Van Halen redefined hard rock with their self-titled debut album
Contrary to popular belief, ‘Eruption’ was not the first time that most listeners had their minds blown by Van Halen. It might have been the biggest shock: two minutes of mostly guitar solos featuring blistering fast techniques that completely revolutionised hard rock. But it wasn’t the first time that audiences fell in love with Van Halen. After all, the band’s 1978 debut strategically places ‘Eruption’ as the album’s second track. There’s a little bit of introduction that is necessary before going gaga over Eddie Van Halen.
No, most audiences were riveted to Van Halen the second that a blaring car horn transmogrifies into Michael Anthony’s thumbing bassline in ‘Runnin’ With the Devil’. In a track that doesn’t even feature Eddie’s iconic tapping technique, Van Halen asserts themselves and everything that they’re about in just under four minutes’ time. Everything that makes Van Halen great can be found on the first song from their first album (again, minus the tapping).
Eddie Van Halen might have become beloved as a flashy lead guitarist, but his role also involved holding down the foundation with riffs and rhythm parts. He’s always locked in with his brother, drummer Alex Van Halen, providing a forward momentum during the verses and ecstatic explosion during the choruses. Anthony keeps his bass parts basic, but his real contributions come during those choruses. Providing the soaring backing harmonies that helped add a pop feel to their gritty edge, Anthony was to be Van Halen’s secret weapon for three decades. Just listen to those high tones in ‘Jamie’s Cryin’ and ‘I’m the One’ – Van Halen was never the same without Anthony’s iconic voice rounding out those pristine harmonies.
And then there was David Lee Roth. “Diamond Dave” (or just “David Roth”, as he’s credited on the original release) spends no time beating around the bush. On ‘Runnin’ With the Devil’, Roth screams, squeals, shrieks, and unleashes a torrent of nonsense that would become part of his signature vocal style. But at its core, Roth’s vocals are dripping with lust and fun. Roth was as much informed by vaudeville as he was by Led Zeppelin, and his persona perfectly toed the line between sex symbol, rock god, and cartoon character.
While they would become known for their flamboyance and excess, Van Halen are nothing but a lean, mean, and finely-tuned hard rock machine on Van Halen. Featuring the best of their material curated at their endless gigs throughout Los Angeles clubs, the band’s debut had very little in the way of fat or filler. Eleven songs and 35 minutes later, it’s easy to see why just about every kid who liked Deep Purple or Peter Frampton had a new obsession when Van Halen came onto the scene.
The sheer number of classic canonical hard rock standards on Van Halen is astounding: ‘Runnin’ With the Devil’, ‘Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love’, ‘I’m the One’, and ‘Jamie’s Cryin’ are all songs that still get spins on classic rock radio stations around the world. And those are just the songs that appear on the first half of the album. After ‘Jamie’s Cryin’ kicks off side B, Van Halen unleashes five of their most underrated and fiery tracks. The band were never close to heavy metal than they were busting out the incendiary riffs to ‘Atomic Punk’ and ‘On Fire’.
They didn’t even need to play their own material to carve out their signature sound. Both of the covers on Van Halen became instant classics in their repertoire: The Kinks’ ‘You Really Got Me’ was reshaped around Eddie’s wild guitar moves, while ‘Ice Cream Man’ helped establish Roth’s lovable ne’er-do-well scamp image. While Van Halen and Roth are busy trying to upstage each other, Anthony and Van Halen keep everything speeding ahead while staying firmly rooted within the groove. Alex Van Halen’s triumphant gallop can be heard in ‘I’m the One’, but his jazzy swing can be equally felt in a song like ‘Little Dreamer’.
The elder Van Halen was still a few years away from his own iconic drum performance on ‘Hot For Teacher’, but his fills throughout Van Halen helped establish him as one of rock’s most innovative timekeepers. The intro to ‘Jamie’s Cryin’ is instantly identifiable (just ask Ton Loc, who borrowed it for his major hit ‘Wild Thing), while his fills throughout ‘Feel Your Love Tonight’ and ‘On Fire’ come straight from the John Bonham school of powerhouse drumming.
Of course, it all inevitably comes back to the push and pull between Eddie Van Halen’s guitar and Roth’s exuberant vocals. While their combative partnership would become infamous, Van Halen and Roth are nothing but symbiotic throughout the 11 tracks of Van Halen. While they could very easily fight for sonic space within each song, Van Halen and Roth instead push each other to greater heights in a non-stop game of good-natured one-upmanship.
As the 1970s began to wind down, hard rock was looking for direction. The 1980s were destined to be glitzier and shinier than the hairy hippiedom of the ’70s. Beards, love beads, and 20-minute solos were out. Keyboards were right on the horizon. Hard rock needed a makeover, and almost in unison, rock bands decided that Van Halen was the group of the future. By 1984, if you didn’t have a shredding lead guitarist and a singer capable of hitting the upper stratosphere with his voice, you were beyond passé. Van Halen were kings, and everyone else was playing catch up.
But Van Halen represents something different: something grittier and more dangerous than the mainstream rock act that Van Halen would become. Closer to true heavy metal than hair metal, Van Halen took hard rock by the balls and forced it to see the future. There’s no gloss or futuristic sounds on Van Halen: it’s pure, hard-edged rock and roll music that sounds better and better the more you realise how simple it truly is. In terms of no-frills hard rock music with no gimmicks, it’s almost impossible to do any better than Van Halen’s legendary debut.
