As a change from the Hagar shit in the last few months, how about a return to basics...?

I've been doing the strangest thing for the last couple of days, constantly listening to a Van Halen album.

Pretty fucking weird thing for me to say I guess as a Webmaster at wwww.diamonddavidleeroth.com but after 25 years you get to the stage that the songs are so burnt out to you that you know every nuance before it happens.

Van Halen II is a little different because apart from a couple of exceptions it's been largely ignored by Roth recently and as Van Halen I's little brother I've only listened to it a couple of thousand times.



So I'm getting back to playing guitar after 10 years and I agree to play Dance the night away with some old friends in a week or so. Time to dig it out and I'm getting really into it again so here goes with the slightly belated VHII 25th anniversary thread.

In my mind VHII has always been almost like the outakes from VHI. Recorded almost live in two weeks it's as close to sitting a rehearsal room with the band as you are gonna get.



Starting with some whale mating sounds from MA 'You're No good' sets the on the whole pretty laid back tone for the album. I remember in the mid eighties getting really annoyed with a Mad comic spoof of Star Trek IV where Spock says 'Is that whale mating songs?' and Kirk replies 'No it's David Lee Roth singing!'. Ahh to be that mainstream again, I guess...

The album to me has a bit of a vibe that the bands are smokin' a bit throughout. Blistering solo what can I say, shit this is March 1979, the US #1's for the month are "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?", "Tragedy" and "I Will Survive" a spectacular month for wedding DJ's but not for cool music like this.

The second track 'Dance the Night Away is obviously still in Roth's set. It reached #11(from memory) and was the bands first big hit. It follows a simple formula that seems to appeal to the great unwashed of the singles buying public whereby you use the same music for the verse as the chorus, In a way Jump used this trick and other more recent examples would be 'Pink' by Aerosmith or 'Could you be the most beautiful girl in the world' by Prince.

The latter two really make me despair of the people that buy singles but like all pre Hagar Van Halen even though it appears to be a simple catchy tune, there is a lot more going on than some standard pop/rock thing. A tapped harmonic solo, I'm sure someone will correct me but that was the first time I had ever heard that...

Next we have Somebody Get Me A Doctor. This kind of reinforces the VHI lite, songs that never quite made it to Van Halen I offcuts argument since they had been playing it before they got signed but it never made the first album. I tend to skip it because

a) I've heard it a zillion times.

b) I prefer the 1977 version off of boots where the solo is twice the length and fucking genius. I'll never understand why they cut it. Don't get me wrong even on the album version the numerous key changes on the solo make it a classic.

Next up Bottoms Up, another single along with DTNA. Almost a non song it's maybe a bit simplistic for some. I think it's more a live song. I remember an interview with Copeland out of the Police where he said they loved to put 'holes' songs where the audience could fall into and the acappella section in this is one of those. Cool.

Outta Love Again.

This was a real eye opener for me listening to it again. The riff has been ripped off by bands as diverse like Faster Pussycat on their debut album. Again it seems pretty simple but the song writing is tremendous. How many bands would write a pre chorus to a verse like that?

Also after years of misery and lies from Alex Van Halen.

Most of us these days tend to hate the fucker but he does great work on this song. After years of high hat ssssshhhhhhhhhhhhh sounds from 5150 combined with his apparently complete prick of a personality he's easy to hate but most drummers would have gone for something far more basic on this track, particularly for the verse.

Good work grasshopper...

Light up the sky
A real fave amongst a lot of Van Halen fans, incredibly original and a song that only Van Halen could possibly have written. When every band and their brother started ripping them off in the 1980s, they took the superficial shit of ripping up their clothes, having whiz bang tapping guitarists and catchy choruses but NONE of them could ever write a song like this. Another hole for the audience to fall into live, wow solo and the outro makes the hair stand on the back of your neck.

Spanish Fly

Eddie proves he can do 'Eruption' on an acoustic. I always though that this was in response to the review they got on VHI by some critic who said 'Great album apart from the pointless keyboard solo...'

D.O.A.

Another song that didn't make it onto VHI.

To me this song is always about Guiness...

I was in a bar in 1987 and went up to the jukebox not expecting much. It was one of the old style ones with the little arm that lifted the 7" single onto a turntable. I love mechanical shit. Open up your VCR and watch the way it winds the tape around the reading heads. To me that is a million times more amazing than the fact that you can program them and whatever. I digress.



Anyhoo to my astonishment among the Whitney Houston and Boy George there is a little gem there, DOA as a B side of(I think) 'You Really Got Me'. I put it on 5 times and get into a very unsuccessful Guiness drinking competition with some guy in the bar. I lose spectacularly and have never touched the stuff since.

I fucking love the phaser solo, pure Eddie at his best. Contemporary interviews have Ed telling one of his many compulsive lies saying that he made up all his solos including this one on the spot. Why is it identical to what you did 2 years previously Ed? It seems petty to knock him though when he's playing like this...

Women in Love

I have a little clip from 'TV Sweetheart Week' (LOL!) of Eddie playing the intro to this while Val looks on adoringly. 'I never want to end up like my old man' Eddie says to the camera while talking about whether he will have kids. Hmm. I'll post that soon. To this day I don't understand who he gets that sound, maybe Wooda or ZahZoo our tech specialists can help?

The solo is beautifully understated. We have EVH with the world at his feet after their first album as the the hottest new kid on the block and he has the discipline to just trill a few notes because that's what fits.

Tremendous.

We finish up with Beautiful Girls

This used to be the last song on my first ever compilation tape. I recorded it on the same tape recorder that I used to use to load my programs for my Spectrum computer. Everytime I hear this song I expect it to go off key at the end because my shitty $10 recorder used to do that...

Surprisingly Dave played this on his YFLM tour and it was a welcome relief from the worst Roth gig I'd been to which was a huge disappontmet at the time overladen with slow songs and mediocre musicianship. The outro is classic showing the humor of Roth even in those early days 'Hey where are you going'. Self effacing...very cool. Brett Michaels copied him(again) on their debut with a 'I wasn't that bad...?' line on 'Look What the Cat Dragged In.' I only mention it to illustrate the difference between the late 80s hair bands copying and the original.

Sitting listening in the rain in Scotland as a teenager was pretty inspirational. I ended up with a drink in my hand but no toes in the sand...

Please go and listen to VHII again, you will not be disappointed or more importantly bored...

Cheers!