The Van Halen album Eddie Van Halen didn’t enjoy making: “I wasn’t happy”
It’s easy to assume that almost anything having to do with Van Halen usually circles back to Eddie Van Halen. He may not have dictated how every song was supposed to go, but if you didn’t have his riffs anchoring down everything or his solos to light the crowd on fire, why even bother listening in the first place? Anyone can feel insecure next to someone like Eddie, but he remembered hating working on Fair Warning once everyone left him high and dry.
Considering their insane work schedule, maybe taking a break was exactly what the band needed. No one gets to make one of the biggest debut albums of all time and suddenly take their foot off the gas, so their label pushed them into the studio for only a few weeks after they came off the tour before starting the whole thing over again throughout the early 1980s.
Most bands would crack under that pressure, but when you have a riff machine like Eddie, it’s hardly an issue. Compared to some of the also-rans on Van Halen II, Women and Children First felt like one of the first major statements they made after their debut, bringing in a lot more grit this time around with the heaviest riffs of their career. Once Fair Warning happened, Eddie came up for air and found no one to work with.
Although the band was certainly around to be there to lay down the tracks, the pressure had gotten to be a little too much for Eddie. Suddenly, it was now about writing the most commercial single, and songs like ‘Push Comes To Shove’ didn’t sit well with him, thinking that they were cashing in on the reggae trends going on at the same time.
According to Eddie, no one was paying attention to the raw sonics of the record, telling Guitar World, “I was starting to get more involved. I wasn’t very happy with the way things were going or the way people were approaching the whole recording process. I would sneak back into the studio at 4 am with Don Landee, the engineer, and completely re-record all the solos and overdubs the way I wanted them. The fucked-up thing was no one even noticed. That’s how uninvolved they were on a musical level.”
Even when working on some minute details, Eddie still couldn’t catch a break. When recording one of the guitar solos for the record, he recalled slaving away all day only to come back after a few hours and play everything the same way he did before, recalling, “On the whole album, I was angry, frustrated and loose.”
Considering this is what the “loose” version of Van Halen sounds like, maybe they should have done it a little more often. While there aren’t many songs with as much commercial potential as something like ‘Unchained’, half of the record is the most experimental material they ever committed to tape, including the wild solo in the middle of ‘Sinner’s Swing’ and the beautiful chordal work on ‘Hear About It Later’.
Fair Warning doesn’t get nearly the same amount of praise as the debut or even the amount of radio airplay as 1984, but it’s probably the closest you can see inside Eddie’s head. It’s a bit scatterbrained at times, and it might not all make sense, but there are also more than a few moments of genius sprinkled throughout every track.
