Van Halen Sign to Interscope Records

[Pocketplayer]

"Outta Love Again" off of Van Halen II is some of the hippest rock drumming ever recorded. It's like a Tony Williams/John Bonham sandwich. And that Ludwig Supersensitive with black dot rules.

Brilliant!

VH II is a rock drumming masterpiece. The power of music...remember playing fooz ball in Dave's Arcade after school and listening to the new VH record over the speakers and having an argument about Dave's screams...too commercial or not? This was as intense an argument as the political cross talk shows...talking VH was THE purpose for the day.

Sammy was good...no doubt about it, but Roth...an original. No better front man ever imo. I remember seeing them in HS at one of those Los Angeles Colosseum weekend festivals. Maybe 1979 or so. Alex was really overplaying when Roth was preaching between songs. Dave tells Alex..."Bring it down Al..." and Alex stops all the ruff fills. Always remember that moment. He was like part Sinatra and Sammy in a rock context.

VH in the day was HUGE...an event in concert. The energy was off the charts. Very different then a Springsteen concert in that sense around the same time period.

There are some cool youtubes of VH around '77 before they got signed gigging the Pasadena area.

Mike never gets his due...the bass player curse. He was a PERFECT fit for this band personality and playing wise. A true pocket player making straight 8ths groove ala Unchained with amazing background vocals.

That snare...pure definition of style. Signature. So This Love...just a sweet sound.

Off 1984...
Sinner's Swing just bounces off the needle.

Off VH II...
That HUGE sound ala No Good w/Mike's backing vocals

Eddie took shredding into a musical band context which makes him so unique. He was first a player rather than a shredder ala McAlpine and all the rest who wrote songs around their playing. Never gonna hear those cats write or play Dance the Nights. That quintessential Eddie guitar sound on Beautiful Girls...



.

[bstocky]

They were a great band. Wrote some incredible music. It's too bad they couldn't have kept it together.

[Gaddabout]

VH was my other gateway drug into jazz fusion. Them and Rush and the Police. Without them, I would never have had the teenage tolerance to listen to, say, Billy Cobham's Warning or, heaven forbid, Chick Corea's Mini-Moog-dominated 70s fusion.

It's hard to believe how many notes a band in that era got away with while making radio hits. I STILL don't understand how to play Hot for Teacher.

[Tom Reschke]

A guitar player buddy and I listened to a bunch of VH on a long drive recently, and I kept commenting on how Alex is basically playing rock jazz drums. His parts are never really consistent, weird flourishes and sounds that come out of nowhere...
I kept marveling to my friend how cool and unique Alex plays, and that there's NO WAY any producer would let you get away with playing like that! My friend nodded in agreement. I love VH, Drop Dead Legs owns.

[langmick]

AVH highlights for me:

Mean Street: hi hat and bass drum work, tricky syncopation, mega endurance
Loss of Control: just badass all the way through
Sunday Afternoon in the Park: a weird slinky groove that plays against the guitar interestingly
Somebody Get Me a Doctor: the little pickup fills are classic, jazzy
So This is Love: just solid

I can't listen to much VH past Diver Down.

[Kurtis]

I STILL don't understand how to play Hot for Teacher.

[peterdb]

did anyone read the excerpt from sammy's book in rolling stone? my god, alex and eddie were pretty nasty to micheal anthony. and he paints quite the picture of eddie as a freakishly weird alcoholic that's nearly impossible to get along with. his mansion has no furniture, has never been cleaned, nothing but black sheets hangin on all the windows, beer cans, and just a general pig sty all around his house and studio. it's pretty interesting reading if your a VH fan. he goes on and on about both the brothers...but mainly eddie. that can't be easy to deal with a guy like that.

[nomsgmusic]

PS it sound like there's 2 drum tracks layered on the outro to Drop Dead Legs..I always wondered about the decision on the production for that. Who's idea was that? It's kind of out of the blue.

Steve, This thread got me listening to Van Halen on the way to and home from a jazz gig today, (nothing funnier than showing up to a jazz singers' gig of standards and brushes, listening (loudly) to Van Halen II and 1984. HA!)

Anyway, what I hear on the outro fade of "Drop Dead Legs," is that it sounds like they tracked Ed's rhythm part with Al playing the part where he is riding the bell, and then tracked Ed's solo with Al playing hi hats. During each part Alex is interacting with each of Ed's respective parts. On so many of the solos it sounds like Ed and Al are "just" playing "duets" and they went back and added bass around them, the shit is pretty loose, (in a very cool way!)

Another one of those weird little VH anomalies, is at the end of either "Beautiful Girls" or "Women In Love," (I forget which) where somebody turns the time around coming out of a solo break, and then Roth corrects it on the vocal entrance. Could be a weird splice as well. There is tons of these little head scratchers to be found (if you want to.) GREAT music!

Gaddabout, re: not being able to play "Hot For Teacher?" Well, the intro would be pretty tough to play without the help of a Harley (I think?) I was told that the first sounds you hear are the low sounds of a Harley idling, and then Alex joins in a with the classic double bass shuffle (but you know that.) I actually use some stuff off of that tune to teach better students some double bass - RH independence stuff. Alex plays some great rock shuffles!

I could talk about VH highlights forever! Steve has told me some interesting stories about Van Halen's first tour, opening for Montrose (anyone else seen those Wolfgang's vault boots of that band? They were tearing it up!) and Journey. Sounds like it was a trip! I would have loved to have seen that.

And I'll say it again,
F A I R W A R N I N G
essential!!!

MSG
(good luck to Jimmy Iovine, I think he'll need it.)

[chris perra]

Intro to Hot for Teacher is all Simmons pads,.. He assigned a floor tom to a kick sound, and played double bass at the same time..
So there's a shuffle going on with the feet, and a triplet pattern similar to the ride pattern with the little skip pattern that he does in the intro..

Add the left hand pattern on the tom that comes after the double bass onslaught and u get the pattern.. It's not exactly the same as the ride plus the tom pattern , with the shuffle kick.. played just on a tom assigned with the kick sound, but it's close..

I read a "Head" magazine interview from Alex circa 1988 in which he explained the Simmons shift and that is how he did Hot for teacher.. No overdubs and no Harley according to him anyway... His sound guy preferred the Simmons stuff live.. Easier to get sounds and tuning ect.. He used to have all those toms in front just for show, but the only thing that was acoustic was the cymbals and snare for the 5150 tour haha

Thank God he kept his snare haha.. Although the album Balance had a sub par snare sound, think they were using the May miking setup back then..Not happening in my opinion..

OU812 is a killer drum album as well.. Alex Van Halen is one of my all time favorite drummers for sure.. I never liked his soloing, but no one comes close to the creativity and personality in rock drumming .. He's up there with Copeland and Bohnam to me.. In there respective genres..

Not many guys have been able to play whatever they want on serious hits,.. over a 20 year period.. 1984 has sooo many signature drum fills.. On par with Journey in the 80's

Such a killer must listen drummer..

[Pocketplayer]

Not many guys have been able to play whatever they want on serious hits,.. over a 20 year period.. 1984 has sooo many signature drum fills.. On par with Journey in the 80's

agreed...I've always felt Frontiers was a masterpiece of rock drumming...well designed parts...perfect feel for each song...Smith playing a role. I remember a friend at PIT at the time when Smith did a clinic and he said it was JUST Journey's drummer...Smith wasn't as well known then. Blew the class away! He couldn't stop talking about what he did.