The Van Halen David Lee Roth years: Their best albums

The Van Halen David Lee Roth years: Their best albums
by Ed Masley – Jun. 11, 2012 04:07 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com

David Lee Roth was the court jester hard rock so desperately needed when the first Van Halen album hit the streets in the winter of ’78, the quintessential onstage foil to Eddie Van Halen’s awe-inspiring finger-tapping pyrotechnics.

There are those — we’ll call them enemies of rock — who favor Roth’s replacement, Sammy Hagar, citing qualities as seemingly superfluous as “vocal range.” But Roth in his prime was the life of the party-rock party, an entertaining force of nature whose clearly cartoonish charisma did as much to make Van Halen stand out on the hard-rock landscape as Eddie’s revolutionary playing ever did.

It was a match made in headbanging heaven.

With Diamond Dave back on the tour bus and Van Halen headed to Phoenix for a US Airways Center date on Saturday, June 16, it seems as good a time as any to size up the Van Halen Roth-era legacy, ranking the albums in order of greatness. But here’s the thing: They’re all great albums. Some are just greater than others, with that first one kind of towering above it all.

1. “Van Halen” (1978)

They dive right in with a four-song winning streak of songs that still loom large in the Van Halen legacy. After setting the tone with the pulsating, bass-driven swagger of “Runnin’ With the Devil,” they turn around and hit you with a finger-tapping neo-classical excursion called “Eruption,” have their way with a rock and roll classic by the Kinks (“You Really Got Me”) and arrive at their first-album peak with “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love.”

Roth really hits his stride on that one — right around the time he delivers the line, “Yeah, you may have all you want, baby. But I got somethin’ you need.” Other obvious highlights range from “Jamie’s Cryin’” to Roth’s playful rendition of Chicago bluesman John Brim’s “Ice Cream Man.”

But even the songs that don’t immediately spring to mind can sound pretty amazing after all these years, from “I’m the One,” a scorching blues explosion with an unexpected doo-wop breakdown, to “Atomic Punk,” a song so good it inspired the naming of a popular Van Halen tribute band.

Here’s how Rolling Stone began a review of the album at the time: “Mark my words: in three years, Van Halen is going to be fat and self-indulgent and disgusting, and they’ll follow Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin right into the toilet.”

Or … this album would go on to sell more than 10 million copies in the States alone while the next five albums took them to the Top 10 on the Billboard album charts.

2. “Diver Down” (1982)

A person could point to the fact that no fewer than five of the songs on “Diver Down,” including both Top 40 hits, are covers as a sign that they’d arrived at something of a dry spell, creatively speaking. That three of the remaining seven tracks are instrumental fragments also speaks to that conclusion. But what does it matter when the end result feels like the soundtrack to the greatest hard-rock party of the early ’80s?

Like the first Van Halen album, “Diver Down” includes a classic Kinks song, “Where Have All the Good Times Gone,” which features crunchier guitar and a far less wistful vocal than the Kinks original. Roy Orbison’s “(Oh) Pretty Woman” and the Motown classic “Dancing in the Streets” were the album’s big hits for a reason, while the record-closing, a cappella “Happy Trails” is the sort of silliness the world had rarely seen from an arena-rock attraction since Pete Townshend got all serious post-”Tommy.”

And there’s no shame in the songs they did write, either, with the raucous yet melodic “Hang ‘Em High” and “Secrets,” a mid-tempo ode to a restless girl with the rhythm of the road, emerging as obvious standouts.

3. “Women and Children First” (1980)

Their third album kicks off with two of the best Van Halen singles ever. “And the Cradle Will Rock” is a slow-burning rocker with Diamond Dave throwing his weight behind the youth vote in the battle of the generation gap. His delivery is brilliant, starting with the way he phrases, “Well, they say it’s kinda frightenin’ how this younger generation swings” and peaking on his deadpan imitation of a nagging dad (“Have you seen Junior’s grades??”), which sets the stage for one of Eddie’s most straightforward gems of a guitar lead.

And that still leaves room, amazingly enough, for Roth to kick it up a notch on “Everybody Wants Some!!,” which leaves no question as to what that “some” would be on its way to one of Diamond Dave’s most memorable monologues (in which the best line is either “I like the way the line runs up the back of the stockings” or “No, no, no, no; don’t take ‘em off”). No one does lecherous better than that.

Other standouts include the breakneck-paced “Loss of Control,” with its appropriately unhinged chorus hook racing the runaway drums to a reckless conclusion, and “Take Your Whiskey Home,” which starts off as a slinky, unplugged country-blues but shifts gears into something more appropriate for rocking the arenas of the day, complete with finger-tapping flash from Eddie.

4. “1984″ (1984)

This is where Van Halen hit the mainstream hard, embracing a more synthesizer-driven sound on “Jump,” their first and only hit that ever topped the Hot 100. Roth’s delivery is great as he handles the shift into poppier waters while bringing his own eccentric charm and personality to the proceedings. And despite the heavy synthesizer presence, Eddie squeezes out some killer licks before passing the spotlight to the synths mid-solo.

“I’ll Wait,” the album’s second single, also favors synthesizers over the crunchy, distorted guitar sound of their reckless youth. But the other hits put those guitars front and center. “Hot for Teacher” is a playful ode to, well, exactly what the title would suggest, giving Alex Van Halen a turn in the spotlight on the opening drum solo before his brother fires off another classic finger-tapping lead. But “Hot for Teacher” works best as a showcase for Roth and his cartoon libido. You can almost hear him smiling when he hits the line “I think of all the education that I’ve missed/But then my homework was never quite like this.”

Roth’s shining moment here, though, is unquestionably “Panama,” the album’s most exhilarating rock track, featuring what may be Diamond Dave’s most smile-inducing monologue, delivered from the front seat of his car. “I reach down between my legs and…” Dramatic pause. “ease the seat back.” Classic comic timing.

5. “Van Halen II” (1979)

The album-launching take on “You’re No Good” is not among their finest hours as a cover band, but the originals make up for it, beginning with the second track. Hitting the streets at the height of the disco revolution, “Dance the Night Away” made the light-up dance floor safe for rock and roll, complete with cowbell. It may be their poppiest moment, with apologies to “Jump,” which could be why it charted so much higher than the other singles on their first four albums.

“Beautiful Girls” is an equally danceable funk-rock track with an equally memorable melody and some key personality-driven asides from Roth (who says, “Sit down right here” then follows with a high-pitched squeal of “Ooh la la” before ending the song with the sound of a kiss).

Other highlights include the grittier-than-usual “D.O.A.” and “Somebody Get Me A Doctor,” which features Roth yelping his way through “You better call up the ambulance/I’m deep in shock” with an obvious grin over Eddie’s metallic guitar riff.

6. “Fair Warning” (1981)

Perhaps their hardest-rocking album, “Fair Warning” gets off to a brilliant start with “Mean Streets,” where Eddie’s harmonic indulgence gives way to a tough-talking vocal from Roth (“At night I walk this stinkin’ street past the crazies on my block/And I see the same old faces and I hear that same old talk”).

And the material is uniformly strong throughout, especially “So This is Love?,” “Push Come to Shove” and “Sinner’s Swing.” “Unchained” features Roth at his goofiest (“Hey man, that suit is you”). And Michael Anthony helps them venture into post-Chic funk with impressive results on “Push Comes to Shove,” which also makes the most of Roth’s falsetto.

Here’s the thing, though. Once you know they’re capable of “Dance the Night Away” or “Everybody Wants Some!!,” it’s hard not to wish they’d invited their poppier side to the table (although “So This is Love?” is not without its pop appeal). That could be why “Fair Warning” was their slowest-selling album of the Roth years.

Still, a classic hard-rock album.

7. “A Different Kind of Truth” (2012)

Their first album together in 28 years? That can’t be good. Or so you’d think until you heard it. This is so much better than it had a right to be. The first single, “Tattoo,” barely hints at how close they would come to returning to form here, even without Michael Anthony’s bass and harmonies.

Any argument against Eddie inviting his kid into the wolf pack is immediately undermined by Wolfgang’s bass work on the second single “She’s the Woman.” “You and Your Blues” has the pop sensibilities that made them such a hit machine. I’ll go out on a limb here and say the guitar work is up to their usual standards, from the solos to the riffs. And Roth may not possess the vocal chops he did on “Dance the Night Away” or “Diver Down,” but he still has personality to burn. “How many roads must a man walk down,” he asks in “Bullethead,” “before he admits he’s lost.”

I only put this album last because of what it’s up against. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t recommend it.