I missed Friday and I missed yesterday, so I'm gonna do what I've wanted to do for a while now. I have never, by design, featured a band more than once, but some Van Halen fans will tell you that Van Halen without David Lee Roth singing is not Van Halen. Some call that band "Van Hagar" because Sammy Hagar sang for them (except for the one album Gary Cherone did). Some just don't acknowledge this part of Van Halen's history at all, saying their last album was 1984 until 2012's A Simple Kind of Truth, which saw David Lee Roth reunite with Edward Van Halen.
I was raised on Van Halen, the self-titled album from 1978, and 1984, which released in that year. My mother had everything in between (as well as those) on vinyl, and she had the Sammy Hagar-fronted albums OU812 and 5150 on tape. She bought them but I never heard her play them, so I took them and listened to them off and on. My own personal first Van Halen (or Van Hagar) album was For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, and while I liked it, it was not a favourite, constantly overshadowed by records from Metallica, Guns n' Roses, and even Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell, Whitney Houston's The Bodyguard soundtrack, and, believe it or not, a Christian rock album. Wild times.
That changed with Balance, Van Halen's last album with Sammy Hagar. Released in 1995, this album featured a naked four-year-old boy sitting on a see-saw, except he's split in the middle and it's conjoined twins. They're one person from the waist down, but above the waist, they split. The one on the left is screaming and pulling away, and the one on the right is calm, but pulling the other one's hair. The wide handle of the see-saw cover the genital area, making the photo not explicit, but it's still creepy as fuck. The Japanese cover may be more creepy; because Japan doesn't generally like body modifications (like piercings and tattoos) and doesn't like things that are "different," the conjoined twins cover was considered offensive, so they used a photo of just the calm boy sitting by himself, like he's at Neverland Ranch or something. Also, the conjoined twins are somewhat posed in the Van Halen "VH" logo; without the other boy pulling away... it's just a naked kid on a see-saw. What was a creepy aspect of the original piece becomes the main focus, and it's unnerving. Bear in mind there's nothing remotely illegal or offensive about the cover; it's just weird. It's not like that Scorpions cover that is straight up illegal outside of Germany. You probably won't get arrested if you look it up (but you probably shouldn't), but it's not something most of us want to see. Likewise, when I added Runaway Train and Without a Trace to my 1990s playlist, I did not add them from Grave Dancers Union, which is one of my favourite albums of the 1990s. I'm just not a fan of the cover, which features two completely naked girls, aged about six and nine, photographed from the rear, with a woman draped in a sheet behind them. I remember buying the CD, and sliding a piece of paper torn from an index card between the booklet and the plastic CD case.
Anyway, cover issues aside, Balance had some really good songs on it, but nobody ever really talks about Not Enough, linked above, which is my favourite song by Van Halen with any singer. To appease the "Van Hagar" crowd, I'll also say it's my favourite "Van Hagar" song. I don't even mind purists wanting to separate the David Lee Roth stuff from the Sammy Hagar stuff. As long as we're not saying DLR's weaker albums are better than the best of Hagar's — and, I don't believe anyone really is. They're just saying that DLR was the better frontman, and that Eddie Van Halen let loose more under him, and that's why they supported the band in the first place, not to hear Sammy Hagar's crooning while EVH plays the piano. And I get it. I can respect it, even. After all, I was raised on DLR-era Van Halen. But when I discovered rock music, Sammy Hagar was the singer of Van Halen, and I loved their sound. I like both styles. So I'm linking Not Enough at the top, we can call it today's (Sunday's) song of the day, because the one from Van Halen should come first, because it came out chronologically first, and, well, let's face it, DLR was kinda the face of Van Halen, if nothing else, for longer.
Looking back at "the real" Van Halen, my favourite's always gonna be 1984/Jump (the two of them together). That's how it was on the record and the tape. We never, ever skipped the intro. It just wasn't done. So when I hear Jump on the radio and it's missing that minute and a half of sweeping synth sounds, I feel like they're cheating the audience. Panama and Hot for Teacher are also great songs. But my favourite songs are on the first Van Halen album from 1978. So for me, there's 70s Van Halen, 80s Van Halen, and 90s Van Halen. It's really just eras. This isn't AC/DC where every song and album basically sounds the same. This is a band centered around a multi-instrumentalist virtuoso and his evolving sound with various musicians. It's not about David Lee Roth vs Sammy Hagar, it's about the music Edward Van Halen wanted to make. So while I think the best ones (not my favourites) are Ice Cream Man (which I've mentioned before) and Eruption (a legendary instrumental), it's very close between the other two big hits on the album. So while I can't say anything bad about Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love, the album's opener, which also might be the first Van Halen song most people heard... my pick for classic Van Halen goes to Runnin' With the Devil. So that'll be my pick for Saturday's song of the day, and Not Enough is today's.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5txwFv-zYM
Of course, there can always be more than one! It isn't a competition. Another person posted in my absence; definitely check that song out too! I'm going to.
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