Van Halen, the monsters of rock

Van Halen’s “1984” was one hell of a thumping masterpiece of hard rock album. “Jump” is probably the song that inducted me to the music of hard rock and heavy metal. The album cover was maybe, controversial during its time. A baby smoking….

Of course, further to all this lies the band’s guitarist, Eddie Van Halen. This guy has what it takes. Great guitar skills and technical prowess. He probably set the standard for guitar solos in hard rock genres during the 80s. Their musical chair arrangement of replacing lead singers have always been news… to me, David Lee Roth was the best.

As a tribute, I rate them as a band with glorious Eddie’s guitar solos, sleazy, great fitnesse of hard rock power, sometimes glam, and the fantastic showmanship of David Lee Roth. Not only a great frontman, Diamond David was the oversexed, God’s gift to women. They always give the crowd a rollicking good time and in turn, form a entire generation of hard rock fans, or I rather call, pop metal fanzines.

They did fantastic cover versions of "(Oh) Pretty Woman", “You Really Got Me”, "Dancing in the Street" and "Where Have All the Good Times Gone?". The magic of the Van Halen I liked disappeared as soon as David Lee Roth left. I reckon Sammy Hagar was passable and Gary Cherone lacked charisma and personality to front a super band. Van Halen also established themselves as great MTV acts with breakthrough videos like “Jump”. The MTV video of “Hot for Teacher” really stirred the groins of many a teenager then.

I still followed through with the "5150", "OU812" and "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge" albums. I felt that at times, they were quite good, but never, brilliant. Whatever it is, I still can look back at “1984”.