So it's Vegas again...

[Nitro Express]

Van Halen III was just an ego trip. I still find it hard to believe Warner Brothers released that album in the state it was in. It was almost as if nobody at the record label had the fortitude to tell Ed that the songs needed work and the mix sounded substandard.

The Van Hagar era was a bit of a different thing, where you can hear the band getting complacent...mostly because they could, partly (I think) because Ed didn't have a songwriting partner in Hagar like he did in Dave where...Ed and Sammy were too friendly. There wasn't any friction, and after Dave left and Templeman stopped producing the band there was nobody there to tell Ed he could do better or challenge him to do better. I think THAT is why there are more than a few Van Hagar tracks that sound fobbed off creatively. It was almost as if the amount of success the band attained made Ed a bit lazy. He just wasn't as hungry after Dave left in terms of wowing people with his guitar playing...like he had left the Guitar Hero mentality behind somewhat, yet what he had achieved on Van Halen's first six albums had already cemented him as a guitar hero forever in the public mind. I can't picture Sam Hagar ever saying to Eddie that anything he was presenting to the band could use a little more work...or Don Landee doing much more than basically engineering the records.

I'd agree that Ed's best stuff, to my ears anyway, resulted from having a lead singer such as Roth who was there with Ed from the beginning and wasn't intimidated by his Rock Guitar God status along with a producer like Templeman who could help hone the material. But Templeman was just as instrumental in terms of working with what Dave brought to the table as a singer as he was with the stuff Ed was coming up with.

Ed wanted to do everything himself by the time VH3 became a project. Ray Daniel’s convinced Ed he was the head guy in Van Halen and it went to Ed’s head. Heck. Andy Johns even said Ed was trying to engineer his own songs and it would drive Eddie nuts Andy could engineer the music better than Ed. Andy had a good chuckle over that one. VH3 was Eddie’s ego run amok due to an enabling manager.

[ZahZoo]

Song writing is a collaborative process with contributions from every person involved in the final product. Van Halen is no exception.

No one person can claim any of the 40 years of VH material was written by one of them... with maybe the exception of Ed solos like Eruption, 316 or Cathedral... even those are just a series of riffs slapped together.

Ed created riffs and rhythms... Alex created structure, beat and groove. Mike created additional structure, beat, groove and vocal compositions... Dave/Sam/Gary created lyrics, melodic structures and color.

Also add a myriad of producers and engineers that contributed hundreds of timing adjustments, tonal landscapes, space, effects and all kinds of tiny aspects that most folks can't separate from the final result.

PS... VH III was more a product of the band and the record industry phasing from the retirement home to their death bed. Thankfully the band outlived the industry so far...

[Terry]

Ed didn’t write songs. Ed wrote riffs. Ed said Alex was actually a better musician than him in the sense that Alex could structure songs better. Makes sense. The drummer lays the beat down everyone else plays on top of. So Ed would noodle and come up with riffs, play them for Alex and Alex would lay a beat down that went with the riff and give his input. They would usually have the rough song hashed out by the time they played for the singer. That’s how it pretty much worked.

All of which seems how the process went in terms of what I've read. None of which is quite the same as Dave sort of portraying himself as the man behind the Wizard Of Oz curtain in terms of Classic Van Halen.

[Terry]

Ed wanted to do everything himself by the time VH3 became a project. Ray Daniel’s convinced Ed he was the head guy in Van Halen and it went to Ed’s head. Heck. Andy Johns even said Ed was trying to engineer his own songs and it would drive Eddie nuts Andy could engineer the music better than Ed. Andy had a good chuckle over that one. VH3 was Eddie’s ego run amok due to an enabling manager.

I think so. I mean, whatever one thought about Cherone's abilities or appropriateness in terms of being the singer, the fact of the matter is many of the instrumental ideas were half-realized and the production was terrible: I'm not a fan of the Van Hagar stuff, but the Sam Halen records sounded professionally produced at least. Van Halen III sounded like demo tapes or work tracks that would have been given to a producer as a reference point going forward to the recording sessions for what would become an album down the line, not a finished product. I don't lay the blame for much of that at Cherone's doorstep.

[Terry]

Song writing is a collaborative process with contributions from every person involved in the final product. Van Halen is no exception.

No one person can claim any of the 40 years of VH material was written by one of them... with maybe the exception of Ed solos like Eruption, 316 or Cathedral... even those are just a series of riffs slapped together.

Ed created riffs and rhythms... Alex created structure, beat and groove. Mike created additional structure, beat, groove and vocal compositions... Dave/Sam/Gary created lyrics, melodic structures and color.

Also add a myriad of producers and engineers that contributed hundreds of timing adjustments, tonal landscapes, space, effects and all kinds of tiny aspects that most folks can't separate from the final result.

PS... VH III was more a product of the band and the record industry phasing from the retirement home to their death bed. Thankfully the band outlived the industry so far...

Yes.

[Terry]

Absolutely.

What will happen though is a thousand reviews from people sitting watching cell phone footage on YouTube in their spare room on a wet Monday night after work.

Like, I enjoyed myself well enough at the Roth show at the 2005 St. Pete Ribfest at the time. Got a cell phone bootleg transferred to dvd of that show a year or so later and watching that cell phone-filmed gig wasn't nearly as fun as being there: the live atmosphere of the event obviously outstrips hearing and watching it on a smaller computer screen.

[Terry]

... and Spammy sucked, incidentally.

Sucked to the point where the handful of good instrumental ideas on those Van Hagar albums were always tempered by Hagar's mediocrity. The title track to 5150 was a case in point: thought that was a killer tune in terms of the guitar work. Hagar comes in with his trite lyrics and brngs the tune down a few notches, to the point where I'd rather hear it as an instrumental.

[Nitro Express]

Song writing is a collaborative process with contributions from every person involved in the final product. Van Halen is no exception.

No one person can claim any of the 40 years of VH material was written by one of them... with maybe the exception of Ed solos like Eruption, 316 or Cathedral... even those are just a series of riffs slapped together.

Ed created riffs and rhythms... Alex created structure, beat and groove. Mike created additional structure, beat, groove and vocal compositions... Dave/Sam/Gary created lyrics, melodic structures and color.

Also add a myriad of producers and engineers that contributed hundreds of timing adjustments, tonal landscapes, space, effects and all kinds of tiny aspects that most folks can't separate from the final result.

PS... VH III was more a product of the band and the record industry phasing from the retirement home to their death bed. Thankfully the band outlived the industry so far...

It’s why people had a hard time copying Ed’s early guitar tone. A lot of that tone was Don Landee’s post production mixing in a combination of a plate reverb and Sunset Sound’s famous echo chamber. If you saw VH live in the early days Ed had more of a classic guitar sound. Also Ted Nugent said he played Ed’s guitar through his rig and it really didn’t sound all that much different than a Gibson through a Fender Dual Showman. That’s when Ted really learned the tone is in the hands. There is no magic effects pedal or little black box. What Don did to Ed’s tone was liven it up and give it more space. Ted Templeman made it dominant in the mix. He was selling the new hot guitar player.

[Nitro Express]

All of which seems how the process went in terms of what I've read. None of which is quite the same as Dave sort of portraying himself as the man behind the Wizard Of Oz curtain in terms of Classic Van Halen.

Dave would listen to the music and write lyrics to it. He liked to do this while riding around LA in a car. I’m sure Dave had some input. Heck. If Dave had the typical recording contract he would have made killer money on the publishing. There is money in those lyrics. I think VH split it an even five ways until of course they screwed Mike over. If Dave knew what he was doing which of course he didn’t it would be good to be Dave.

[Nitro Express]

I think so. I mean, whatever one thought about Cherone's abilities or appropriateness in terms of being the singer, the fact of the matter is many of the instrumental ideas were half-realized and the production was terrible: I'm not a fan of the Van Hagar stuff, but the Sam Halen records sounded professionally produced at least. Van Halen III sounded like demo tapes or work tracks that would have been given to a producer as a reference point going forward to the recording sessions for what would become an album down the line, not a finished product. I don't lay the blame for much of that at Cherone's doorstep.

That was Ray Daniel’s fuckup. Ray was Gary’s manager so Ray was set to make more money off the album and tour. Ray chased Sammy off and used Dave to generate excitement then he sold a turd called VH3. As Zahzoo said the turd went into production because the recording industry was in turmoil. California glam rock got replaced by grunge and the internet and streaming music was coming onto the scene. Warner’s viewed Van Halen as a dated “has been” and were trying to figure out how to survive in the internet age. This allowed Eddie and Ray to ass blast the public with VH3.

[Nitro Express]

Sucked to the point where the handful of good instrumental ideas on those Van Hagar albums were always tempered by Hagar's mediocrity. The title track to 5150 was a case in point: thought that was a killer tune in terms of the guitar work. Hagar comes in with his trite lyrics and brngs the tune down a few notches, to the point where I'd rather hear it as an instrumental.

There is some killer guitar on some of those Van Hagar albums. I just didn’t like the poodle barking on top of it. The lyrics were like the dirty poems I got in trouble for writing in second grade. Yup. I wrote a dirty poem and the girl next to me read it. She gave it to the teacher. I ended up in the principal’s office waiting for my mom to come. I then had to convince my mom I didn’t have any porn magazines and nobody was showing me bad stuff. I was shocked to learn people actually did what my dirty and demented mind thought up. Yuck!

[Nitro Express]

If Sammy was around in 1974 I could have blamed him and his lyrics for my nasty mind.

[Nitro Express]

I wasn’t hot for teacher but I was hot for the reading aid. I was up for breakfast and I wanted to stick my banana between her melons and into her cherry bowl.

[Terry]

Dave would listen to the music and write lyrics to it. He liked to do this while riding around LA in a car. I’m sure Dave had some input. Heck. If Dave had the typical recording contract he would have made killer money on the publishing. There is money in those lyrics. I think VH split it an even five ways until of course they screwed Mike over. If Dave knew what he was doing which of course he didn’t it would be good to be Dave.

Without a doubt Dave had a major input.

While I wasn't there at the creation of those songs in terms of the process, the creative nucleus of CVH seems to me to have been Dave and Eddie. With Ed and Alex jamming on instrumental ideas at times and then presenting that to Dave. The lyrics and lead vocal delivery, for me, was as important to CVH as what Eddie was doing guitar-wise.

I'm just not onboard with the notion that Roth was THE mastermind behind CVH. Crucial, yes.

[Terry]

I wasn’t hot for teacher but I was hot for the reading aid. I was up for breakfast and I wanted to stick my banana between her melons and into her cherry bowl.

She was a 9 on a 10 scale, and I ain't tellin' no lies. She tried puttin' me off, but I ain't havin' that jive.



Was that an actual Hagar lyric? Sounds like it could have been (and one of his better ones, at that).