Dave didn't like Eddie self producing

[POJO_Risin]

I liked the raunchy ass guitar in Human's Being...not the whelping by the Divine Ms. M...but the down in the gutter guitar playing...

[Terry]

To me Balance is the best guitar of that era. That sound with Me Wise and Can't Get. If VH gets into that groove with the Diamond One and we got ourselves a winner.

The album had a clear, crisp sound to it. Probably one of the better sounding Van Halen albums made after Dave left in a production sense.

[Unchainme]

The last Van Hagar song, "Humans Being" had a really pissed off guitar tone to it. Might have been a decent song with Dave singing, but as usual the Ched Rocker fucked it all up with his stupid lyrics. Especially the Lennon rip off chorus.

Who writes a bunch of angry verses and then has a pussy chorus like "shine on shine on"?? Well at least he didn't say "like the moon and the stars and the sun". That would have been more blatant than when he ripped off Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down" for that song on FUCK with the plagarized "Jump" riff.

i recall reading that ed was indeed quite pissed off about the lryics calling them "cheesey",

[FORD]

I believe Ed's exact quote was "you can't write Stairway to Heaven music with I Can't Drive 55 lyrics"

Guess he forgot that in 2004 when he let Sammy get away with "Upchuck Your Breakfast", which made "I Can't Drive 55" look like goddamn Shakespeare by comparison.

[kwame k]

i recall reading that ed was indeed quite pissed off about the lryics calling them "cheesey",

Heard the same thing.....EVH hated the lyrics.........their birth place was more than a song about a Country where pot's legal.

Life goal #5..............getting banned from Amsterdam

[POJO_Risin]

Speaking of the song Amsterdam, that has to be one of the worst Van Hagar tunes and that really is saying a lot. "Wham Bam....Amsterdam.....Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.."
My god, that was the first time i had ever heard that tune. I heard Balance sucked but no one really prepared me for that nonsense. You guys had better have my back better than this in the future.

There were major...MAJOR Roth Rumors that started in 1991/92...especially post production...and carried all the way into and through 1995. There was a bunch of trouble on the tour for F.U.C.K., centering around Hagar drifting away from the band. I know spED was drinking heavy...wife mama-drama...but with Hagar, it wasn't going well. Anyone that watched the MTV Music Awards in 1992...when they won song of the year, I think, for Right Now...could see it after the show. It was the infamous Fartman episode with Howard Stern. Hagar slammed Stern after the show during the interview...and spED...doing his pre-Dave 1996...took about five steps back...forced the camera to pan back actually, then slammed spAM on national TV about not messing with Stern. While the interview was still going on, you could see spAM talking shit...and spED talking shit...then they cut away.

Amsterdam was the second to last nail in the coffin...with the lyrical escapades of Mas Tequila-Man...calling the VH bros homeland the home of weed (which it is).

He must have been wearing a cup...

Anyways...there was a circus...or a guitar magazine that had Ed slamming Hagar again about the lyrics. There were other bits and pieces laying around in the mid-90's...

I do wonder...if Dave hadn't sunk to the levels he did (I saw him play in a small bar, no shit, of about 150 or so of my closest friends in a dive in Corry, PA)...if there wouldn't have been something big happen sooner than 1996...

What was this about again?

[POJO_Risin]

Funny, I remember hearing Sammy say something about VH having their 'Stairway to Heaven' on that album.

I can't fucking remember the name of the song, but it had lyrics that burned into my head because of their insipidness, and I apologize if they aren't right, but here goes: "If I were you, and you were me, I wonder who I'd rather be." I remember hearing the song...maybe on Westwood One's premiere party (remember those), and thinking, "He's thinking about Dave..."

[FORD]

I believe the song Sammy called their "Stairway" was the song "Between Us Two" which they were also supposed to record for the Twister soundtrack, but it was cut in favor of the sisters' instrumental track "Break the Wind" or whatever the fuck it was called.

Sammy was under the impression that this song would have been a huge hit for Van Hagar, an iconic song or whatever. Oddly enough, when he had another chance to record it in 2004, he decided instead to sing "Upchuck for Breakfast" and "It's About Time". God damn Sammy, if the song was so great and so Iconic, wouldn't it have still been that way 8 years later?

Or for that matter, why didn't he just put it on his solo album, like Cherone did with the song "Left for Dead" from the aborted VDIII sequel?

[FORD]

Fuck all this talk about Hagar and Cherone is making me ill. Time to clear the cheese out of the brains......

[chefcraig]

I dunno about you guys, but I really had a laugh as Edward Van Halen attempted to come across as some sort of moralist with his beyond the point reservations about Hagar's lyrics for "Amsterdam". The entire vehicle of good VH music was based upon a hedonistic attitude, yet all of a sudden, this was in poor taste. In the meantime, it was OK to fill out the album with segments that included the guitar-god doinking about while wrecking a piano and a particularly pointless interlude of percussive nonsense performed by his brother. Yeah, nothing like having your priorities in order.

[sadaist]

I dunno about you guys, but I really had a laugh as Edward Van Halen attempted to come across as some sort of moralist with his beyond the point reservations about Hagar's lyrics for "Amsterdam". The entire vehicle of good VH music was based upon a hedonistic attitude, yet all of a sudden, this was in poor taste. In the meantime, it was OK to fill out the album with segments that included the guitar-god doinking about while wrecking a piano and a particularly pointless interlude of percussive nonsense performed by his brother. Yeah, nothing like having your priorities in order.

Not a huge difference in sentiment from Wham Bam Amsterdam, stones you like nothing else can and I"m taking whiskey to the party tonight & I'm looking for somebody to squeeze. Obviously the latter kicks ass while the first is a weak song. But Eddie took issue with the subject? Van Halen was always about no reservations and having fun. It's not like Sammy was singing about using meth until your teeth fell out & you lost your career & all your friends. Uhm...nevermind.

I think Eddie just wanted to be some adult contemporary artist that wrote serious music on serious topics. Like what Sting did after The Police. Problem is EVH isn't Sting.

And back on topic...they need to get the fuck out of 5150 and in to an actual studio.