While my first real Van Halen memory dates back to the late 1970s and hearing “Jamie’s Crying” on Dad’s car stereo in Dearborn, Michigan, by way of Detroit’s WRIF, my true passion for the band developed a few years later. If you ask me whether I’m a “Dave man” of a “Van Hagar guy,” I usually reply that I’m a “VAN HALEN guy.” What the brothers Eddie and Alex do is always the constant and the most irreplaceable. Among my peers, in 1984, Van Halen’s album of the same name was as much a staple in our day-to-day lives as Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Huey Lewis and the News’ Sports. Those albums dictated the way I and my fellow sixth graders walked, talked and dressed.
Fast forward to the first two months of 2012. Michael Jackson is now almost two whole years removed from his mortal coil, and by the time he passed away in June of 2010, a whole generation or two were oblivious to the enormity of the pop megastar’s wattage, how guys wanted to be him and girls wanted to date him. By 2010, the frail single parent of three was a shell of his former self, never fully living down charges of sexually inappropriate behavior with children that never did stick to him in terms of criminal convictions. Any quirks that Jackson displayed back in 1984 were just that, quirks that the masses would gladly oblige a supremely talented singer and performer who’d charmed and dazzled audiences since his age was in the single digits. But for years before his death due to prescription drug abuse and living beyond his means, the quirks became more and more unsettling to any rational, albeit average, American not remotely immersed in global celebrity of Jackson’s level. While he was actually prepping a world tour that was supposed to re-light his star, no one knows how well it would have played and how long it would have lasted considering that he didn’t even survive the preproduction.
At least Huey Lewis’s story is anything but a precautionary tale. While the hits have been but a distant memory for going on three decades, I’ve personally been happy to see Huey Lewis on a couple of occasions already in 2012. Like it was the 1980s all over again, Lewis and his longtime backing band turned up in their native San Francisco to sing the National Anthem at the 49ers’ first of two playoff games at Candlestick Park in January. And not long after that, Lewis was on hand, as he has been for years, actually, at Pebble Beach for the golf course’s annual pro-am event. Safe to say the roots rock and roll band’s most commercially successful days are behind them, but there is certainly nothing objectionable about their current musical trajectory, still touring and recording.
But returning to what actually brought me back here, courtesy of our host, Troy Brownfield. Of the three musical acts I cited dating back to 1984, Van Halen has undeniably returned with a vengeance and is in prime position to dominate the rock and roll landscape, this year and quite possibly beyond. 2011 saw a lot of hints, rumors and allegations that we’d hear from this band in a big way, but considering the fact that the band’s last full-length album dropped in 1997 (and the less said about Van Halen III, the better), most fans were in “I’ll believe it when I see it” mode. Never mind the questions of what particular “version” of this band could we expect. Since the ill-fated Gary Cherone era came and went after one and only one CD, Eddie and Alex Van Halen have rotated through their singers and bass-players like so many packs of cigarettes. We may never know what original bassist Michael Anthony did to get on Eddie’s bad side, but the fans are the only ones slighted less by his expulsion years ago. On that note, I’ve always enjoyed the fact that Anthony was the only original VH member to attend their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. Sweet justice, indeed.
Then the day after Christmas of last year, a proverbial snowball was rolled down the mountain, and to date it’s done nothing short of become a full-blown avalanche. On December 26, 2011, an e-mail went out to all subscribers of the official Van Halen website showing new footage of the same band lineup that’s been together since 2007: David Lee Roth singing in front of Eddie and Alex, and on bass, Eddie’s 20-year-old son, Wolfgang. While the black and white footage was clearly new (weeks prior, publicity photos set the scene when it was announced that anything new from Van Halen was going to be released by Interscope Records after a decades-long relationship with Warner Bros. Records), the accompanying music was straight out of the last Diamond Dave era, 1984 (“Panama,” “Jump”). What followed since 2012 began has been nothing short of a tidal wave, even more remarkable considering the bands aversion to musical proficiency since the mid-90s. Even in this age of internet speed, it is still pretty unheard of to see a big musical act announce their reemergence with tour dates to boot, roll out a new single immediately after and release the full album less than a month later. Clearly Van Halen was busy as hell in 2011, but they were brilliant in keeping things under wraps and only going public in less than six weeks.
Lord knows that Van Halen can return to the music scene with David Lee Roth and be under no obligation to release new music. Acts like the Eagles, Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney do it all the time and all their fans do is clamor for the classics when they see them in concert. Van Halen did just fine on their reunion tour in 2007 without so much as a newly packaged greatest hits collection to satiate fans. But Van Halen went and did the unthinkable: they made an album that stands on its own and will likely be played over and over by fans for years to come. Maybe this is what they were referring to when they named their new release “A Different Kind of Truth”? Up front, I was wary of this new album from the onset, mainly because as great a band as Van Halen remains, they haven’t come up with a truly listenable complete piece of work since the early Nineties. There’s been some flashes here and there – even Van Halen III had some chunky riffs that I don’t mind hearing now. But even the most diehard fans could not be blamed for apprehension when the overall VH brand has been tarnished for so long. Go figure that the band goes and cranks out an album that, in its entirety is not like anything we’ve heard since, Women and Children First and Fair Warning.
It doesn’t take a scholar with a degree in musical theory to realize that a lot of this has to do with the fact that Van Halen opted to dust off a lot of material that went unused once they started recording for Warner Bros. I myself got a hold of what was called the “Gene Simmons Demos,” (1976) tracks that Van Halen laid down after Simmons “discovered” them and shopped around for a record deal. Other music was worked on later and didn’t make the cut in their earliest albums. It was excellent for this longtime fan to hear, and interesting to catch bits and pieces of riffs that ended up on their self-titled debut and subsequent LPs. Point blank, there was some great unused stuff, and the idea that any of it could go unused seemed insane. Plus, other than Eddie’s son, Wolfgang, these guys, all well in their 50s, have either laid down fresh instrumentals or doled out all-new lyrics. And let’s be honest, every worthwhile band leading up to the Beatles did similar things during their time. It’s a practice as old as rock and roll. Anyway, Eddie & Co. must’ve agreed, and it’s proven to be a splendid, inspired way to get back in the groove with David Lee Roth, for potentially a whole new audience as well.
I could pick out of a hat any one of the thirteen tracks (13?? Van Halen NEVER produced that many tracks for a full-length before!!) where it’d be appropriate to declare “Eddie wails!!” With all the negative press Eddie’s been more reliable for with failed stints in rehab, it’s heartening to hear the greatest guitarist of the last quarter century playing with such abandon while remaining technically sound (same can be said for his brother Alex, though he’s not been known for making headlines in general). Honestly, no matter what you think you know about Van Halen, “A Different Kind of Truth” is unquestionably the most unrelenting album they’ve ever produced, in any incarnation. There is literally no letup, no ballads, no poignant, pop-tinged moments where things are “taken down a notch.” From beginning to end, the stereo’s meant to be turned up full blast. And the band’s also gotten back to more economically paced running times on their songs. Five- to seven-minute songs have made way for four minutes and under, and it suits the material. I’ll let other fans with a more encyclopedic knowledge of the back story of each track dissect them and expand on the differences between old and new (go to Van Halen News Desk, really, for the best take -- http://www.vhnd.com/2012/02/07/van-halen-a-different-kind-of-truth-the-vhnd-review/). It’s a pretty damn good start to the new year, and if Van Halen’s not being mentioned positively and often in the general media’s “Best of 2012” recaps, it might mean that it’s 1985 all over again. That’s when Diamond Dave and his Van Halen colleagues first parted ways. Let’s hope the guys “stay frosty.”
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