Why Van Hagar Pales In Comparison

[Rikk]

Do you really think Ed’s music would’ve been that different if Roth hadn’t walked? Come on.

I do sincerely think that the album 5150 wouldn't have musically been THAT different. I think Dave would've rejected a couple of things...but for the most part, it would have been the same music.

The problem was what was chosen to sing on it. GET UP would have been a stunner had Dave been around for it.

The argument made here by many of us, Heater, is that the six-pack was where it's at. I don't just blame Ed for the band being over after that. I think Dave's ego was so enormous that he went and did a really stupid thing: he left the band. He should've stuck around.

Some fans knock 1984 for the new sounds on it. I love it...it was my first VH album. I was eight-years-old. I love that through all the new sounds Ed was producing, he and Dave worked at it and found a meeting place and made a brilliant album.

Dave made a ton of mistakes after he left the band...he DID become a self-parody.

But I listen to ME WISE MAGIC and think, wow...that's the sound. They did it. It took 12 years...but they did it.

And A DIFFERENT KIND OF TRUTH, I don't listen to it the way I listen to newer albums by some vintage acts and sort of pretend to like it because I'm nostalgic. I genuinely love A DIFFERENT KIND OF TRUTH. In fact, it's not my 7th-favorite VH album. It's probably my 4th or 5th-favorite VH album. I listen to STAY FROSTY, OUTTA SPACE, BEATS WORKIN', SHE'S THE WOMAN, CHINA TOWN, YOU AND YOUR BLUES, BULLETHEAD, HONEYBABYSWEETIEDOLL, BIG RIVER, BLOOD AND FIRE and genuinely enjoy them the same way I enjoy those early albums. No irony. No apology. No pretending.

And anytime idiots like Eddie Trunk try and whine that so much of the music on that album is "old songs," I wonder just how much these people know anything about the band's history. They were recycling old riffs and music on all of those albums...even the Sammy ones. TAKE ME BACK from BALANCE is based on a pre-1978 piece of music Ed had tried with Dave. Point is, I don't care. It's Van Halen. It's a new (well, it WAS new in 2012) Van Halen album. Most of Dave's lyrics are new. And I like them. Yes, he needed them to make an album like that. And they needed him.

[Rikk]

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.

And now I'll agree with Vinnie and almost contradict my earlier argument. YES...another reason for the band's downfall was Ed just coming up with some stuff that lost the fire.

Ain't nobody gonna tell me that SUCKER IN A 3-PIECE is a band truly inspired. That song is a...jam...at best. I'm sure they had a ton of stuff like that just sitting in the vault during the Dave years. But they clearly didn't release stuff this uninspired during those years. There's nothing memorable in that thing. I've heard it enough times over the past decades...and it's one of those rare Van Halen songs that I could not sing back to you the riff or anything Hagar is singing unless I went to listen to it again. It's completely unmemorable. How that did not end up an outtake is unreal.

I'm also a huge LITTLE FEAT fan. Great, great band. Musicianship unrivaled. But their cover of APOLITICAL BLUES is truly unmemorable. They lost any of the danger that's in the original song and sounded like a poor bar band. How did that thing get released?

None of us can know for sure...it's possible Dave would have heard the music for SUCKER IN A 3-PIECE and turned it into something great. We'll never know. But I listen to songs like CAN'T STOP LOVIN' YOU or MAN ON A MISSION and am just plain shocked that this ever left the recording studio onto a real album. It's really generic, boring stuff.

[Nitro Express]

I never cared for Steve Vai’s tone much. On the Dave albums it sounds like an 80’s video game. But it kinda goes with the cartoonish songs and videos. I listen to that early solo Dave stuff for a good laugh. Yankee Rose and Going Crazy are funny songs. Vai’s video game tone works.

[Nitro Express]

Rock and Roll is sonic junk food.

[Vinnie Velvet]

I do sincerely think that the album 5150 wouldn't have musically been THAT different. I think Dave would've rejected a couple of things...but for the most part, it would have been the same music.

The problem was what was chosen to sing on it. GET UP would have been a stunner had Dave been around for it.

Ok I agree. But let's be honest, Ed on 5150 is for the most part lazy.

What was he doing on Get Up?
I just went on youtube and listened to it as it had been years since I last heard it.

Its not even a riff and that standard finger tapping solo. It sounded more of a parody of Eddie than actually him. Throw in Hagar and his lame attempt to put together lyrics under a faster tempo song and its so bad. Like really bad.

[Rikk]

Ok I agree. But let's be honest, Ed on 5150 is for the most part lazy.

What was he doing on Get Up?
I just went on youtube and listened to it as it had been years since I last heard it.

Its not even a riff and that standard finger tapping solo. It sounded more of a parody of Eddie than actually him. Throw in Hagar and his lame attempt to put together lyrics under a faster tempo song and its so bad. Like really bad.

I'll give you that: GET UP is nothing particularly original.

But that's not the one that I think is particularly shameful...GOOD ENOUGH is the one I think is really derivative. It's just a bad hard rock riff...any idiot could sing something on it. And did!

Again, Dave could've taken that and done something great with it.

Think about it: PANAMA is great because Dave came up with great stuff on it. Without the vocals, hooks & melodies, PANAMA could've sounded like a lot of 80s hard rock. There's a reason it's timeless...

[Seshmeister]

Yup it's all about the vocal melodies especially in a band where the music was usually being written first.

Roth would have made Get Up and Good Enough way better. Then you have a few Foreigner songs for the housewives and total shit like Inside. The biggest Van Hagar album 5150 massively overachieved it's pretty mediocre and if it hadn't been coming off 1984 and a wave of people wanting to play guitar like Eddie Van Halen it would have sold a fraction of what it did.

Every Van Hagar album sold fewer than the previous one and it was all a massive decline from 1984.

[Rikk]

Every Van Hagar album sold fewer than the previous one and it was all a massive decline from 1984.

I cannot believe this does not get pointed out enough. IT'S FUCKING TRUE, INNIT?? Every single Van Hagar album sold less than the predecessor. There's a good reason for that.

And while I've been admitting that I've listened to ALL Van Halen since Eddie died, one album I have NOT put on is that fucking FOR UNLAWFUL CARNAL KNOWLEDGE. That is the album that is the absolute pits, in my opinion. That album actually got put into the Sheep Pen at one point (an album, not a poster!). Eddie is positively sleepwalking on this one. The riffs, the solos...everything is mid-paced and boring. No imagination.

Christ, even BALANCE and the dreaded VH III had better guitar-playing on them than F.U.C.K. did...and they fucking sucked.

[Nitro Express]

Ok I agree. But let's be honest, Ed on 5150 is for the most part lazy.

What was he doing on Get Up?
I just went on youtube and listened to it as it had been years since I last heard it.

Its not even a riff and that standard finger tapping solo. It sounded more of a parody of Eddie than actually him. Throw in Hagar and his lame attempt to put together lyrics under a faster tempo song and its so bad. Like really bad.

Hellooooo Baybeeeeee! Rrrrow Rrrrrow Weeee Weeee Weeee Dah Dah Da Da Da Wee Wee

[Nitro Express]

If you could turn cheese, glitter and anal lube into sound it would be Van Hagar.

[Nitro Express]

Hi. I’m Sammy Hagar and I was the lead singer in Van Halen. Alex has a stick up his ass. It’s all his fault why I can’t attention whore while riding on an Eddie Van Halen tribute float pimping my booze brands.

[Nitro Express]

I don’t know who’s more lame. Sammy Hagar or his fans. I doubt there’s anyone in the audience who weighs under 200 pounds. Just a fat mass of smelly human chowder full of artery clogging Sammy chow and ethanol from a dirty Mexican distillery ran by cartel owned slaves.

[Nitro Express]

Sammy is so proud all his shit comes from a third world narco state ran by thugs. Nothing runs in Mexico without a shakedown. Buy Hagar crap you fund gangsters.

[Nitro Express]

The biggest gangster being Sammy himself. He won’t shoot you but he will kill you or at least make you seriously ill with stuff he calls his music. It might even cause some to develop homosexual fantasies. The dude must have escaped from a government lab.

[MasonL]

Ok I agree. But let's be honest, Ed on 5150 is for the most part lazy.

What was he doing on Get Up?
I just went on youtube and listened to it as it had been years since I last heard it.

Its not even a riff and that standard finger tapping solo. It sounded more of a parody of Eddie than actually him. Throw in Hagar and his lame attempt to put together lyrics under a faster tempo song and its so bad. Like really bad.

Hagar would have had no clue what to do on stuff like I'm The One, Sinner's Swing, As Is, or Hot for Teacher. No clue whatsoever. They would've turned out like Source of Infection, one of the worst songs ever written. Just screeching over the music and ruining what good is left from Ed's guitar playing.

Just goes to show how important those melodies. I can't stand when people say "it's all about Eddie anyways, it doesn't matter who's singing." Uh, yes it does. Inspired melodies like Panama make that song timeless compared to a generic, can't even hum it to you off the top of my head vocal like Good Enough. And from then on in the Spam era, it was generic, uninspired, made to sell garbage. FUCK is so bland.