Van Halen, "1984"
Ken’s got it bad, so bad
Ken’s Pitch:
Van Halen was hard, they were raw, and they helped define late ‘70s and early ‘80s rock. With just one album under their belt in 1978, they had a “signature sound”, a combination of revolutionary guitar work by the late, great Eddie Van Halen, and the unique, even-if-imperfect vocals of David Lee Roth. Somehow they managed to follow that up with two gems, and even though 1982’s Diver Down was slightly disappointing, the band remained true to its roots. Their sound was undoubtedly rock, a sonic rejection of all things pop. Or so we thought.
It’s the album Van Halen fans love to hate. From the spacey, 1-minute synthesizer introduction melting right into the opening notes of “Jump”, 1984 made millions of excited fans, well, cringe. I get it, it’s a huge departure from what we had become accustomed to, but does every band with a unique sound have to keep bringing us more and more of the same?
By the mid-’80s, everyone was using synthesizers. Eddie, always the experimentalist, was a pretty accomplished piano player and loved what was happening to the rock scene. I recently saw an interview with him the day after the recording of 1984 was completed. He was exhausted, but ecstatic. He loved what he and his bandmates had just completed. The album wouldn’t be released for months, but he loved it already. That’s authenticity at its best; just a man and the pride he feels about the music he just made.
To me, a lot of pop music from that time feels forced. You can almost hear the industry executives counting their money as they collectively figure out how many times an hour the next Thompson Twins single would get played on radio stations across the country. The stars seemed to be going through the motions as a means to fame. I’m not saying none of it was genuine, but none of it FELT genuine.
Van Halen was different; they were making music they thought was awesome with equipment they thought was cool. If it sounded “pop-py” or too mainstream, that was because the public ate it up, not because it was some sub-par, throwaway garbage with no merit.
You may not love “Jump”, but it changed rock music in the ‘80s. “Panama” is as classic a Van Halen track as anything they’ve ever done, “I’ll Wait” is signature Diamond Dave, and while the lyrics are corny as hell, “Hot For Teacher” is Eddie doing what Eddie does best!
Taylor Swift is currently making a billion or so dollars because she’s had so many eras in her career. I’d ask the many Van Halen fans out there to make some room on the shelves for the second era of their favorite band. Of course, haters gonna hate, hate, hate.
CJ’s Response:
The opening notes of Eddie’s keyboard on the intro to “Jump” is the sound of Van Halen dying!
That’s what I said to anyone and everyone in my sophomore math class who would listen. And listen they should have. At age 15 in 1984, I had it all figured out – music, school, women. So I knew what I was talking about when I said that the demise of Jeff Spicoli’s birthday party band was nigh.
And while I was right about Van Halen breaking up, I was wrong about this album. (I was also wrong about women, but you probably saw that coming.) Turns out 1984 was a damn sight better than anything else at the time for the simple reason that, keyboards notwithstanding, Van Halen was still Van Halen.
As my math mates trooped off to buy tickets for the 1984 Tour, I begrudgingly sat down and listened to the whole album. Sure “Jump” was goofy, but it was still pretty good. And “Panama” was excellent. (Maybe my brother and I tied a rope to a tree branch in an ill-fated attempt to replicate Diamond Dave’s flight across the stage in the video and maybe we didn’t.) I also couldn’t help but smile at “Drop Dead Legs” and “Girl Gone Bad”, two classic sex-focused VH songs. My argument dissolved in a haze of dry ice.
I do have two embarrassing stories associated with this album:
For reasons I can only attribute to the consumption of six or seven Old Milwaukees, I requested “I’ll Wait” at a fraternity party. It may be a good song to listen to in your car or your bedroom, but it absolutely destroyed the vibe at the party. Women left the dancefloor in droves and I was never allowed to request a song again. And this was my fraternity!
My twenty-something sophomore English teacher decided to call our parents for a mid-semester check-in. She got a hold of my mom one night and they spoke for nearly an hour. When they hung up, I asked what they had been talking about. My mom, who is a wildcard under the best circumstances, told me that they’d spent the majority of the conversation discussing the “Hot for Teacher” video. “I told her you really liked it,” my mom informed me. “She said she wasn’t surprised.”
I didn’t speak in English class for the rest of the year.
Pitch Successful (It ain’t the worst that I seen.)
Mitch’s Response:
Nowadays people think that it’s great to grow up Jewish - being part of an all-powerful cabal, with the global domination, and the controlling of the banks and the media and whatnot - but it wasn’t always that way. Back in the '80s us Jewish kids were just the weird nerds who had to eat matzah and hard boiled eggs for lunch during Passover, and the only thing that prevented us from getting our asses kicked were our unexpected prowess at shooting foul shots (fundamentals, baby), and the two bonus days off we scored everyone in September.
Worst of all, there were barely any cool Jewish celebrity role models in popular culture: we had Barbra Streisand, we had Neil Diamond, and we had Juan Epstein. Not great, Bob!
But at least we had Diamond Dave. The one and only David Lee Roth.
Inexplicably, the coolest frontman from the best rock band of the ‘80s was Jewish. And he wasn’t just sort-of Jewish. He was as Jewy as they come, with his whole schtick coming straight out of the Catskills, the magical epicenter of traditional Jewish entertainment (my brother and I were lucky enough to catch the tail-end of the Catskills era with family trips to the Nevele). In fact, the magic of Van Halen was precisely in the blending of Dave’s Catskillian charisma with the Dutch perfectionism and aloofness of the Van Halen brothers.
When 1984 came out in the year 5744, it simultaneously felt like both the peak and the end of Van Halen, as rumors of their demise was already swirling in Circus magazine and on MTV News. I don’t want to get caught up in the synthesizer squirmish, but it was a huge source of controversy at the time. In retrospect, the synths give the band a more modern-sound, and work well on “I’ll Wait” but sound super-cheesy on “Jump”.
None of that matters, though, because 1984 gives us the best-ever Van Halen song (“Panama”) and Pete Angelus’ magnus opus video (“Hot for Teacher”). The rest of this short album is split between good filler (“Top Jimmy” and “Drop Dead Legs”) and bad filler (“Girl Gone Bad” and “House of Pain”) in usual Van Halen tradition.
If we just got Diamond Dave it would have been enough. If we just got “Panama" it would have been enough. If we just got the “Hot for Teacher” video it would have been enough. But, luckily, in 1984, we got it all. Dayenu.
Pitch Successful (all the best albums feature smoking on the cover)
Ken’s pitch went down smooth, like a bottle of Jack Daniels, and Van Halen’s 1984 has jumped into the Newbury St. Collection. What’s your take on Van Halen and their synth-eruption 1984? Which top 20 album from 1984 would you have pitched? Please let us know in the comments section.
Please join us as next week as the EONS time machine rides off to 1991 with Mitch’s pitch for Garth Brooks’ No Fences.
the sound of van halen dying is sammy hagar's voice
You eloquently describe the dilemma of how to feel about 1984 when it arrived, and I concur. It's a solid VH, though sorta not VH, album. Meanwhile, I'll Wait for a fraternity party... eek! I can almost see Panama working - almost.
Finally - props to Aztec Camera for Roddy's blistering 'acoustic' version of Jump.