Why Van Hagar Pales In Comparison

[VHscraps]

There was a dip in energy.

They had all aged a bit and got over that youthful desire to shove what they had in your face and basically explode in sound. Listen to especially the first three albums - they are explosive. They are made of pure energy.

But eventually EVH wanted to play keyboards. He wanted to opt out of the gunslinger guitar thing that was just hotting up in the early to mid 80s and would signal this in interviews by saying things like his favourite guitarist was ... they guy who played guitar with Bryan Adams, etc.

Then there was Hagar, who was even older and you could say, set in his ways. He was almost 40 by then, which at the time seemed quite old. The peak of his energy on record was 'Good Rockin' Tonight' with Montrose, recorded in '73. Twelve years later he had been through a whole MOR career, half a dozen albums or so, on Capitol Records.

Then there was the songs. The combination of DLR and EVH worked because they came from different places in terms of what they listened to. DLR used to say that the way he sang - and more important the kind of vocal melodies he came up with - was not like what someone who listened to the same stuff as Ed listened to would come up with. So there was a particular blend of influences that went into the songs.

With Hagar, it was a different blend and he was already pretty middle of the road, so ... bring on the fucking ballads. No surprise there.

It pales cos as an entity it is older and staler and has basically been neutered. So, as much as I can say it is all down to Hagar, it is also just that real vital rock 'n' roll is mostly a young person's game. Young and hungry. And for VH type of high enery music that matters.

By 85-86 that was all in the past.

[Nitro Express]

It could well have been the case where even if Roth had stayed on in 1985 that Van Halen wouldn't have been able to sustain the same level of quality those fist 6 albums had. I'm not sure Ed's synth pop leanings and Roth's showtune leanings would have necessarily meshed well. You look at other even bigger rock acts and see where there was a creative peak followed by a lot of material in later years that didn't quite measure up. The Rolling Stones come to mind. The Who by the time Who Are You rolled around or Led Zeppelin when In Through The Out Door was released were unable to put out albums that didn't have filler on them.

I'd like to think had Roth stayed in 1985 the band could have come up with a few more great albums. But at least the band went out on top.

In the early days Van Halen except for Mike were single guys. You become a different person when you get married and have nice things at home and your curiosity of what’s out there has been satisfied. Dave was worried the marriages would hurt the band’s image and steal the fire. Ed got pissed because Dave didn’t want wives on the road.

[Nitro Express]

Dave likened the Van Hagar backstage to a yacht club. Ha! Ha!

[Nitro Express]

It could well have been the case where even if Roth had stayed on in 1985 that Van Halen wouldn't have been able to sustain the same level of quality those fist 6 albums had. I'm not sure Ed's synth pop leanings and Roth's showtune leanings would have necessarily meshed well. You look at other even bigger rock acts and see where there was a creative peak followed by a lot of material in later years that didn't quite measure up. The Rolling Stones come to mind. The Who by the time Who Are You rolled around or Led Zeppelin when In Through The Out Door was released were unable to put out albums that didn't have filler on them.

I'd like to think had Roth stayed in 1985 the band could have come up with a few more great albums. But at least the band went out on top.

Could you imagine Dave singing Dreams or Love Walks In? Ha! Ha! It would be funny as hell.

[Heater]

Could you imagine Dave singing Dreams or Love Walks In? Ha! Ha! It would be funny as hell.

Thank God Dave stuck with those hard hitting metal songs, Just a Gigolo, California Girls, Goin’ Crazy…..you know, ones that were too heavy for Fair Warning.

[Heater]

I'd like to think had Roth stayed in 1985 the band could have come up with a few more great albums. But at least the band went out on top.[/QUOTE]—Nitro

None of Roth’s solo albums were anything to write home about, fairly cliche, in fact, which makes sense as by the time 1984 rolled around Dave was an absolute cliche himself. Do you really think Ed’s music would’ve been that different if Roth hadn’t walked? Come on.

[Von Halen]

I tend to agree with both of Heater's posts.

[ZahZoo]

Ed's adaptation to Roth's sense of melody and vice-versa would have been different compared to the crap he churned out with Hagar. This is evident in the 2 new songs released on the Best Of record with Dave.

Dave's creative timing signatures and melodic sense are far more technically complex than the simpleton nonsense Hagar writes. That's the difference...

[MasonL]

There was a dip in energy.

They had all aged a bit and got over that youthful desire to shove what they had in your face and basically explode in sound. Listen to especially the first three albums - they are explosive. They are made of pure energy.

But eventually EVH wanted to play keyboards. He wanted to opt out of the gunslinger guitar thing that was just hotting up in the early to mid 80s and would signal this in interviews by saying things like his favourite guitarist was ... they guy who played guitar with Bryan Adams, etc.

Then there was Hagar, who was even older and you could say, set in his ways. He was almost 40 by then, which at the time seemed quite old. The peak of his energy on record was 'Good Rockin' Tonight' with Montrose, recorded in '73. Twelve years later he had been through a whole MOR career, half a dozen albums or so, on Capitol Records.

Then there was the songs. The combination of DLR and EVH worked because they came from different places in terms of what they listened to. DLR used to say that the way he sang - and more important the kind of vocal melodies he came up with - was not like what someone who listened to the same stuff as Ed listened to would come up with. So there was a particular blend of influences that went into the songs.

With Hagar, it was a different blend and he was already pretty middle of the road, so ... bring on the fucking ballads. No surprise there.

It pales cos as an entity it is older and staler and has basically been neutered. So, as much as I can say it is all down to Hagar, it is also just that real vital rock 'n' roll is mostly a young person's game. Young and hungry. And for VH type of high enery music that matters.

By 85-86 that was all in the past.

Good points all around. By the mid-80's Ed was in the state of sit around and listen to the old lady. I still think, however, that his use of keyboards could have resulted in great music with Roth on board. Because Dave never settled down or got married. He was always in tune with the lifestyle of it. Even listening to Jump-there's a lot more bite and edge to that song than the keyboard crap that comes from 5150 and OU812.

[Rikk]

Good one. Glad you finally took the third “k” off your name…..you don’t need it…..some things are quite obvious.

LMAO!! Is that why you think I'm called RIKK?? You obviously eat Special K and see Ks in your sleep. I have a canvas of MLK's "I have a dream" speech in the stairwell leading to my mancave, but you think I'm K because of the KKK?

Whatever floats your boat, weirdo. I need to turn on the heater again.

[Rikk]

Sam lost me when he said he was visited by a group of aliens called The Nine and they downloaded stuff into his mind. I’ve been all over the world including Antarctica. I even camped out in a lava tube for a week. I’ve seen the curve of the earth from the summit of a tall mountain, I’ve been in jungles, I’ve been under the ocean. I’ve been in forrests so thick Sasquatch should be there but he never showed up. Aliens? Never saw any. Reptile people? Nope. But Sam see’s all sorts of things. The freakiest things I’ve ever seen were usually at parties during my mis-spent youth. Ski-resort towns over New Years can get pretty freaky.

NITRO, I truly believe you've seen all of these things. And I also truly believe you've never seen aliens who ended up downloading a number into your brain.

But HAGAR, he seems to see and know a lot of things with little effort. Aliens? Methinks he got hit in the face one too many times during his boxing days, during which he was the best boxer in the world and had 100 million knockouts...

[Rikk]

Ed didn't give Sammy a riff from the other side of the grave... sheesh. Hagar had a brain fart... associated it to Edward and created a convenient reality. Delusion at it's best.

Indeed. Anybody who couldn't bother to call someone up while alive and send them a riff to sing to WOULD NOT then put real effort into appearing beyond the grave to send a riff to someone he knew would do nothing with it...

[Vinnie Velvet]

Good points all around. By the mid-80's Ed was in the state of sit around and listen to the old lady. I still think, however, that his use of keyboards could have resulted in great music with Roth on board. Because Dave never settled down or got married. He was always in tune with the lifestyle of it. Even listening to Jump-there's a lot more bite and edge to that song than the keyboard crap that comes from 5150 and OU812.

Agreed.

They certainly would've continued in that fashion.

However, by 1985 the music that Ed was coming up with for whatever reason lost the fire. And Dave had trouble with it. And he most likely attributed it to the drug and alcohol abuse Ed was into.

Its one thing to socially drink or do blow while on tour its another thing to be boozing all day when a guy like Dave wanted to get going on the new record.

There were several things that led to the collapse of course.

[Rikk]

Thank God Dave stuck with those hard hitting metal songs, Just a Gigolo, California Girls, Goin’ Crazy…..you know, ones that were too heavy for Fair Warning.

Ah, but you're making another mistake, Heatee...most of the honest posters at this site (AND THAT'S ONE THING I LIKE ABOUT THIS SITE COMPARED TO THE LINKS IS THAT PEOPLE TEND TO BE HONEST) do not claim that Dave's solo career was as excellent as the 6-pack...many would say that both parties fucked up big time when they parted.

I personally don't listen to CRAZY FROM THE HEAT very often...I have to be in a special 80s nostalgia mood to put that one on.

I do listen to EAT 'EM AND SMILE a good amount. That was a killer band...great songs. But I'M EASY and THAT'S LIFE (I actually love Sinatra's original...I'm a Sinatra fan, shoot me) are pretty skippable.

But no one has ever played to me a Van Hagar track that rocks as uncompromisingly as SHYBOY. And yeah, make fun of it...but I like GOIN' CRAZY. It's a bit cheesy...but I like it.

Generally, Dave's solo career is the mixed bag that Van Hagar's discography is...but I am honest in at least stating I have still put the Van Hagar records on in some sort of remembrance of Eddie since 2000...

But the Dave solo stuff has..."moments"...I remember telling POJO that SENSIBLE SHOES is maybe my favorite Dave song...ever. I remember waiting for him to laugh at me and he agreed...it's the shit.

There ain't one song like SENSIBLE SHOES in the Van Hagar catalog.

(I remember around October 2020, my wife and I were making dinner...VH was playing on the ol' iTunes...FEELIN' by Van Hagar was playing...my wife was quietly stirring the ground meat in the frying pan when she jerked her head upright and stammered, "Politicians...smoking crack?...what the hell is this idiot singing about? Put on PANAMA or something!!" ...I laughed. I could never have married a woman who actually thought I CAN'T DRIVE 55 was a folk-hero anthem.)

I love YANKEE ROSE, but the production kills it. Eddie knew how to use the keyboard as a bed instrument...it was there to provide the riff and give you something to sing on. Old school VH fans will shit on me...but I consider JUMP and I'LL WAIT just as much classic Van Halen songs as anything else. YANKEE ROSE was ruined by cheesy keyboard overdubs...a guitar song in which the producer chooses to overdub hockey arena keyboard overdubs under the guitar riff to add 80s commercial value. YANKEE ROSE needs a guitar-heavy remix...BUT FUCK YOU IF YOU DON'T THINK YANKEE ROSE IS A GREAT SONG...CUZ IT IS.

David Lee Roth needed Van Halen almost as much as Van Halen needed him.

But if one listens to some of Dave's work with John 5...take a listen to DLR BAND from 1998...I was one of maybe 20,000 people who bought that album. But it is a killer, intense 51-minutes of blues-rock music with zip. That album tore VHIII a new asshole...knocked it out in the first round.

I had a rare listen to VHIII recently...heard the song ONE I WANT. Gary sings, "Black man, he's looking for justice"...I found that pretty disgusting. Is that all black people do? Run around looking for justice? I thought some of them just try and raise a family and live their lives? Most black friends I have certainly mention unequal treatment by cops or years of racism/segregation in this country...but "looking for justice" is not what makes up their sole experience in America...though it would be just if they felt that way. "White man...tryin' to get a tan"...I did an ancestry-test: I am 35% Swedish, 10% Norwegian, 5% Scottish, 35% Armenian, 5% Egyptian, 5% a bunch of stuff...the second-half of stuff won and I don't need a tan. And my wife is Irish, French, German, Scottish, English...she sure needs a tan but doesn't ever mention it or go to tanning salons. I get what Gary is trying to sing, but it's just moronic...for so many reasons. He's making a list of different kinds of "man" and summing up their existence, experience and passion in little two-to-five-word slogans...as if it's somehow innovative and intelligent lyric-writing...and it comes out dumber than even anything Cheesehead ever wrote. And then Gary sings, "Ape man, ain't nobody's uncle..." Seriously, is that what Van Halen lyrics became reduced to? Unsubtle attacks on evolution-theory? Why is this idiot (who sang that awful MORE THAN WORDS song) writing lyrics on a Van Halen album?

I like Whitesnake. I like Def Leppard fine. I even like Mötley Crüe. I outgrew most of this music by my teens and started listening to punk rock. By my late-teens, I outgrew most of the punk rock because I started seeking bands with greater musicianship (but still listen to my old DEAD KENNEDYS records and a few other things). I still drag out my Whitesnake records from the late-70s/early-80s because Blackmore is still my favorite guitar-player (right up there with Eddie and, yes, Ace Frehley...still love him) and I'm addicted to all things in the Deep Purple family tree.

BUT...Van Halen always transcended all this stuff for me. Those six records were on another level. When the lyrics seemed dumb, they were winking. When they didn't seem dumb but just existed, they were LITTLE GUITARS or LOSS OF CONTROL...or sometimes they were just steeped in the blues, like THE FULL BUG or TAKE YOUR WHISKEY HOME... They say Roth didn't write love songs? IN A SIMPLE RHYME is a love song. But there's nothing generic about it.

Dave lost the writing partner who inspired him to write things like LITTLE GUITARS or ROMEO DELIGHT when the band broke up in 1985. Eddie lost the writing partner who had to be driven around in his car with the instrumental blasting from the car speakers until the right lyrics came out. He traded Roth in for a singer who was happy to write the lyrics on the hood of the car sitting in the driveway, in a rush because the "singer" had a plane to catch. That's the difference. I don't think Sammy had the ability to write lyrics like Dave's if he tried. But occasionally, Sammy could write something that at least sounded inspired. Y'know, MARCHING TO MARS is actually not a bad song. The lyrics aren't great but at least they're better than most anything he wrote at 5150 (I may be biased because he wrote that song with Mickey Hart and I'm an unapologetic Dead fan...so is Dave, I believe).

Some people on here claim that Sam never did a damn thing in his life. They've certainly earned that opinion. Me? I think his tequila is damned good...I drank a good amount one night and enjoyed the taste, had a helluva buzz going and then had a pretty weak hangover the next morning (the best booze, in my humble opinion, doesn't lay on the worst hangovers...if you stay pure and stick with one poison). Also, Montrose has a hallowed spot in my 6,000+ CD collection and massive iTunes catalog (I don't like streaming, sorry...I make my own radio station in my home and I also like liner notes). Montrose's debut LP is a pure slab of amazing 70s hard rock, Templeman honing his skills to become the amazing producer he would become for the six-pack half-a-decade later. Hagar sounds young, hungry, inspired...he CANNOT write great lyrics, but the lyrics aren't particularly embarrassing. MAKE IT LAST, ROCK CANDY, BAD MOTOR SCOOTER, ROCK THE NATION (ok, the title of that one makes me cringe) are great hard rock songs. There's a reason Cheesehead still plays these songs all the time in his sets. They really are good. I even think some of the tracks on his first handful of late-70s solo albums are ok...you have to search for them among all the generic hard rock, but there are some good tunes. I even remember some unique Van Morrison cover he does (not a Van Morrison song I remember from one of Van's many 1970s LPs) that I like.

Point is: I've done my research. I live to listen to all kinds of music and find the gems in the dust. Hagar has done things here and there that he has nothing to be embarrassed about. But for the most part, he did most of the pretty-good things he did before he ever walked into 5150.

I will say that LITTLE WHITE LIES, off said MARCHING TO MARS album, is also a pretty good slab of rock/blues...lyrically, he's got nothing to be embarrassed about...those brothers sure screwed him over. And musically, it's a pretty-damn good piece of work...the arrangement, in which the electric guitars keep threatening to crunch and finally do on the last verse...that's some pretty good work. I remember FORD way back in the day admitting that this isn't a bad piece o' work.

Point is, on a Roth site...with Van Halen the most important thing Roth did during his entire career...talking Sam vs. Dave is a tried-and-true conversation that will never die. And I've always veered towards the side that does not pretend everything is so cut-and-dry. I know what I like. I know what's true. I'm not one of those Roth fans who has mp3s of every single radio show Dave did in 2006 and listens to them religiously. I listen to his solo albums, but I don't put them on nearly as often as I put on classic Van Halen (though I listen to SENSIBLE SHOES, SHYBOY, anything off DLR BAND with pretty large regularity). And I take NO SHAME in enjoying Montrose's debut LP. I have the 2nd Montrose LP, but I don't think I've ever listened to it the whole way through...I could be wrong.

I come to Rotharmy because I really enjoy the music conversation...AND because I like a lot of the people who STILL (thank God) post here. Since MAX died, I get a twinge of sadness when I'm at this place because I was so used to knowing he'd be here talking about all things "stellar" and posting some great new recipe... He and I were true friends in real life. I probably logged 500+ hours on the phone with that guy. We were really close back in the day. There's a deep guilt I still live with that I never phoned him those last few weeks of his life...I think he just went faster than I thought he was going to...but in retrospect, I had enough of a warning, and I'm just going to have to live with the guilt of that one. But yeah, we were friends. I talked him through his breaking up with his wife. We talked personal stuff...but we couldn't help ourselves and still spent 60% of those 500+ phone hours talking...music. Including Van Halen.

**AND...anyone making fun of people for still debating Roth vs. Cheesehead here need to REMIND THEMSELVES that they've taken the time to go to a Roth site to criticize people for having said conversation. Which is the bigger waste of time? Having the conversation OR trolling those having the conversation?**

[Rikk]

Ed's adaptation to Roth's sense of melody and vice-versa would have been different compared to the crap he churned out with Hagar. This is evident in the 2 new songs released on the Best Of record with Dave.

Dave's creative timing signatures and melodic sense are far more technically complex than the simpleton nonsense Hagar writes. That's the difference...

What Dave did with ME WISE MAGIC still blows my mind...26 (holy shit!) years later. I remember hearing that song for the first time, thinking, "Ed's music is nothing like the music he wrote on the six-pack. It's way more complex...almost like challenging the singer to come up with anything to sing on this. But somehow, Dave came up with the goods! How the hell did Dave think of these melodies?"

The chorus to ME WISE MAGIC sadly never gets spoken about the way things like PANAMA do (don't get me wrong...PANAMA is amazing). But that ME WISE MAGIC chorus is...all these years later...still stunning! I really wanted them to pull that song out during the reunion years...but even I can see that it would have been a bitch to pull out live. And the masses that came to those Dave/VH tours 2007-2015 were waiting for RUNNIN' WITH THE DEVIL and JUMP, not ME WISE MAGIC.

It's a shame. Imagine how great Van Halen's 1998 album would have been had the brothers' egos not have been so bloody huge in the mid-90s. When VHIII bombed as big as it did, it knocked Ed's ego down a notch or twenty...and he became a chemical mess.