The Case for Van Halen

Van Halen: The Good, the bad and the ugly

GOOD
The instrumentation is unusually tight. It’s seamless. It could hold water. A big reason for this phenomenon is having two brothers play lead guitar (Eddie) and drums (Alex), two parts of a rock band that very rarely are so dialed into each other as they are with Van Halen (I would by the way venture that the same could be said about Smashing Pumpkins).

Once Eddie got down with the synth keyboards in the early 80s, Van Halen took it to a whole new level that none of its contemporaries could approach. Here you had this guitar virtuoso in Eddie Van Halen who demonstrated that he also had an amazing pop sensibility and knack for songwriting. A worthy template came to be repeated time and again by Van Halen in many of its signature hits – a keyboard-based intro hooks you in, the song builds in force until a ridiculous guitar solo finally serves as the crescendo. Just think of the keyboard intro to “Jump” and the piano at the beginning of “Right Now.”

BAD
Changing lead singers so many times. Hey, anybody who DIDN’T get tired of being in a band with David Lee Roth should have their head checked. And Sammy Haggar, with one of the best rock voices of this or any generation, was the perfect replacement to someone like Diamond Dave who was more about style than substance. But kind of like how you can rationalize someone getting divorced once but then with every subsequent divorce that person’s credibility evaporates at an exponential rate, so too in 1997 everyone in the music world was like, “They didn’t just hire the guy from Extreme (acoustic one-hit wonders for “More Than Words”) to replace Sammy Haggar, did they? It’s a joke, right?”

Bringing Eddie’s son Wolfgang into the band in 2006 to replace longtime bassist Michael Anthony. How narcissistic is it to bring your own son into your band? I mean, if the son’s got any chops of his own, he’s probably better suited playing with people his own age rather than an-over-the-hill has-been. Having said that, I still don’t know what’s worse: said unconscionability of bringing your own son into your band, or naming your son Wolfgang Van Halen. What, was Amadeus already taken?

UGLY
Around the end of the last millennium, Eddie Van Halen told the world he had cancer. Only he didn’t want to tell people what kind of cancer he had, which not surprisingly sparked rumors that Eddie had fallen prey to a cancer of the testicular variety. Well, turns out it was tongue cancer. Despite getting a third of his tongue removed, to this day dude continues to smoke because he sees no causal connection between his two-packs-a-day habit and the malignant tumor he got on his tongue. Like those cartoon guys on the Guinness beer commercials are so fond of saying, “Brilliant!!”

Four words: 2000 MTV Music Awards. Shortly after (surprise!) canning Gary Cherone, rumors spread that Van Halen was getting back together with its orignal frontman David Lee Roth for some new tracks on an upcoming Greatest Hits disc. So the quartet makes its first public appearance together at the MTV Music Awards as presenters. Diamond Dave, who’d spent the previous 15 years trying to figure out how he’d gotten himself kicked out of the world’s biggest rock band, is so attention-starved and jittery when they hit the stage to present that he starts rambling, ungracefully attracting attention to himself and generally acting more excited than A.C. Green on his wedding night. I kid you not, the other three guys in the band are standing there on the stage staring at Roth with looks on their face that unmistakably say, “What the hell does this guy think he’s doing? And what the hell were we thinking to bring him back into the fold?” Shortly thereafter, the rumored reunion falls through and Van Halen goes the next four years without any lead singer whatsoever.

Van Halen vs. Bon Jovi, Part I

Back in the 80s when I was still a little Sheed, it struck me as quite odd that two of the biggest rock bands of the day both derived their names from the two-word surname of the bands’ most prominent members. I am speaking, of course, about Van Halen and Bon Jovi. Because of the similarity in their names, comparing these two bands to each other is something that’s been going on in my head for over 20 years now.

In formulating an in-depth comparison/analysis, the first thing that comes to mind is the issue of longevity. It’s been a decade and a half since Van Halen was anything more than an unintentionally hilarious sideshow (come back tomorrow for a few specifics). Conversely, even today Bon Jovi never seems too far removed from the public consciousness (they had an album hit record-store shelves less than two years ago that sold five million copies).

But then there’s the issue of relative greatness. At its peak, Van Halen was much more influential and meaningful than anything Bon Jovi ever approached. For statistical proof, just look at the aggregate album sales that put Van Halen at 56.5 million, compared to “only” 33 million for Bon Jovi (data from the Recording Industry Association of America). However, if you (like me) prefer to frame debates in terms of anecdotal evidence, then look no further than the 1982 movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High in which Sean Penn unforgettably portrayed surfer/slacker extraordinaire Jeff Spicoli. At the end of the movie, a paragraph about what became of each of the main characters following high school is shown on the screen. Spicoli, we’re told, got a five-figure sum of money for saving Brooke Shields from drowning. What’d he do with the money? Hire Van Halen to play his birthday party, of course.

For the musically-challenged, let’s frame this in terms of sports. Van Halen and Bon Jovi are like baseball stars Eddie Murray and Dale Murphy, respectively (and no, it’s not by accident that I chose players with such similar last names as “Murray” and “Murphy”). In a 21-year career, Murray hit .287 to go with 504 HR and 1907 RBI. Murphy, meanwhile, hit .265 with 398 HR and 1266 RBI over 18 seasons. Murray wins by a landslide, right? Not so fast. Although Eddie is the only one of the two enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame, Dale is the only one with an MVP award on his mantle – and dude’s got two of them. What’s better in the eyes of history, a player who was consistently great for a longer period of time or one who was great for over a decade AND the best player in baseball for a two-year span? In my not-so-humble opinion, it’s a debate that’s far from cut-and-dry.

So it’s on: Van Halen versus Bon Jovi for the distinction of “Best 80s Rock Band Named After a Two-Word Surname.” Let the debate begin…tomorrow.

President Boyd K. Packer?