Van Halen Donnington 1984

[Rikk]

In many ways it's all been left too long now.

Firstly because so much has been lost but mainly because it's difficult to monetize now and that's always the bottom line. No one buys DVDs any more or expects to pay for any video content really. Maybe enough revenue to pay for a couple of editors to do some work but nothing much to the Van Halen's or Roth. Thinking about it the only time a professionally shot Van Halen show could have been marketed well would have been in that little 1996 window because any other time is either too early or too late?

Still who knows, in my little bubble at least this has been big news online and among some friends including my bass player whose school janitor drove half a dozen 15 year old pupils over 300 miles from Scotland to England in his old van to their first gig - different times.

Maybe the interest from this will lead to more stuff...

Sesh, I'll tell you this...

My wife & daughter just went to bed. I've been sitting in my home theater downstairs, watching this incredible spectacle from my projector. The picture quality ain't 4K or Blu-Ray...but this is still THE SICKEST, MOST AWESOME concert video I've seen in years.

The last time I felt so adrenalized watching concert footage was 2003 when Led Zeppelin released the DVD set of professionally-released footage.

AND THIS HAS THAT SET BEAT.

Everyone always says that Led Zeppelin were the best live rock band ever. And I used to think that was possible. But watching this...the original Van Halen WAS THE BEST LIVE BAND EVER.

THIS FOOTAGE IS FUCKING INCREDIBLE!! I'm getting goosebumps just writing about what I've been watching.

I hope & pray we get a professionally-released film of the original band. I really enjoyed the Dave reunion era...but even that didn't hold a candle to 1978-1984.

IF we never get a proper home video release of the original band, I can accept vids like this leaking. This is STILL 1,000,000 times more exciting than anything we've watched before. I've watched the US Festival and South American vids 1,000,000 times. I've watched the audience-shot Montreal '84 more times than I can count. But watching the band THIS up-close and this "on fire," this is like nothing I've ever seen.

DID YOU NOTICE HOW HAPPY THEY ALL LOOK ON THAT STAGE? We all know what's going to go down in just a few months. But they were still so great at this point, they couldn't fake how good they still were.

And I'm a sucker for the 1984 album. I know it's not many fans' favorite...I know so many fans prefer the debut. But 1984 was my first Van Halen album. I got it when I was eight years old. To see the classic line-up playing material from that album and the rest of the six-pack...

...and these close-up shots of the band kicking ass on-stage...

THIS IS TRULY THE HOLY GRAIL. I still have to pinch myself watching it.

It's nice to be reminded of why I cherish this band so much.

(Let's hope there's more leaked footage to come our way in the months to come... Largo '84, let's go.)

[Silexxx]

https://mega.nz/file/2QYAXLCS#ouqyBO...UEd-yydpFQDB3w

Here's another one. 2.4 gb and higher quality than YT.

[Von Halen]

I would love to speculate on what the band could release from this...but no band treats their fans worse than Van Halen. I wouldn't expect we'll ever see anything. Wolfgang was practically bragging that fans shouldn't hold their breath for any new releases of anything from the archives. (I hate that guy now.)

I have said Van Halen is the worst band to their fans, for many many years now.

I hate that fat fucker too. He is so jealous of Van Halen and Van Halen fan. His lame fucking music will be long forgotten, and CVH will still be standing the test of time. I bet this release pisses him off so bad, because more poeple are interested in this 39 years after the fact, than are interested in his garbage in the present.

[Vinnie Velvet]

I have said Van Halen is the worst band to their fans, for many many years now.

I hate that fat fucker too. He is so jealous of Van Halen and Van Halen fan. His lame fucking music will be long forgotten, and CVH will still be standing the test of time. I bet this release pisses him off so bad, because more poeple are interested in this 39 years after the fact, than are interested in his garbage in the present.

Not to mention the video footage has dwarfed the recent Van Hagar remasters announcement.

Cause there's only one MIGHTY VAN HALEN!

[Kristy]

Now that's a fucking Van Halen concert!! Hell yeah!

Watched this yesterday in full. Apart from the shitty sound this was VH at its peak.

[Nickdfresh]

I'd kill for the Soundboard/Mixing Desk audio...

[Kristy]

Everyone always says that Led Zeppelin were the best live rock band ever.

Nobody says that.

[Rikk]

I'd kill for the Soundboard/Mixing Desk audio...

I doubt we'll ever hear it...

[Rikk]

There's a slate on this footage. It was planned to be sync'd with something...probably a multi-track audio. Could be a Nagra.

This was clearly sync'd to the long-circulating audience-boot audio that's been circulating for years. If you listen closely, you can even hear the little "gap" sound between each song, indicating that this was originally taken from a CD source (changing track numbers).

Considering practically every second of this film has been properly sync'd to the audience boot, someone clearly put A LOT OF WORK into this before leaking it.

[Rikk]

Well...AC/DC's screen-vid HAS leaked. That means VH's must be out there somewhere. Maybe it'll leak at some point.

[Seshmeister]

https://mega.nz/file/2QYAXLCS#ouqyBO...UEd-yydpFQDB3w

Here's another one. 2.4 gb and higher quality than YT.

Coincidence?

[Nickdfresh]

I doubt we'll ever hear it...

Sadly you may be right. But there have been SB recordings from that venue that have surfaced. Def Leopard and Aerosmith have both had live material bootlegged or officially released from those shows, but they were both after 1984.

And incidents like that sound tech who kept cassettes of the VH live in London shows in 1978 that surfaced after his death, when his father found them in his attic going through his stuff give me some hope...

[Nickdfresh]

Another recent link claiming better sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J23OliBag5w

[Rikk]

Another recent link claiming better sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J23OliBag5w

The sound IS a bit better...but now it's slightly out of sync. Damn.

[twonabomber]

The second YouTube has now been deleted and says "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by ELiteWorksaAteBay." Who the fuck is ELiteWorksaAteBay? Googling that brings up an eBay store.

[Seshmeister]

I think the current internet theory based on some evidence is that this is a collector/dealer who bought the tape from Noel Monk's estate. He had been selling it to private collectors and one of them decided it should be made public either because he is just a fan and thought that after 39 fucking years we deserved to see it or because the sale had been made under the terms of it being exclusive and then then found out he had been conned because it was being sold to multiple people.

I've seen some sheepish fans on social media say that the guy who put this into the public domain should be outed so he can be punished by Van Halen lawyers and I couldn't disagree more.

39 years they have done nothing with this or anything else - footage of a public event in front of 65 000 people. Plus presumably Noel Monk's estate got a little bit of cash for it and maybe he could have been treated a bit better by VH Inc back in the day. Who knows but he did help generate an huge amount of money for WB especially and tens of millions for the band members.

[Rikk]

The second YouTube has now been deleted and says "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by ELiteWorksaAteBay." Who the fuck is ELiteWorksaAteBay? Googling that brings up an eBay store.

This concert was apparently being sold on DVD on eBay a short time ago from a seller. Kind of ridiculous that he's claiming some kind of exclusivity for footage he cannot remotely claim to legally own.

[Von Halen]

This concert was apparently being sold on DVD on eBay a short time ago from a seller. Kind of ridiculous that he's claiming some kind of exclusivity for footage he cannot remotely claim to legally own.

If he bought it from the Noel Monk estate, he may actually "own" it.

Fuck these hoarders though. RELEASE it all!

[Rikk]

If he bought it from the Noel Monk estate, he may actually "own" it.

Fuck these hoarders though. RELEASE it all!

Seriously. I mean, I'm excited as shit by this footage...

...but the LARGO '84 show is, to me, another true HOLY GRAIL.

Monk owned that. Release it!

[Von Halen]

Seriously. I mean, I'm excited as shit by this footage...

...but the LARGO '84 show is, to me, another true HOLY GRAIL.

Monk owned that. Release it!

Or the US Festival. Or the South America shows. RELEASE them all!

[Seshmeister]

If he bought it from the Noel Monk estate, he may actually "own" it.

That would need to be a court looking back at the original contracts but I doubt Monk would have paid for it out of his own pocket which would mean it was either owned by the band or the record company or jointly since Monk would be using band money as their agent. Since Van Halen by all accounts signed a terrible 'Motown' style 1970s record contract IMHO chances are there will be a clause that gives ownership to the record company.

[Von Halen]

I might agree, but this was a public auction. You think WB didn't know what stuff Monk's estate was selling? If they owned that, they'd have claimed it. Same with Al or Fatgang.

[Seshmeister]

I might agree, but this was a public auction. You think WB didn't know what stuff Monk's estate was selling? If they owned that, they'd have claimed it. Same with Al or Fatgang.

I could totally imagine them all missing this. They will all know now though when it's all over the Classic Rock site(s) and you have Neil Schone tweeting the end of the video @ Yoko Bertinelli.

[Seshmeister]

[Terry]

I think the current internet theory based on some evidence is that this is a collector/dealer who bought the tape from Noel Monk's estate. He had been selling it to private collectors and one of them decided it should be made public either because he is just a fan and thought that after 39 fucking years we deserved to see it or because the sale had been made under the terms of it being exclusive and then then found out he had been conned because it was being sold to multiple people.

I've seen some sheepish fans on social media say that the guy who put this into the public domain should be outed so he can be punished by Van Halen lawyers and I couldn't disagree more.

39 years they have done nothing with this or anything else - footage of a public event in front of 65 000 people. Plus presumably Noel Monk's estate got a little bit of cash for it and maybe he could have been treated a bit better by VH Inc back in the day. Who knows but he did help generate an huge amount of money for WB especially and tens of millions for the band members.

I understand bands (and obviously record companies) want to get paid for their work.

With Van Halen, I've basically had a "fuck 'em" attitude toward when the bootlegs surfaced, in that - as you say - the band have done ziltch over the years with the live Roth stuff...yet the band put out...what...3 live video releases with Hagar and a live album with Hagar?

I'd a been happy to pay over $100 a decade back for a multi-disc live CVH set. Wouldn't have been upset in the least with shows such as Donnington in terms of the quality of the footage or audio.

Now - again, as you say - it's too late for a dvd format release. The Van Halens waited too long and that technology has passed them by. If bootleggers wanna upload the stuff online and I get to watch it for free, I'll feel about as bad as I did during the late 1990s through 2010 or so when I was trading for boots of 1982 Largo or 1981 Memphis or 1983 Argentina, which is to say I won't feel bad in the least.

I don't even blame Ed's kid for this stuff not being out there for sale, because this stuff should have been out there for sale before the kid was even in the band.

It was cool to see the Donnington show beyond that previously circulated HFT clip.

[Seshmeister]

Van Halen are that rarest of things a band that signed a shitty record contract who were so successful they still made(and have) tens of millions of $ in the bank.

One of the reasons for this is they just happened to be lucky enough to have their albums all bought twice because they were in the sweet spot when CDs came out so tbh I have zero worries about the tiny loss of income to them that this release hypothetically costs them. It's their fault not mine that they made and continue to make so many bad decisions about how to sell their work.

This is the equivalent of taking something you spot sitting in the garbage can of your super rich neighbor.

[Nickdfresh]

Didn't Monk get them out of their initial contract (that was to be a permanent recurring one) by "throwing sand in their eyes" and throwing WB off so they missed the deadline resigning the contract?

[Von Halen]

Didn't Monk get them out of their initial contract (that was to be a permanent recurring one) by "throwing sand in their eyes" and throwing WB off so they missed the deadline resigning the contract?

Not sure if it was Monk, but that did happen.

[Terry]

Van Halen are that rarest of things a band that signed a shitty record contract who were so successful they still made(and have) tens of millions of $ in the bank.

One of the reasons for this is they just happened to be lucky enough to have their albums all bought twice because they were in the sweet spot when CDs came out so tbh I have zero worries about the tiny loss of income to them that this release hypothetically costs them. It's their fault not mine that they made and continue to make so many bad decisions about how to sell their work.

This is the equivalent of taking something you spot sitting in the garbage can of your super rich neighbor.

Particularly with the Roth stuff, where I purchased all that stuff on both vinyl and cassette in the 1980s, then repurchased it all again in the 1990s on cd.

At this point it was cool just to have the concert made available to watch simply to...you know, watch it. Before stuff like this degrades and is lost forever. Frankly, I don't care about what Eddie would have wanted or what his wishes were re: people seeing/hearing this stuff.

That's one aspect of boots I've always liked, in that despite the varying degrees of quality sound-wise you get a truthful representation of a live show rather than a show that has been fiddled with and overdubbed post-performance.

[Silexxx]

Someone made a "multicam" edit with the BBC footage of HOF.

[Vinnie Velvet]

Someone made a "multicam" edit with the BBC footage of HOF.

Wow thats great.

[Seshmeister]

At this point it was cool just to have the concert made available to watch simply to...you know, watch it. Before stuff like this degrades and is lost forever. Frankly, I don't care about what Eddie would have wanted or what his wishes were re: people seeing/hearing this stuff.

That's one aspect of boots I've always liked, in that despite the varying degrees of quality sound-wise you get a truthful representation of a live show rather than a show that has been fiddled with and overdubbed post-performance.

If you were just listening to this as an audio bootleg you would think that Eddie's lead up to the solo in 'On Fire' (12:40) was a bit sloppy and slightly below his usual level. Watching it you get to see he was playing it one handed while frantically signalling probably to get the drums louder through the monitor. It's not an impossible bit of guitar playing but it's pretty cool given the open E and he's probably rarely if ever played it that way before. He then goes straight from that to playing the solo absolutely perfectly while in his head he will still be processing the conversation wondering if he was understood and maybe even thinking about whether Roth just put his strapped up knee out because he just hobbled across him. Oh and did I mention knowing that the 130 000 eyes are now all staring at him because it's a guitar bit?

This is the difference between a total pro and all those people that can post a good take of the solo on YouTube sitting in their bedroom...it's an order of magnitude.

[Seshmeister]

Someone made a "multicam" edit with the BBC footage of HOF.

The BBC footage was always so fucking annoying because either the cameraman had fallen sudden and madly in love with Michael Antony or he somehow managed to mistake him for the lead guitarist. I had forgotten about the huge number of bottles the crowd were throwing at each other, the ones that landed on stage were probably accidental misses aimed at someone else.

[Vinnie Velvet]

If you were just listening to this as an audio bootleg you would think that Eddie's lead up to the solo in 'On Fire' (12:40) was a bit sloppy and slightly below his usual level. Watching it you get to see he was playing it one handed while frantically signalling probably to get the drums louder through the monitor. It's not an impossible bit of guitar playing but it's pretty cool given the open E and he's probably rarely if ever played it that way before. He then goes straight from that to playing the solo absolutely perfectly while in his head he will still be processing the conversation wondering if he was understood and maybe even thinking about whether Roth just put his strapped up knee out because he just hobbled across him. Oh and did I mention knowing that the 130 000 eyes are now all staring at him because it's a guitar bit?

This is the difference between a total pro and all those people that can post a good take of the solo on YouTube sitting in their bedroom...it's an order of magnitude.

It showcases that Ed and the rest of the band really paid their dues and perfected their chops playing clubs and backyard parties for years before areans.

[Terry]

If you were just listening to this as an audio bootleg you would think that Eddie's lead up to the solo in 'On Fire' (12:40) was a bit sloppy and slightly below his usual level. Watching it you get to see he was playing it one handed while frantically signalling probably to get the drums louder through the monitor. It's not an impossible bit of guitar playing but it's pretty cool given the open E and he's probably rarely if ever played it that way before. He then goes straight from that to playing the solo absolutely perfectly while in his head he will still be processing the conversation wondering if he was understood and maybe even thinking about whether Roth just put his strapped up knee out because he just hobbled across him. Oh and did I mention knowing that the 130 000 eyes are now all staring at him because it's a guitar bit?

This is the difference between a total pro and all those people that can post a good take of the solo on YouTube sitting in their bedroom...it's an order of magnitude.

You wonder how many of these bedroom youtuber guitarists would even be able to avoid shitting themselves in front of 130,000 in a live situation when you've got that one shot at getting it right vs. sitting in the comfort of their houses recording as many takes as needed to get the perfect one to post online. Never mind the chances these youtubers will ever be able to come up with something of their own worth hearing vs. copying someone else's material.

I caught that On Fire pre-solo bit where Ed's sort of legato hammer fretting the riff while simultaneously signaling offstage to have Al's drums turned up louder in the onstage monitors...he was a total pro, indeed.

[Rikk]

Eddie's lead up to the solo in 'On Fire' (12:40) was a bit sloppy and slightly below his usual level. Watching it you get to see he was playing it one handed while frantically signalling probably to get the drums louder through the monitor. It's not an impossible bit of guitar playing but it's pretty cool given the open E and he's probably rarely if ever played it that way before.

See, this is where having guitar players on the site helps. I play drums and sing...I would never have noticed that.

Edward was truly amazing. (I still maintain that his playing never got technically better after the 1984 era, but maybe guitar players here would know better than me.)

[Seshmeister]

Dunno never listened to it.

[Seshmeister]

I'm exaggerating but only a bit. I pretty much didn't listen to 23 years of his career at all.

Quite a lot of people don't improve a huge amount after a certain point. I now practice mainly to not get worse. I remember reading an interview with Hank Marvin where he said he hadn't improved at all between 1964 and 1989.

It's a bit odd when it's your full time job though. Look at Lars Ulrich.

[Rikk]

I'm exaggerating but only a bit. I pretty much didn't listen to 23 years of his career at all.

I won't lie and claim I didn't listen to Eddie the years after his work on 1984...but not with the same closeness and admiration. I never noticed him truly develop past that. But just from my ears alone (again, I don't play guitar), TOP JIMMY sounds pretty insane compared to some of the stuff off the first album (which was also stunning work).

But after that, Eddie just didn't seem inspired to be a guitar hero to the same degree. I love A DIFFERENT KIND OF TRUTH, but he's still using his same bag o' tricks (even down to the songs themselves).

[Rikk]

It's a bit odd when it's your full time job though. Look at Lars Ulrich.

As a drummer, I can say I agree with you about Lars. He hasn't improved in any way since, at least, ...AND JUSTICE FOR ALL. But I won't buy some people's claims that he is a bad drummer. That's nonsense. He's still creative and plays with dexterity and skill.

He's just no Dave Lombardo...or Nick Menza...or John Bonham, for that matter.