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Anniversary: ‘5150’ Time at Texxas Jam!

July 19, 2016 —by VHND Leave a Comment

Sammy & Eddie at Texxas Jam, by Rick Gould

On this day in 1986, Van Halen headlined the 9th annual TEXXAS JAM at the Cotton Bowl in front of 72,000 rowdy fans. The bill included BTO, Keel, Krokus, Dio, and Loverboy.

VHND contributing writer Kevin Dodds,  author of  Edward Van Halen: A Definitive Biography  was there, and we think you’ll enjoy his recollection…

‘5150’ Time at Texxas Jam!

By Kevin Dodds

Van Halen’s triumphant 1986 performance at the Texxas Jam is a core component of my youth. The show represented a major victory for the rechristened “Van Hagar,” and allowed my brother and our friends to have an unforgettable experience.

1986 was a bit of a drag for my family. My father had been at the forefront of the savings and loan industry in Houston since the late 1960s, and had made a nice living as an executive accountant until the mid-80s. By their nature, savings and loans were already high-risk ventures, but deregulation in 1982 loosened rules that were already not strict enough and fomented a total collapse. Because of that, my father had no choice but to take a job in Dallas for several months, occasionally coming home to Houston on weekends before eventually exiting the S&L industry altogether.

My parents were fully onboard the Van Halen train since “(Oh) Pretty Woman” was released, and they allowed me and my brother to see the 1984 concert at The Summit in Houston. We waited for Van Halen’s spring 1986 concert announcement only to see no Texas dates on the first leg. As summer neared, the word was coming down that Van Halen would headline the annual Texxas Jam concert at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. The band had actually scheduled the tour around this particular date. At the time, we assumed that was our only chance to see them since it was the only Texas date on their itinerary at the time. Suddenly, my father’s situation struck us as a bit of a blessing. We were given the okay to attend the show and we stayed at the condo in Las Colinas that the bank had put my dad up in.

My friends Dave, Chris, and I were only 14, and my brother Brandon and his friend Gary were 18. Only Gary had ever attended a Texxas Jam before—the one in 1984 headlined by Rush and Ozzy at the Astrodome. Gary’s experience never quite made it to my parents. He told us about fights and drugs and concert t-shirts getting stolen. At least it had been air-conditioned. He gave us pointers about how to stay on our toes if necessary, all of which promptly went out the window.

When we arrived at the Cotton Bowl the morning of Saturday July 19, I was struck by how incredibly disorganized it seemed. This event had been going on for almost a decade at that point, yet initially felt like it was just barely scraped together in time for the gates to open. The point of entry that we used was chaotic. There were no clear queue lines, and instead, a mass of people pushing toward a weak barricade. We had to wait a good hour in heavy congestion for the gate to open. As we were waiting, I noticed a guy with a pair of binoculars around his neck. I thought to myself, “Oh, man. What a great idea! I’ll bet he’s really going to enjoy the show.” After a few minutes, I watched him unscrew one of the lenses and take a huge swig of whiskey. It was the first time I had ever seen a binocular flask.

Dozens of people waiting to make entry with us were already loaded before the first band even started, and some seemed to be hell bent on causing trouble. Two guys in front of us did not like the looks of each other and proceeded to have a fistfight just inside the gate. It was disturbing, and it wasn’t the only fight we saw that day. Hard rock and metal concerts of the 1980s were unfortunately often accompanied by what seemed to be alcohol-fueled violence. It is one part of the “good old days” no one really wants to remember clearly.

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Although we had arrived at 11am and made entry around noon, the temperature had already crept into the mid-90s. At festival concerts before 1990, but there was no such thing as cold water being sold in individual plastic bottles. Vendors served soda and beer in wax Coca-Cola cups. Water was to be found in the few original water fountains near the undersized and outdated restrooms at the Cotton Bowl. Fans also opened up the few available faucets around the facility, and the water the came out tasted like dirt and was anything but cold. Mostly, people just drank Coke and beer without much regard to their hydration. There was essentially nothing at all to eat at the venue other than popcorn and hotdogs.

We entered the stadium on the northeast side. This was perfect because we had initially planned to stake out seats as close to Eddie Van Halen’s side of the stage as possible. We made our way down and took up five seats on the lower deck of the Cotton Bowl which put us directly near stage left (the bandstand was on the north end of the field facing south).

At about the time we took our seats, Bachman Turner Overdrive (B.T.O.) took the stage. The recently reunited band was well received and performed popular classic rock staples like “Takin’ Care of Business” and “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet.” Better yet was the moment Leslie West of Mountain joined B.T.O. on stage for a killer rendition of the famous rocker “Mississippi Queen.”

The band Keel followed B.T.O. and was fun but largely forgettable, and their set marked a transitional moment in the day. The gates were now flowing freely and, in a short amount of time, the seats really began to fill up. The atmosphere went from being a little stressed to more of a relaxed summertime buzz as everyone settled in. The excitement level and party atmosphere started to take off, too. Several rows in front of us, we noticed that a group of people were sharing a joint right out of Up in Smoke — the largest example of its kind that anyone might ever hope to see. I was shocked that is was so out in the open. This was no baseball game.

We decided to hit the bathrooms first and found ourselves in an absolute mess of congestion in the stadium hallway. People were pushing and everyone was packed in too tight. An older guy that I assumed was a concert veteran blurted out, “Now, that’s what I wanted, to come and get sardined at the Cotton Bowl!” That was one of only a few times we used the restroom during the 11-hour concert. Honestly, we had not stayed hydrated enough to warrant going more often.

The Astroturf field inside the Cotton Bowl had been covered with a black tarp. The moment you stepped onto the field, you felt the temperature rise 10-15 degrees. Giant fire hoses from the front of the stage helped cool off the crowd.

Before Dio went on, the stadium erupted into a classic Texxas Jam “cup war.” All of the wax soft drink and beer cups that had built up throughout the day made perfect small projectiles when crushed into a ball. The war started between two adjacent sections but soon devolved into a free-for-all. For about ten minutes, wadded up cups flew from the lower deck to the upper deck and from the upper deck to the field. At about that time, a stadium announcer declared that 72,000 fans had shown up that day.

Our excitement about seeing Dio was tempered by the push of the crowd. My brother and his friend quickly tired of watching out for us. We enjoyed Dio’s set, but it was like watching a concert while wrestling with a hundred people in 110-degree heat. At the end of Dio’s set, my brother told us that they were moving up to try and get in front of Edward. We wanted to, but we were not up to it at all. In fact, we’d had damn near all we could take already. The sun was near setting and we had a decision to make. We left my brother and his friend on the floor, and the three of us moved into an open bank of seats in the front row of the section we had been in all day. We ended up about 75 feet from Eddie’s side of the stage.

Before the band came on, two gigantic 5150 tapestries the size of small office buildings were unfurled on the stage scaffolding. The wait for Van Halen to take the stage was excruciating. We were exhausted from the day and we were dehydrated to an extent, but there was absolutely no opportunity for us to get anything to drink between Dio and Van Halen. My friends did not get to see the 1984 show like I had, and after two years of listening to me go on about that concert, they were more than ready for the show to start. The wait just seemed to go on and on. About fifteen minutes after sunset, the stage lights finally came up and the sound of Ed’s guitar came pouring out of the PA.

The moment that the band took the stage was broadcast live on Q102, a now defunct Dallas rock station. Legendary disc jockey Doug “Redbeard” Hill laughed up their fashion sense by teasing Eddie about his board shorts and calling Michael Anthony a “canary” for dressing in all yellow. As the band made their entrance, Redbeard exclaimed, “The place is in pandemonium! PANDEMONIUM!” The band hit the stage jamming away on one chord to set get their sound together and set the tone. After a minute or so, Hagar yelled out “HELLO, TEXAS!!!” and Van Halen broke into “You Really Got Me” for the set opener.

Listen to Redbeard describe Van Halen’s entrance here:

From the first second of the first song, it was obvious that the band was overly pumped, primed, and playing in perfect form. The crowd reception was amazing and the sound was excellent. Sammy Hagar was a veteran of the Texxas Jam concert series, so when the band went into Hagar’s “One Way to Rock” for the second song, it was well received by the crowd.

However, few other songs hit like the third tune, “Summer Nights.” Hearing that particular song dead in the middle of the summer of 1986 at a huge stadium with the sunset still barely trailing off was monumentally special. Van Halen had just begun to dip into the 5150 album, and “Get Up” followed. Alex took his drum solo and the band followed with five more songs from 5150 including an incredible rendition of the title track.

At the time, I did not lament the lack of Roth-era tunes, although they were mightily absent with only “Panama” and “Ain’t Talkin ‘Bout Love” representing everything that had come before Hagar. As the concert played out, we stood there wide-eyed and excited enjoying every single second of the show. My friend Dave scratched the set list into his tour book with his fingernail as the show went on.

Edward’s guitar solo that night may very well have been one of the finest he has ever performed. Ed was certainly at the peak of his powers from 1984 to 1986, but this solo was particularly special and a bit unique. When Edward began his guitar solo, he took a seat on the stage to play some quieter stuff. However, where he would normally begin with the piece known as “316,” Ed played a version of Beethoven’s piano masterpiece “Fur Elise” on guitar. At the time, it was one of the few pieces of classical music that I was familiar with, and I recall being astounded at the version that Edward tapped off. Later on, I read that the decision for Ed to add the piece to his solo resulted from an argument that Ed had with Alex over the key of the song. To prove Alex wrong, Edward purchased the sheet music from a local music store while on tour which piqued Edward’s fascination with the piece. (There are only two documented incidents in which Edward performed “Fur Elise” during his 1986 solos.)

The remaining five songs of the show featured three non-Van Halen tunes: “I Can’t Drive 55,” “Wild Thing,” and “Rock ‘N Roll.” “Why Can’t This Be Love?” was in retrospect an odd choice for the second to last song, but it was a hit single at the time. Closing with a Led Zeppelin tune was an excellent idea, however, and the crowd ate it up.

When the 11-hour concert was over, the chaos and disorganization that marked the early hours of the show returned, except now it was dark. Although we successfully met back up with my brother and his friend, we nearly became separated several times while simply trying to find the car. During that walk, the state of my dehydration was serious and all I could think of was finding a Coca-Cola somewhere. It was late and convenience stores were not as ubiquitous as they are now. Finally, we found a gas station where I was able to buy a Coke through a small service window. I still have the Coke bottle to this day. I wrote on it: “Texxas Jam 86. This Coke saved my life.”

To quote the late, great Ronnie James Dio: “It’s an event. It’s like a Woodstock situation. ‘I was there at Texxas Jam number nine [1986]. And I survived it!’”

Author Kevin Dodds wrote   Edward Van Halen: A Definitive Biography , which is currently on sale for $5 off at Van Halen Store. Order it  here .

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“When I first played Jump for the guys nobody wanted anything to do with it. Dave said I was a guitar hero and I shouldn’t be playing keyboards”: The story of Van Halen’s 1984 – the Flying V, the synths and the end of the David Lee Roth era

Creative differences led to Roth’s departure the following year, but 1984 found the band firing on all cylinders, as Eddie Van Halen embraced his pop sensibilities while retaining the musical adventurism that made him the greatest of all time

George Orwell’s novel 1984 envisioned a dystopian future where totalitarian governments ruled the world, and the average person’s attempts to enjoy even the slightest personal pleasure were patrolled and punished by the Thought Police in service of Big Brother. 

However, when mankind finally reached that symbolic year, the prevailing atmosphere was more of a hedonistic non-stop party than a period of peril. We have the power of the mighty Van Halen to thank for much of that. 

Considered by many – including Eddie Van Halen himself – as the band’s masterpiece, 1984 was one of Van Halen’s best-selling albums and one of the best-selling rock albums of the entire ’80s. 

It has earned RIAA Diamond certification for surpassing 10 million units sold – a feat the band only matched with their 1978 debut album, with the two perfectly bookending the beginning and end of Van Halen’s classic era with David Lee Roth fronting the band.

Clocking in at a lean 33 minutes and 22 seconds, 1984 was, as the saying goes, all killer and no filler. Even the best-selling album of all-time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller , can’t make that boast (does anyone even remember Baby Be Mine and The Lady in My Life ?). 1984 produced an impressive string of four hit singles, with Jump delivering Van Halen’s only Number 1 charting hit single in the band’s entire career. 

Panama and I’ll Wait both peaked at Number 13, and Hot for Teacher came in at a not-too-shabby Number 56. Even the album’s “deep” tracks – Top Jimmy , Drop Dead Legs , Girl Gone Bad and House of Pain – were scorchers too hot for the Top 40, but found a welcoming home on more adventurous FM station playlists. 

The only outlier is the album’s title track, but Ed’s solo synth performance perfectly set the mood as a brief overture that boldly introduced Van Halen’s brave new world.

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Future Control

With 40 years of hindsight, it’s tempting to look back and conclude that the phenomenal popularity of 1984 was primarily due to it being the perfect album released at the perfect time.

However, its success also benefited significantly from several years of extremely hard work leading up to its release, along with a series of high-profile events that brought Van Halen prominently into the public’s awareness.

Van Halen staked a claim as the biggest band in the world when they headlined “Heavy Metal Day” on May 29, 1983, at the US Festival, performing in front of an estimated audience of 375,000

During the early ’80s, Van Halen had become one of the world’s biggest touring acts. The band sold out every single one of its 83 shows in the United States and Canada on its 1982 Hide Your Sheep tour, and in early 1983 they made their first ever appearances in South America during a month-long leg that introduced the band to thousands of rabid fans.

A few months later, Van Halen staked a claim as the biggest band in the world when they headlined “Heavy Metal Day” on May 29, 1983, at the US Festival, performing in front of an estimated audience of 375,000 – Van Halen’s largest audience ever. Their fee for the US Festival gig was $1.5 million, setting a new world record at the time.

Van Halen was also experiencing a significant upward trajectory in record sales. 1984 ’s predecessor, Diver Down , was a commercial success thanks in large part to the hit status of the 1982 single (Oh) Pretty Woman , which peaked at Number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.

The only previous time that Van Halen cracked the Top 20 was when Dance the Night Away reached Number 15, and that was all the way back in 1979. From their debut effort onward, each album that Van Halen released charted higher than its predecessor, with Diver Down peaking at Number 3 compared to Fair Warning ’s top position at Number 5.

Ed’s charming, down-to-earth demeanor won over many new fans who would have been shocked by the raucous atmosphere at a typical Van Halen concert, let alone the band’s backstage antics

Van Halen’s tour, album and single statistics were notable, but what truly catapulted the band into the public limelight was Ed’s increasing celebrity status, even though the guitarist never sought the spotlight and was never comfortable with being called a rock star.

His marriage to popular television actress Valerie Bertinelli led to appearances on mainstream prime time shows like Entertainment Tonight , making the Van Halen name a household word. Ed’s charming, down-to-earth demeanor won over many new fans who would have been shocked by the raucous atmosphere at a typical Van Halen concert, let alone the band’s backstage antics.

But perhaps the biggest turning point that made Ed a bona fide celebrity was his guest appearance on Michael Jackson’s 1982 album Thriller , on Beat It . Jackson wanted to record a rock song, and he knew that getting the world’s most popular guitarist to play a solo would introduce and endear the singer to an entirely new audience. 

What Ed didn’t realize at the time was that his performance on Thriller would similarly cause Jackson’s fans to notice Van Halen. Beat It went on to top the charts worldwide, and those 33 seconds of shredding guitar bliss became an immortal symbol of the most enduring cultural crossover of pop, R&B and rock.

Eddie didn’t want his name to appear on Thriller ’s credits, mainly to keep the session a secret from his bandmates, but there was no mistaking who performed that solo. 

Despite his request to remain incognito, record company and musician’s union agreements led to his name appearing four times in the liner notes, and his wife Valerie and engineer Donn Landee, who had recorded every Van Halen to date, also were thanked for good measure.

It didn’t matter anyways as David Lee Roth immediately knew it was Ed the first time he heard Beat It blaring from a car stereo in a 7-Eleven parking lot. 

Brave New World

Edward Van Halen’s creative inspiration increasingly grew during the early ’80s as he broadened his horizons into new musical styles and techniques and explored instruments beyond the guitar.

While he was initially pleased with Van Halen’s fifth album, Diver Down , he wasn’t happy with the rapid-fire approach to the sessions, which were completed in a mad rush over a period of 12 days. 

On the band’s previous album, Fair Warning , Ed had finally become comfortable with spending considerably more time recording and crafting multiple guitar tracks in the studio while also experimenting with a broader palette of guitar tones. He felt that the slam-bang live performance blueprint used on Diver Down was a regression to the band’s first three albums, and the outcome left him creatively unsatisfied.

“I was always butting heads with (producer) Ted Templeman about what makes a good record,” Van Halen said in 2014. “ Diver Down was a turning point for me because half of it was cover tunes. When we made Fair Warning I spent a lot more time with [engineer] Donn Landee working on my sound. I became much more involved in the recording process. 

“To me, Fair Warning was more true to what I am and what I believe Van Halen is. We’re a hard rock band, and we were an album band. I like odd things. I was not a pop guy, even though I have a good sense of how to write a pop song. When we started work on 1984 I wanted to ram it up Ted’s poop chute and show him that we could make a great record without any cover tunes and do it our way.”

In order to be able to do things his way, Ed took dominant control of the creative reins by building a professional multitrack studio at home in 1982. Initially, the plan was to build a studio for recording demos, but as work progressed the guitarist realized that, with Landee working by his side, he could record Van Halen’s next album there.

I did not set out to build a full-blown studio. I just wanted a better place to put my music together so I could show it to the guys Eddie Van Halen

“I did not set out to build a full-blown studio,” Ed admitted. “I just wanted a better place to put my music together so I could show it to the guys. I never imagined that it would turn into what it did until we started building it. Slowly it turned into a lot more than I originally envisioned. 

“Everybody else was even more surprised than I was, especially Ted. They thought I was just building a little demo room. Then Donn said, ‘No man! We’re going to make records up here!’ Donn and I had grown really close and had a common vision. Everybody was afraid that Donn and I were taking control. Well… yes! That’s exactly what we did, and the results proved that we weren’t idiots.”

Ed’s new home studio, named “5150” after the California law code for taking a mentally disordered person into custody when that person is considered a danger to others, was completed by the end of 1982. 

In a recent interview with Greg Renoff for Tape Op magazine, Landee recalls that the first recording session took place on January 2, 1983, with Ed on synthesizer and his brother Alex Van Halen on drums. 

Although Ed said in his 2014 Guitar World interview that he didn’t want to record cover tunes, ironically the very first song ever recorded at 5150 was a cover of Wilson Pickett’s In the Midnight Hour . 

It’s very likely that this was a calculated move on Ed’s part to appease David Lee Roth and Templeman, perhaps hoping to convince them that the studio was indeed up to the task after they worked there and heard the results. The fact that the song was never released and is still locked up in 5150’s vaults suggests that Ed may have never actually wanted to record it in the first place.

However, Ed boldly revealed his hand with his next move. Over the previous few years, the guitarist had worked on a synth-dominated song that would later be named Jump after Roth wrote the lyrics, and with the studio up and running he recorded an instrumental demo of the tune, performed on an Oberheim OB-Xa synthesizer with accompaniment from Al on drums and Michael Anthony on bass. 

“When I first played Jump for the guys nobody wanted to have anything to do with it,” Ed said. “Dave said that I was a guitar hero and I shouldn’t be playing keyboards. But when Ted heard the demo and said it was a stone-cold hit, everyone started to like it more. Ted only cared about Jump . He really didn’t care much about the rest of the record and just wanted that one hit.”

The band worked diligently recording new material for most of 1983, with the exception of the month of May, which they spent preparing for their appearance at the US Festival. Ed particularly reveled in having “unchained” freedom to experiment whenever and for as long as he pleased.

This included some explorations he wouldn’t have tried at a regular studio, like when he backed up his 1970 Lamborghini Miura S near 5150’s doors and miked its mighty roar. Initially intended for use during the chorus of Jump , the Lamborghini’s forceful growl eventually found its immortal home on the bridge of Panama .

Necessary tools for the party

In addition to equipping 5150 with a solid selection of classic studio gear that included a Universal Audio console purchased from United Western Studios, 3M M56 16-track tape machine and various items of high-end outboard gear such as Eventide Harmonizers, Teletronix LA-2A and UREI 1176 limiters, Lexicon Prime Time digital delay and EMT140ST plate reverb, Ed also added a wide variety of new instruments to his creative arsenal.

Ed had become enamored with the Oberheim OB-Xa polyphonic synthesizer and its updated version the OB-8, and they played a major role in three of the album’s songs. 

Keyboards had actually prominently appeared on all three of Van Halen’s previous albums – a Wurlitzer electric piano on And the Cradle Will Rock… ( Women and Children First ), an Electro-Harmonix Mini-Synthesizer on Saturday Afternoon in the Park and One Foot Out the Door ( Fair Warning ) and a Mini Moog on Dancing in the Street ( Diver Down ) – but they were distorted and usually employed as ersatz guitars. With 1984 , Jump and I’ll Wait , there was no mistaking that Ed was playing synths.

However, Ed was still a guitarist at heart and to his core, and he made many new additions to his guitar collection. The most notable newcomer was a rare vintage 1958 Gibson Flying V that Ed bought from Dan Martin of Missouri’s St. Charles Guitar Exchange – the first of many vintage guitars Ed would buy from the dealer over the years. 

The V was Van Halen’s primary guitar on the album, used to record Hot For Teacher, Girl Gone Bad , the main riff of Drop Dead Legs and, as recently discovered, quite possibly for Jump [researcher Allan Garber has uncovered a behind-the-bridge pick scrape in the isolated guitar track, corresponding sonically with the V’s tailpiece configuration]. 

Ed put the Ripley to good use on Top Jimmy, using an open D7 tuning (DADACD, low to high) and playing harmonics that bounced across the stereo soundscape

The guitarist had also acquired a few of Steve Ripley’s stereo guitars , featuring hexaphonic pickups (essentially each string had its own individual pickup) and panning controls for each string.

Ed put the Ripley to good use on Top Jimmy , using an open D7 tuning (DADACD, low to high) and playing harmonics that bounced across the stereo soundscape. This is probably the song called Ripley on a Warner Bros. memo that Ted Templeman wrote on August 23, 1983. 

Ed later recycled the title for another song he wrote for The Wild Life soundtrack since it also used the Ripley guitar. That song later became Blood and Fire on Van Halen’s 2012 A Different Kind of Truth album.

Photos taken at 5150 during this period show a Veilette-Citron Shark baritone guitar, but apparently any songs where he might have used it didn’t make the final cut on the album. That Warner Bros. memo lists a song called Baritone Slide – very likely an unreleased or unfinished track featuring this instrument.

Eddie Van Halen had officially publicly retired the Frankenstein starting with the tour in support of 1984, but it’s plausible that he used it for one last hurrah

Ed had given conflicting reports over the years about the use of his original Frankenstein guitar or his Kramer 5150 to record the album. He had officially publicly retired the Frankenstein starting with the tour in support of 1984 , but it’s plausible that he used it for one last hurrah.

However, Ed also had a habit of immediately putting new guitars to use once they orbited into his universe. As the 5150 became his favorite main guitar on albums recorded for the remainder of the ’80s, he may have played it on 1984 . But one confirmed constant throughout all of Van Halen’s first six albums was the use of his 1968 Marshall Super Lead 100-watt head with its voltage reduced via a Variac. 

“I had my old faithful Marshall head and bare wooden 4x12 cabinet facing off into a corner,” he recalled. “Al was in the other corner, and we set up some baffles to have isolation between my guitar and the drums. Because the space was so limited, Alex had to use a Simmons kit except for the snare.” 

Ed employed effects much more sparingly than he had on previous Van Halen albums. Most notably, he used a pair of Eventide H910 or H949 Harmonizers that were slightly detuned and individually panned left and right to provide a stereo spread and subtle chorus effect on many guitar tracks. 

Panama made good use of rhythmic delay, and the studio’s EMT plate reverb was employed tastefully on that song as well as Girl Gone Bad and House of Pain . However Ed’s usual MXR flanger and phaser pedals are absent.

Ministry of Truth

The finished product exceeded all expectations and then some. 1984 was a document of a band at its prime, where years of relentless touring had made their sound tight and their improvisational communication almost psychic.

Ed’s songwriting talents had expanded and grown, with his knack for pop hooks balanced by ambitious excursions inspired by progressive rock and fusion jazz. 

Perhaps the most surprising element of 1984 is the fact that the first note of guitar is heard after more than two minutes have passed. This was partly the result of Templeman’s late comment that he wished the album had a song called 1984 . 

Landee realized that he had about 45 minutes of Ed improvising solo on the Oberheim that could be edited down to an instrumental intro, and voila! He had his wish. The 1984 synth instrumental made the perfect dramatic statement and lead in to Jump .

Jump was pure pop perfection that fit right in with the synth-crazy mid-’80s, but Ed’s dynamic guitar solo was the secret weapon behind its success, giving Van Halen a competitive crossover advantage with a hard rock audience that would never be caught dead listening to groups like the Human League, Depeche Mode or Soft Cell. 

Panama may be the ultimate classic Van Halen tune, with Roth’s raunchy “fast car and faster girl” lyrics perfectly capturing the So Cal party vibe that made the band so irresistible from day one. It’s also one of two songs on 1984 that were inspired by AC/DC, which was not a bad move considering how Back in Black had already become the best-selling hard rock album of all-time.

Drop Dead Legs was inspired by Black in Black... It’s almost a jazz version of Back in Black – I put a lot more notes in there

The infectious, bouncy energy of Top Jimmy made it a strong contender for a fifth single or at least a hell of a B-side. However, it was probably held back by the difficulty of switching from open D7 tuning to standard for the solo’s delirious whammy bar workout, which prevented Van Halen from ever performing the song live. 

Drop Dead Legs similarly should have been a hit, partly thanks to its relentless pile-driving Michael Anthony/Alex Van Halen rhythm section groove.

“That was inspired by Black in Black ,” Ed admitted. “I was grooving to that beat, although Drop Dead Legs is slower. Whatever I listen to somehow is filtered through me and comes out differently. It’s almost a jazz version of Back in Black – I put a lot more notes in there.” It was never played live until the final 2015 tour.

Jump and its supporting music video may have made Van Halen seem harmless and cuddly, but Hot for Teacher was the opposite, exposing the band as the bad boy party animals they really were.

Alex Van Halen’s galloping Simmons drum intro sounds like a nitro-fueled dragster revving up before he switches to a Billy Cobham-meets-Buddy Rich swing that pushes Ed’s hot-rodded tapping into overdrive.

Roth’s schoolboy-in-heat lyrics are given extra punch and verve by Anthony’s high-pitched harmonies, while Ed keeps things loose and raunchy with ZZ Top-inspired bluesy finger-plucked riffs.

I’ll Wait was the album’s other synth-driven hit, with the yin of Ed’s sophisticated keyboard chords and a chorus with smooth yacht-rock lyrics penned by the Doobie Brothers’ Michael McDonald counterbalanced by the yang of Roth’s semi-goofball rants about “heartbreak in overdrive” and “such good photography!”

The guitar solo similarly provides a contrast between Ed’s melodic phrasing and fusion-esque flourishes with explosive vibrato bar noise.

When the album’s final sequence was being prepared in late 1983, no-one had any inkling that the band’s classic era with David Lee Roth would soon come to a close, yet the final two songs on 1984 delivered about as perfect a send-off as any fan could ask for.

Girl Gone Bad is simply epic and the closest thing to a progressive rock song that the band ever recorded. Ed delivered a tour-de-force performance with dynamic shifts in emotion from elegiac tapped harmonics to dark, drama-filled riffs. This was Van Halen’s equivalent to Led Zeppelin’s Achilles Last Stand with the added bonus of a truly blazing Van Halen solo heavily inspired by Allan Holdsworth.

Dating back to Van Halen’s early club days (demos were recorded in 1976 with Gene Simmons and in early 1977 for Warner Bros.), House of Pain was the only song not completely written fresh for the album, although the only element that remained from the early versions was the song’s main riff.

“I guess nobody really liked it the way that it originally was,” Ed said. “The intro and verses are completely different, and the fast part in the middle for the solo and the groove at the end are almost like entirely new songs.”

House of Pain showed that Van Halen had grown and evolved considerably over the preceding seven to eight years without losing any of their hunger, intensity and power.

Gin-scented tears

All good things must come to an end. They were too good to last. Always leave the people wanting more. These may be overused clichés, but it’s difficult to think of better ways to describe the aftermath of the 1984 album, its ambitious supporting tour and the eventual breakup of Van Halen’s classic David Lee Roth lineup.

Did success spoil Van Halen? Yes, and no. Eddie Van Halen’s ever-growing musical ambitions and desire to pursue different sonic paths collided with David Lee Roth’s incessant adoration of the spotlight and aspirations to pursue a career as a movie star.

With two diametrically opposed forces in conflict, the tensions inevitably sucked all the air out of the room until no one could comfortably breathe. Trying to outdo 1984 ’s success would have been an unfathomable challenge for any band, so it sadly made sense for Van Halen to end that chapter at the top of their game.

Van Halen fans both new and old maybe didn’t get exactly what they wanted, but instead they got what they needed. The Van Halen brothers and Anthony joined forces with Sammy Hagar and his growing legion of fans to take the band in a different and arguably more progressive direction it couldn’t have tried with Roth.

5150 didn’t reach the staggering commercial sales heights of 1984 , but it became Van Halen’s third all-time best-selling album with 6x Platinum certification. It was also the first Van Halen album to finally reach the #1 spot on the charts. [ 1984 likely also would have achieved that feat, but it had the disadvantage of going head-to-head with the best-selling album of all-time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller , which was in the beginning of several extended periods where it completely dominated the charts for several months.]

The Van Halen brothers and Anthony joined forces with Sammy Hagar and his growing legion of fans to take the band in a different and arguably more progressive direction

Meanwhile, Roth put together one of rock’s greatest supergroups, recruiting the extraordinary talents of guitarist Steve Vai, bassist Billy Sheehan and drummer Gregg Bissonette to keep the rip-roaring party going full blast.

Roth’s first full-length album Eat ‘Em and Smile was nowhere near as commercially successful as the albums he recorded with Van Halen, but with Vai and Sheehan’s instrumental pyrotechnics and Roth’s inimitable character it kept the white-hot flame burning very brightly for classic Van Halen fans.

The split resulted in a Dave vs. Sammy argument as incessant as it is meaningless. For some fans, the change truly was the best of both worlds, but it didn’t last. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. Van Halen had won the victory over itself.

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Chris is the co-author of Eruption - Conversations with Eddie Van Halen. He is a 40-year music industry veteran who started at Boardwalk Entertainment (Joan Jett, Night Ranger) and Roland US before becoming a guitar journalist in 1991. He has interviewed more than 600 artists, written more than 1,400 product reviews and contributed to Jeff Beck’s Beck 01: Hot Rods and Rock & Roll and Eric Clapton’s Six String Stories.

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How Eddie Van Halen Stopped Sammy Hagar From Retiring

R ocker Sammy Hagar was all smiles when he recently received his very own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. While speaking about the honor, he recalled a time when he was about to retire from making music completely, and how his late friend Eddie Van Halen swooped in and stopped him from calling it quits.

He explained , “Then comes Van Halen when I was ready to retire. I hate to use that word because I swear it’s not in my DNA. But I was ready to say, ‘You know, I’m going to quit for a while. I’m going to stop. I’ve been touring my whole life.’ This is 1985, you know. I just came off a major tour, platinum albums in a row, you know. I was rich and famous. So, I thought, ‘Why am I going to keep doing this?’ And then Eddie [Van Halen] calls. That was a defining moment.”

Before he became a Van Halen frontman, Hagar was already famous as part of the band Montrose in the 1970s and had a successful solo career. Later on, a spat with Eddie became another defining moment in his career. Hagar was kicked out of the band in 1996 after he and Eddie had some creative differences. Eventually, Hagar rejoined Van Halen in 2003 and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with them in 2007.

While many people know Hagar for his work in Van Halen, he also admitted that his time with Montrose was very important to him. He shared, “Joining Montrose was a big step from playing clubs, someone else’s music, to writing my own music and making my own album of original material and then going on tour all over the world. So, that was a big moment. I mean, that was a defining moment. I learned everything from Ronnie Montrose. How to play on stage, how to write songs, how to do all that.”

At the star ceremony, singer John Mayer was there to talk about his friend Hagar and shared why Hagar and his music are so timeless. He joked “Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, Sammy Hagar is having way more fun than you.”

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Sammy Hagar on Rocking with Van Halen, Building His Cabo Wabo Empire, and Why Live Music Will Be The ‘Ultimate Savior of Art’

Contrary to what you might have heard in a certain song, there are, in fact, quite a few ways to rock. And few people know that better than Sammy Hagar .

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“I truly believe that live music is probably going to be the ultimate savior of art,” Hagar says. “You can have all this AI stuff, you can do so many things with computers, but then when you see a Bob Dylan-type walk out with a guitar and a harmonica around his neck and start singing about something that matters, with heart and soul and truth in it… that’s always going to be valuable to people.

Hagar’s fortunes then unexpectedly shifted into the stratosphere. After the departure of frontman David Lee Roth from Van Halen, guitarist Eddie Van Halen (a Montrose fan of long standing) asked Hagar to join the band in his place. It was an unlikely marriage on paper — Hagar’s more serious musicianship and unpretentious everyman appeal couldn’t have been further removed from Roth’s preening wildman persona — but phenomenally successful. From 1986 to 1995, the Hagar-fronted Van Halen released four No. 1 LPs, each going platinum several times over.

Leaving the group was rough for Hagar, who suddenly found himself more famous than ever, but somehow needing to prove himself anew. 

Of course, Hagar’s post-Van Halen solo ventures were plenty successful: he notched rock radio hits with 1997’s “Little White Lie” and 1999’s “Mas Tequila.” But it was yet another band — the supergroup Chickenfoot, with guitarist Joe Satriani, former Van Halen bandmate Michael Anthony and the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith — that saw Hagar return to the uppermost reaches of the Billboard charts in the 2000s. 

“Not to beat my chest, but I’m a real easy guy to work with,” Hagar says. “I really don’t have an ego when it comes to music. I’m always better with other people, I’ll be the first to admit. I personally know that when I would write songs with Eddie or Joe, they were better than what I could do myself.”

It was that same collaborative spirit (pun very much intended) that saw Hagar notch one of his most unexpected coups starting in the 1990s. After falling in love with Baja California while on vacation, Hagar teamed with a local developer and opened up his own bar in Cabo San Lucas. Eventually, that one bar blossomed into a multimillion-dollar beverage line and a chain of satellite Cabo Wabo Cantinas and Sammy’s Beach Bar and Grill locations across California, Nevada, Ohio and Hawaii. Long before the likes of Jay-Z and Rihanna made these sorts of ventures de rigueur for pop stars, Hagar was already busy building his own south-of-the-border business empire.

And just as it was in his earliest days, as a kid in Fontana who saw Elvis on television and immediately wanted to pick up a guitar, that act of creation remains the central driver for Hagar, no matter the venue or the audience. 

“At a certain point, I decided I didn’t want to be on a record label anymore,” Hagar says of his later career. “Music was changing, radio wasn’t playing my type of music, MTV was gone, so it was like: ‘Wow, where are you gonna go?’ So I said I don’t care, I’m just gonna make my own records. A record like [2000’s] ‘Ten 13,’ or [2006’s] ‘Livin’ It Up,’ those are great records. The best record I ever made in my life was the last one: [2022’s] ‘Crazy Times.’ I’d argue with anyone. It’s right up there with [solo breakthrough] ‘Standing Hampton.’ And it sold like 70,000 copies, and that’s fine. I make records these days because I get creative ideas and I can’t just sit on them. I have to go hit ‘record.’

TIPSHEET WHAT: Sammy Hagar gets a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame WHEN: 11:30 a.m. April 30 WHERE: 6212 Hollywood Blvd. WEB: walkoffame.com

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