying even for the most patient rockstars in the world, and when he started making bids towards being a rock and roll god, there was something about it that was too much of a Vegas act than what Eddie wanted. But if he could tolerate him swirling a sword in the air and spending most of his time in the spotlight soaking in the applause, he drew the line at him trying to change their entire musical direction.
There was no way anything from Crazy From the Heat would end up on a Van Halen record, but it’s not like Roth didn’t try every now and again. He had loads of great ideas for tunes, but there were always going to be moments where the band had to begrudgingly play through whatever cover song he thought they should be playing at any given time.
It’s not like Roth didn’t have a small point, though. ‘You Really Got Me’ made them look hungry right out of the gate, and their take on ‘Big Bad Bill’ from Diver Down was a nice change of pace from what they were used to. But when looking at the way their career was shaping up with Hagar, Eddie said that he would have rather played anything else than go back to the world of covers.
They would still play the occasional cover tune like The Who’s ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ with ‘The Red Rocker’, but Eddie felt that he wanted to be known more for his originals than any of their phoney covers, saying, “Songs like ‘Dancing in the Streets’ would-I hate to say it. It really [pissed] me off because say, Diver Down, that album was half cover tunes. It was Dave and Ted [Templeton]. They were very, their philosophy was sort of if you redo an old hit, you’re halfway there because it’s already been done. And I remember saying, ‘I’d rather bomb with my own shit than make it with somebody else’s.’”
And it’s not like the covers worked all the time. Diver Down may have not been designed to be a mainline Van Halen album by any stretch, but looking at how many cover tunes are on the record, it was clear that they were out of ideas. They had a few great choices in there, but it was starting to look more than a little desperate seeing them playing The Kinks for a second time on ‘Where Have All the Good Times Gone’.
So when Hagar was brought in, it’s no wonder why Eddie felt so re-energised about music all over again. It’s one thing to have fresh blood in the band to work off of, but with Roth gone, that meant that he could finally stop worrying about the rock and roll posturing and focus on the music again.
