1984 (1984)
1. 1984
2. Jump
3. Panama
4. Top Jimmy
5. Drop Dead Leg
6. Hot For Teacher
7. I'll Wait
8. Girl Gone Bad
9. House of Pain
Coming out almost two years after
their last release, fans were very hungry for something new.
Interestingly, Van Halen, at this point, wasn't really a 'singles'
band. They had a built up a reputation as a stellar, party-rock entity
that would provide just about the best show that money could buy during
this time, so it's no surprise that since the 'rock video' era was just
now coming onto the scene, that the band was about to explode popularity-wise
embracing this new medium.
The leadoff single, Jump lacks a lot of bite that their more
familiar tunes had at this point in their career. It's a very 'poppish' single
for Van Halen standards, and a lot of the hard core were a bit turned off
initially when they first heard the track. Not to mention it was kinda
synthesizer heavy as well. Still, though, the song evolved into one of
the most loved, and definitely best known song the band ever recorded.
Which leads to the video. The band paid a paltry $6,000 to basically
film the guys on stage singing and gyrating to the track with an 8mm
camera. It almost seems a bit odd that such a simplistic video would be so successful
and memorable, yet we have to keep in mind that these guys were, in
fact, a very visual band. So just seeing the guys on stage doing
their thing (in a few different costumes) was enough to generate solid
interest.
Then there was the track Panama, which seemed to be much more
typical to what the guys were used to delivering. Again, not a flashy video '
simply the guys on stage (in an actual concert setting this time, I
think) doing what they do best. They only take full advantage of what
video can offer on the wonderful track Hot For Teacher. The
video is hilarious in its own twisted way. It's very hard to
listen to the song without visualizing the video ' which is why I'm
bringing it up here. It's a bit of a shame that Van Halen didn't have
more stuff like this in their video arsenal.
The other song that received radio airplay was I'll Wait, that
like Jump, was very heavy laden with synthesizers. There are
many who label this as Van Halen's 'synthesizer' album, but other than
these two songs (plus the intro title song that only lasts about 90
seconds), there really isn't that much synthesizer here. Other than
these four songs, the remainder of the album isn't necessarily stellar,
although the only song that really falls a bit flat is Top Jimmy.
Unlike the Sammy Hagar era Van Halen, all of the Roth albums tended to
be fairly short (usually 30-35 minutes), so if you had four 'really
good' songs, this made up for easily half the album.
Although this was their best album in terms of sales and popularity, it
also essentially broke up the band. There have been so many different
stories, so I'm not exactly sure what happened. Plus, this would only
be the beginning of the Van Halen soap opera that would permeate the
rock and roll headlines for more than a quarter of a century to follow.
From what I can tell, Eddie and Dave (the two biggest stars in terms of
creativity) weren't getting along and each wanted to pull the band in
different directions. Roth wanted to be more 'goofy', Eddie wanted to be
more 'serious'. So Roth either was quit or fired (depending on who you
talked to) after the tour. Fortunately, there was a lot of life left in
Van Halen without the star singer, and although the new guy took them in
a bit of a different direction, most of the masses were pleased. At
least for the next decade or so.
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