Published on Mar 18, 1998
I remember the phone ringing a few weeks ago. I was surfing the
net, and slugging down a huge glass of cola, trying to prepare for
a long day.
“Bill!” said the voice. “That you?”
Very hungover, I mustered a faint “Hi Chris.”
“You heard that new Van Halen tune?”
“Not yet.”
“I thought Sammy was OUT!”
“Huh?”
“Cherone sounds like Hagar on this new song!”
“GARY Cherone? Sounds like Hagar?”
“I couldn’t believe it either!”
Puzzled, I entered the shower and promptly forgot our
conversation. But a couple of days later, I’m shooting down U.S. 6,
and the unmistakable sound of Van Halen fills my car. I wasn’t
paying much attention at first, because I didn’t realize it was new
Van Halen. Instead, I found myself thinking; “I wonder where I
missed this song on the
Twister soundtrack.” Realizing my stupidity, I turned up the
radio to get my first glimpse of
Van Halen III, the first of the Cherone-era Halen
albums.
If this is any indication of things we can expect from the third
era of Van Halen, it’ll be a pretty depressing era. This is not a
good album. Not only is it sad how much they made Cherone sound
like Hagar, but the entire album is a muddled mess of misguided
production and musical direction. This has to be the flattest
sounding Van Halen album I’ve ever heard. There is very little
bottom, and Cherone either doesn’t have the vocal boom to pull off
the sound they tried to achieve here, or producer Mike Post fell
asleep at the wheel. Cherone sounds like he’s feet from the
microphone on this album.
The album begins with “Neworld”, a pseudo-moving instrumental
that, I assume, is supposed to bring in the latest era of Van Halen
dramatically. It fails and comes off sappy instead, and you find
yourself a bit embarrassed.
Next is “Without You”, the first single off the album, and the
track that had Chris and I amazed at how shameless a Hagar wanna-be
they made Cherone sound. I use the word “made” here because if
you’ve ever heard an Extreme album, I betcha $100 you never said,
“Gee, this guy sounds like Sammy Hagar.” If anything, Cherone’s
dupe of Hagar’s voice is a testament to his vocal talents, because
he does a good job at the imitation. What’s depressing is that he
fails to bring his own style to the band. It would be one thing if
he sang Sammy’s old stuff live just like Sammy. That would be
impressive. Instead, he records all of his songs in Sammy’s voice,
making you wonder if he just didn’t have the creative prowess to do
anything else. Or maybe they made him do it, like I stated earlier.
Either way, it’s pretty sad. When Sammy joined the band, he took
the band in a whole new direction. The band was reborn. With
Cherone singing, the album would have been more aptly named
“…continued”, rather than
Van Halen III.
My biggest complaint with Sammy Hagar was the fact that he
wasn’t exactly a great lyricist. The stuff he wrote was always kind
of cliche. But he made up for any deficiency here in other areas.
On this album, Cherone makes Hagar seem like Nietzche. Allow me to
sample a section of “One I Want’s” lyrics:
“Pizzaman, just want a slice
Badman, looking for attention
<snip>
Candyman, yeah the candyman can
Blackman, he looking for justice
Whiteman, trying to get a tan”
Huh?
Enough of this drudgery. The album’s high point is “Once”, a
synthesized ballad that is the most suitable song for Cherone’s
style. It has a catchy melody and actually makes you want to listen
to it, which is more than I can say for most of this album. Still,
the song drags on for nearly eight minutes, endlessly repeating the
same melody, until you begin screaming “Enough! Stop it!” until
pieces of your vocal cords begin splintering the air at several
hundred miles an hour. Even the album’s high point becomes
unwelcome.
Somewhere, two previous Van Halen singers are having a good
laugh. Between them, they have (with Van Halen) recorded some of
the greatest rock songs ever written. This album can’t rip out a
great rock tune, and it can’t move you with a ballad. This album
plods along without even the slightest hint of direction. Some
songs even sound mistimed. Still others sound completely
non-linear, which is to say they sound like different songs mashed
together to form a whole. (We’ll make it fit!) I don’t mean to pin
this all on Cherone; it’s obviously not all his fault. But, the
reality here is that Cherone brought nothing to Van Halen like he
did Extreme. This album would have been better with David Coverdale
on it. They could have re-named the band “Van Snake”. At least that
would have been funny.