Quick, where were you when you discovered the video for “Jump,”
\nand possibly discovered Van Halen? I still remember I was watching
\nFriday Night Videos<\/i> when they opened up with this clip from
\nVan Halen. Its homemade look and high energy level, combined with
\nwhat still is a damn fine song, hooked me the moment I heard it. In
\na short span of time, I had picked up all of Van Halen’s
\nalbums.<\/p>\n
That album,
\n1984<\/i>, remains Van Halen’s best work to this day, and served
\nas an unexpected swansong to the first version of the band. (One of
\nthe funniest lines in
\nThe Wedding Singer<\/i> is when Adam Sandler tells his ex-fiancee
\nto get out of his Van Halen t-shirt “before you jinx the band and
\nthey break up.”)<\/p>\n
Eddie Van Halen and crew were admittedly stagnating. Their
\nprevious release,
\nDiver Down<\/i>, was most definitely experimental, but its
\nreliance on cover tunes seemed to only make conditions worse.
\nClearly, this band needed a shot in the arm — and to many people’s
\nsurprise, it came in the form of keyboards. The opening work “1984”
\nspells out in just over one minute that this is going to be an
\nexciting trip, and your first stop is “Jump.”<\/p>\n
Think about it: a hard rock tune that hit the top of the charts
\nwith only a little guitar work. But if any song sealed Eddie Van
\nHalen’s title as a guitar god, this was it. Lead singer David Lee
\nRoth is in fine form, bassist Michael Anthony continued to happily
\nthump away on his four-stringer, and drummer Alex Van Halen…
\nwell, there’s a reason I consider him one of the few masters of the
\ndrum kit, the other being Neil Peart.<\/p>\n
All of the singles off
\n1984<\/i> are as fresh today as they were back in the mid-’80s.
\n“Panama” is a song that had my two-year-old bouncing happily in
\nfront of the speakers, while “Hot For Teacher” is still a slice of
\nguilty fun that features some incredible double bass work from Alex
\nVan Halen. A lesser-known single but not lesser-played, “I’ll
\nWait,” is the only moment of “weakness,” if you can even call it
\nthat. It is a definite lean towards radio-friendliness (never mind
\nthe fact that “Jump” was all over the dials), but it does capture a
\ndifferent side of Van Halen.<\/p>\n
Even the songs that didn’t make the cut as singles are pretty
\ntasty. “House Of Pain,” the album’s closer (and, from what I
\nremember, the b-side to the “Jump” single), is a return to
\nballs-out rock that demonstrates Van Halen hadn’t lost a step,
\nwhile tracks like “Top Jimmy” and “Drop Dead Legs” all rock just as
\nhard.<\/p>\n
The striking thing about
\n1984<\/i> is its brevity; the nine songs on this disc fly by
\nbefore you’re even settled into your chair. But after a few
\ndisappointments, perhaps the band decided that “less is more”…
\nwhatever the case, it worked. The other thought that hits the
\nlistener is, “What would the band have come up with had Roth stayed
\nwith the band?” Unfortunately, he would leave the band by 1986 to
\nstart his own solo career.<\/p>\n
\n1984<\/i> is another album that qualifies as a must-own, no
\nmatter what form of music you’re a fan of.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24741,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5673],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-35945","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-van-halen","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35945"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=35945"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=35945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}