‘Don’t Tell Me (What Love Can Do)’: the track lyrics Van Halen was “sick and tired of”
Every band has to have some sort of balancing act to keep everything together. Even though a group like Van Halen might have their guitarist’ name on the front of the group, it’s hard to keep up a band dynamic if he were constantly telling Michael Anthony how the bass should be played or demanding that his brother, Alex, play a certain groove throughout an entire song. When it comes to words, though, it can be a bit of a different story.
When you think about it, every lyricist speaks for more than themselves whenever they put pen to paper. This is going to be a tune that has the band’s seal of approval for most fans, and if someone like Roger Waters started writing songs about being a fascist dictator when making The Wall, it’s pretty clear why David Gilmour and Nick Mason may have backed off a little bit.
Then again, no one really needed to think too hard when it came to Van Halen’s lyrics. While they were never insipid like the rest of hair metal, their tunes were always a bit more thoughtful than the knuckle-dragging variety of rock fan, especially towards the Sammy Hagar era. Some of the topics did hinge into dad-rock territory, but hearing something that sounds a bit middle-aged is a lot better than dealing with Poison or Motley Crue coming out with a line that’s about predatory behaviour.
But even if ‘The Red Rocker’ wrote all the lyrics, that didn’t mean that it gel with Eddie all the time. The guitarist famously hated every word of ‘Amsterdam’ due to it being one of the most overt stereotypes about he and Alex’s heritage, but when Hagar brought in a song all about believing in yourself and helping someone through a bad time, Eddie demanded he start everything over.
Hagar’s idea wasn’t even that bad, either. For a group that was all about having a good time, hearing of Kurt Cobain’s death and responding to someone in that position could have been a great sign of musical camaraderie for the tune ‘Don’t Tell Me What Love Can Do’, but according to Alex Van Halen, something about Hagar’s approach didn’t sit well with the rest of the group.
His heart was in the right place, but all the talk of coming together wasn’t right for the drummer, saying, “We spent a little more time asking Sammy to rewrite stuff. Like, ‘Don’t Tell Me (What Love Can Do)’ was originally ‘What Love Can Do.’ The whole slant of the song was one of universal love – that it can cure all and fix all, and the planet will be all right. Well, you hear so many people talking about it. I don’t wanna hear it. Show me. I’m sick and tired of people telling me this shit.”
That kind of message might fit in better with the album title Balance by coming after the song ‘Can’t Stop Loving You,’ but it’s also a bit of a cop-out on their part as well. There are far greater nuanced takes on someone struggling with their personal pain, but writing a tribute song to Cobain that sounds like a glorified metal song feels a bit off, considering Cobain famously hated the posturing variety of rock and roll stars.
But that shouldn’t detract from the band’s heart when making the tune. Thousands of people have found themselves in the same frame of mind as Cobain was, and even if only one of them heard this song and found a way out of that darkness, that would be more than enough.
