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Here's Dave talking about both "Pretty Woman" and "Dancing In The Street", in Creem magazine, 1982 .
PRETTY WOMAN
"Something that is a different vocal sound for Van Halen, different guitar sound, but I don't think it's lost any of its torque. I don't think any of the humidity has been let out of the tires so to speak. It's just different – but not by device again. I remember when we were playing it back in the bar days and Eddie said, 'there's no piano and no acoustic rhythm guitar, how do we fill it up?' And I said, 'well try playing something like ‘Ticket To Ride’ and speed it up. Inspiration does not come from nowhere! You don't sit in a darkened room or an isolation tank and wait for a burst of light and the Hand of God to come down and hand you the scroll. I've tried that. And said fuck it, let's do 'Pretty Woman'! No seriously, what you do is borrow from somebody – no, you actually steal it – and you change the beginning and you change the end of it the way you like it and then you change the middle and it's all yours. And everybody says 'you can't do that.' Horseshit! They used to do that in the days of the classical composers. The great artists did that, so what's the difference? People want us to be original. I don't care 'what people want."
Side 2
DANCING IN THE STREET
"It's exactly what the title implies – something going on that was not immediately apparent to the eye. We've been. playing these lush vocal harmonies and so forth to make up for our lack of instrumentation – we don't have keyboards, we don't have three chicks in the background going 'shoop-shoop,' we don't have a Minister to introduce us and hold the towel. [Just back from a James Brown concert.] So we're forced to come up with what is now the Van Halen sound – it sounds like more than four people are playing when in actuality there are almost zero overdubs – that's why it takes us such a short amount of time to do it. If you listen to this song and that sound and what we're doing in there, and then go back and listen to the first album and all the way up again, then you'll see where it comes from."
PRETTY WOMAN
"Something that is a different vocal sound for Van Halen, different guitar sound, but I don't think it's lost any of its torque. I don't think any of the humidity has been let out of the tires so to speak. It's just different – but not by device again. I remember when we were playing it back in the bar days and Eddie said, 'there's no piano and no acoustic rhythm guitar, how do we fill it up?' And I said, 'well try playing something like ‘Ticket To Ride’ and speed it up. Inspiration does not come from nowhere! You don't sit in a darkened room or an isolation tank and wait for a burst of light and the Hand of God to come down and hand you the scroll. I've tried that. And said fuck it, let's do 'Pretty Woman'! No seriously, what you do is borrow from somebody – no, you actually steal it – and you change the beginning and you change the end of it the way you like it and then you change the middle and it's all yours. And everybody says 'you can't do that.' Horseshit! They used to do that in the days of the classical composers. The great artists did that, so what's the difference? People want us to be original. I don't care 'what people want."
Side 2
DANCING IN THE STREET
"It's exactly what the title implies – something going on that was not immediately apparent to the eye. We've been. playing these lush vocal harmonies and so forth to make up for our lack of instrumentation – we don't have keyboards, we don't have three chicks in the background going 'shoop-shoop,' we don't have a Minister to introduce us and hold the towel. [Just back from a James Brown concert.] So we're forced to come up with what is now the Van Halen sound – it sounds like more than four people are playing when in actuality there are almost zero overdubs – that's why it takes us such a short amount of time to do it. If you listen to this song and that sound and what we're doing in there, and then go back and listen to the first album and all the way up again, then you'll see where it comes from."
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