Published on Jun 8, 1998
Quick, where were you when you discovered the video for “Jump,”
and possibly discovered Van Halen? I still remember I was watching
Friday Night Videos when they opened up with this clip from
Van Halen. Its homemade look and high energy level, combined with
what still is a damn fine song, hooked me the moment I heard it. In
a short span of time, I had picked up all of Van Halen’s
albums.
That album,
1984, remains Van Halen’s best work to this day, and served
as an unexpected swansong to the first version of the band. (One of
the funniest lines in
The Wedding Singer is when Adam Sandler tells his ex-fiancee
to get out of his Van Halen t-shirt “before you jinx the band and
they break up.”)
Eddie Van Halen and crew were admittedly stagnating. Their
previous release,
Diver Down, was most definitely experimental, but its
reliance on cover tunes seemed to only make conditions worse.
Clearly, this band needed a shot in the arm — and to many people’s
surprise, it came in the form of keyboards. The opening work “1984”
spells out in just over one minute that this is going to be an
exciting trip, and your first stop is “Jump.”
Think about it: a hard rock tune that hit the top of the charts
with only a little guitar work. But if any song sealed Eddie Van
Halen’s title as a guitar god, this was it. Lead singer David Lee
Roth is in fine form, bassist Michael Anthony continued to happily
thump away on his four-stringer, and drummer Alex Van Halen…
well, there’s a reason I consider him one of the few masters of the
drum kit, the other being Neil Peart.
All of the singles off
1984 are as fresh today as they were back in the mid-’80s.
“Panama” is a song that had my two-year-old bouncing happily in
front of the speakers, while “Hot For Teacher” is still a slice of
guilty fun that features some incredible double bass work from Alex
Van Halen. A lesser-known single but not lesser-played, “I’ll
Wait,” is the only moment of “weakness,” if you can even call it
that. It is a definite lean towards radio-friendliness (never mind
the fact that “Jump” was all over the dials), but it does capture a
different side of Van Halen.
Even the songs that didn’t make the cut as singles are pretty
tasty. “House Of Pain,” the album’s closer (and, from what I
remember, the b-side to the “Jump” single), is a return to
balls-out rock that demonstrates Van Halen hadn’t lost a step,
while tracks like “Top Jimmy” and “Drop Dead Legs” all rock just as
hard.
The striking thing about
1984 is its brevity; the nine songs on this disc fly by
before you’re even settled into your chair. But after a few
disappointments, perhaps the band decided that “less is more”…
whatever the case, it worked. The other thought that hits the
listener is, “What would the band have come up with had Roth stayed
with the band?” Unfortunately, he would leave the band by 1986 to
start his own solo career.
1984 is another album that qualifies as a must-own, no
matter what form of music you’re a fan of.