From the Vaults: MCMLXXXIV
The Van Halen brothers were really into George Orwell when they were working on the album listed in the title above. Don’t recognize it? They originally wanted to call it Animal Farm but settled for 1984 instead. It was a product of Ed’s new home studio he dubbed 5150. According to Ed’s brother (and Van Halen drummer) Alex, “We were actually microdosing acid while we worked on the album that became MCMLXXXIV – that’s 1984! You know how everyone is saying how psychedelics are so great for creativity? Based on our extensive experiments, I can tell you there’s some truth to the rumor.”
Unlike their previous albums, this one took a year to record. Their longtime engineer, Donn Landee, remembered when they started the project, “Ed and I had a pact. ‘We’re not going to puke this one out’. That was it, word for word.” Classic Rock Magazine featured VH on the cover in December 2024 (Issue #334) to help celebrate the 40th Anniversary of 1984, the album most fans and critics say was the zenith of the original lineup’s records. To accompany writer Chris Gill’s expansive cover story, CMR also included an excerpt from VH drummer Alex Van Halen’s 2024 book Brothers (Harper Nonfiction). The book is Alex’s tribute to Eddie and the excerpt used focused on 1984 (naturally). The album clocked in under 35 minutes, but there was no fluff – it has been described as ‘all killer and no filler’ – something even Michael Jackson’s mega selling Thriller album can’t boast (as Gill reminds us by pointing to MJ’s Baby Be Mine and The Lady in My Life).
When Eddie decided to build his own studio, Van Halen was already a major draw world wide. The sold out all 83 shows of their 1982-83 Hide Your Sheep tour of the United States and Canada. They embarked on their first ever South American swing, performing to a whole new batch of fans on the month long jaunt. How big were they? Headlining Heavy Metal Day at the US Festival on May 29, 1983, they performed in front of an estimated 375,000 people, their largest gig ever. Oh yes, we should also mention they set a new world record with their $1.5 million fee. It also didn’t hurt that the album released before 1984 (Diver Down (1982)) was also a huge success. Sales of Diver Down were propelled by the (Oh) Pretty Woman single which peaked at No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.
Eddie seemed to have the golden touch. His marriage to actress Valerie Bertinelli thrust him into the ‘celebrity’ category. He wasn’t thrilled with his new found fame. Eddie didn’t even like to be thought of as a ‘rock star’, yet there he was, appearing on shows like Entertainment Tonight. When Michael Jackson came calling to ask Van Halen to make a guest appearance on his Thriller album, his new found status was confirmed. The Thriller performance introduced VH to a whole new audience even though Ed did not want an album credit. The other boys in VH all agreed they would not farm themselves out to other projects so Eddie tried to keep his participation on the low down. He told GuitarWorld back in 1990, “Believe it or not, I did the Michael Jackson thing ‘cos I figured nobody’d know.” The secret was not well kept and everybody knew who did the Beat It solo, including Roth, bassist Michael Anthony, and brother Alex.
Alex Van Halen has taken some flak in recent months for not wanting to participate in any form of ‘Eddie’ tribute concert or tour. He was always considered to be ‘the quiet one’ in the band, but when your front man is David Lee Roth, this isn’t much of a surprise. If Brothers proves anything, it is simply this – being the quiet one in the band certainly does not mean that Alex didn’t have his own ideas and opinions. See his above comments about ‘microdosing acid’ as one example. His book credits the building of Eddie’s 5150 Studio as being a huge factor in 1984’s success. The brothers VH would spend hours, sometimes days, woodshedding ideas that would later appear on the album. “Work was our fun,” Alex. “Being totally exhausted and yet coming up with something terrific…it’s a good time. What was the incentive to stop?”
Engineer Landee confirms the workaholic atmosphere at 5150: “We could always collapse on the floor. We did that a few times. Wake up and go, ‘where were we last night? Oh, right here.’ We wanted every song to be as good as it possibly could be.” Not everyone liked the home studio atmosphere, however. Ed’s wife Valerie was concerned and would call up producer Ted Templeman and say, “Ted, they’ve been in there for two days. Can you come and get them out?” Lead singer Roth also wasn’t a fan of this new working environment. He was not about to stay up for days at a time. Many times DLR would be there ready to work but everyone else would be sleeping off a multi-day jam. Dave always acted like it was his band, but working in Ed’s home studio put Ed in charge. Templeman had his own issues with how 1984 was coming together, too. He thought the drums were too loud and up front in the mix, but Alex, Ed, and Donn wanted it that way. They always wanted VH to have that heavy, Led Zeppelin sound and now they were finally achieving what they wanted.
The track Jump gives a good indication how the Alex-Ed-Donn team were conducting business. Given time to explore different musical avenues, Eddie reconnected with his keyboard playing past and began experimenting with synthesizers. When he played the riff that would become Jump on the Oberheim OB-Xa, he says, “Nobody wanted to have anything to do with it. Dave said I was a guitar hero and shouldn’t be playing keyboards. But when Ted heard it, he thought it was a stone-cold hit and everyone started to like it more. Templemen only really cared about Jump. He really didn’t care much for the rest of the record, he just wanted that one hit.” There had been keyboards on previous Van Halen tracks but they were mostly distorted and in the background, almost like additional guitar tracks. Hearing 1984, there is no doubt Eddie had added a new color to his palette of sounds.
Alex found the reluctance of both Roth and Templeman to embrace this new direction ironic. DLR showed his dislike by calling the synths ‘sympathizers’. Ted later said, “I told the band, ‘Hey, I signed a Heavy Metal band’. I thought these guys should stay in their pocket, and not go into pop.” Alex countered with, “And this from the guy who made us do Dance the Night Away?” Roth dragged his feet about writing lyrics hoping it was just a phase that would go away. He was wrong on both accounts and when he finally got off square one, he ‘Jump’ed on board (yes, pun intended).
In Brothers, Alex takes issue with the ‘Heavy Metal’ tag: “How many times do I have to say it? Van Halen is NOT a heavy metal band. We’re MUSICIANS!!!!! It was really irritating for Ed – for both of us – to be told not to evolve as artists, not to try new instruments and ideas.” Some rabid fans were mortified when they learned Alex was playing electronic drums at 5150 and not the massive acoustic sets he used on tour. He rationalized it as a smart decision: in concert, the drum kit had to be mic’d up and fed into the PA board; in the studio, the electronic drums can be run right into the recording console and the sound dialed in. The end result was an easy way to get the drum tracks down in less space with less studio baffling and such.
Landee reports that the first actual recording done at 5150 was on January 2, 1983. With Alex on drums and Eddie on synth, the brothers VH laid down a track Donn thinks was a ‘convincer’ – something to show Roth and Templeman the studio was up to the task of recording albums. Eddie originally wanted to build a small home studio so he could organize his music to show the other guys. It was Donn who said, “No man! We are going to make records up here!” Ed began to see 5150 the same way and thought, “Everybody was afraid that Donn and I were taking control. Well – yes! That’s exactly what we did, and the results proved we weren’t idiots.”
Roth was still reluctant to perform the song, but once he hit on the right lyrics, things fell together. The label suits were worried the song might be misconstrued as one encouraging suicide (‘You want to kill yourself, sucker? Go ahead and jump’). Ironically, it was Roth who finally defended the end result. DLR explained, “No! That’s not what I mean. I mean you’ve got to find your nerve. Take a chance! Ask that girl across the room to dance, even though she might say no. You’re worried ‘cuz she might turn you down, but life is all about rolling the dice and going for it. Take the leap of faith and jump!” With the overall vibe set, the next battle would be about the video – hits still needed the visuals to get them on MTV after all.
David was not about keeping things simple. He wanted to put all of his fantasies on video. Director Robert Lombard counted down all of ‘Diamond Dave’s’ ideas for the Jump video:
“We shot all this ridiculous and overblown footage that had everything to do with the carnival Dave had going on in his head. He wanted a performance video intercut with him doing crazy stuff, like driving his chopped Merc hot rod and hanging out with midgets and girls in maid’s outfits.” Alex put it in band perspective: “We ended up with the Jump video you know and love: a straightforward representation of us doing what we do best. But it was not an experience of camaraderie producing it.” Lombard continues, “I didn’t shoot them together until the end of the day. I was trying to keep peace because I felt tension amongst them.”
Dave’s issues with the ‘carnival in his head’ would be one of the defining factors why he left the band not long after 1984. First, the band had set the bar extremely high and one must wonder how they would have managed to top themselves. Secondly, if one watches videos Diamond Dave did for his first solo outings (California Girls, Just A Gigolo / I Ain’t Got Nobody, Yankee Rose) one can see exactly what Alex and Lombard were attesting to about Dave’s over the top visions.
When recording began at 5150, the studio wasn’t even finished. According to Templeman, it was kind of a nightmare: “It looked like a half-finished construction project on the inside. There were exposed two-by-fours and wires running everywhere. The patch bays weren’t color-coded yet, so only Donn could decipher the inputs and outputs. Whenever I was in there, it felt like I was working in the bathtub – everything was so confined.” Alex said he and Ed loved it: “We didn’t mind. We didn’t need the big space we used to use because we didn’t have to worry about isolating my drum kit so the sound wouldn’t bleed onto other tracks during recording. I was working on a Simmons electronic kit now – the sound went directly into the console. Consequently, Ed and I could be jamming right up next to each other and Donn could record Ed’s guitar track and my drums without worrying there would be any interference.”
So Eddie and Alex Van Halen set out to make a record that their producer and lead singer hated. That does not sound like a promising start. In the end, the numbers tell the tale. 1984 sold over ten million copies. Rolling Stone called it, “The album that brings all of Van Halen’s talent into focus.” Jump was nominated for three Grammy awards. The album made it to No. 2 on the Billboard charts and stayed there for five weeks. It never climbed to No. 1 due to a little album called Thriller (with a little help from Eddie) stood in the way. Templeman eventually conceded to Donn Landee that, “1984 was to Van Halen what Sgt. Pepper was to The Beatles: a full flowering of the band’s creativity. The work of musicians who had a mature understanding of what they wanted and simply weren’t going to stop until they achieved it.”
In the wake of the success of 1984, there was the inevitable major tour so the band didn’t fracture on short notice. Over time, the friction between ‘I want to be the center of attention’ Dave and the ‘I want to pursue other musical themes’ Eddie took its toll. When Roth split and formed the David Lee Roth band with Steve Vai (guitar), Billie Sheehan (bass) and Greg Bissonette (drums), he was able to take charge of the image. His first solo album (Eat ‘em and Smile) wasn’t as commercially successful as his work with Van Halen, he was free to be DLR – superstar.
Van Halen’s next album with new lead singer Sammy Hagar (5150) didn’t reach the sales of 1984, but that was hardly a surprise. It did, however, become their third largest selling album while racking up six-times Platinum sales. Hagar had his own career that started off with him fronting Montrose (with another iconic guitarist Ronnie Montrose). When Montrose moved on without him, he began building a new fan base in his ‘Red Rocker’ phase. Paired with the brothers VH and Anthony, the combined fan base and excellent albums they produced were just what they needed in the post-DLR years. Both sides tell slightly different stories of what happened to the Hagar fronted Van Halen, but suffice to say, everything was great until it wasn’t and Sammy was gone.
The ensuing years were a bit confusing for hardcore VH fans. There was one album and a bit of touring done with the VHIII lineup featuring former Extreme singer Gary Cherrone. This experiment ended rather suddenly before DLR himself returned to the fold, at least for a while.
Michael Anthony was jettisoned in favor of Eddie’s son Wolfgang but he found a happy home working with Sammy Hagar on a variety of projects. The ‘Roth returns to VH’ was short-lived when the same old ego problems inserted themselves as Eddie was undergoing some health problems. He seemed to be in full recovery and plotting the next step when he passed away.
Several attempts have been made to put together an ‘Eddie Tribute Show and/or Tour’ but too many players with their own ideas kept scuttling the idea. Alex put up a lot of his drum kits and memorabilia on auction signaling he was not interested. Roth took some swipes in social media about Wolfgang (who was by now forging his own successful post-VH career). Hagar finally got tired of waiting for someone to put together the show so he organized his own. Along with drummer Jason Bonham (who was replaced by Kenny Aronoff mid-tour when Jason’s mother became ill back in England), Anthony, and super guitarist Joe Satriani, Sammy spent the better part of 2024 touring the Best of Both Worlds lineup featuring much of his work with VH and even some from the DLR era (like Jump).
Some complain that it is more like a VH cover band, but Satriani has the chops to cover Eddie’s parts. With Anthony and Hagar’s history, nobody has walked away from their shows feeling like they had been duped by a ‘faux Van Halen’. They will top off this monumental tour with a Las Vegas residency in May of 2025. Van Halen is gone but the music remains.
Top Piece Video – Well, we talked enough about Jump, so how could we not include it here?