Forget about the Rise and Fall of Western Civilization for a moment, and let us reflect instead upon the Rise and Fall of Van Halen, if only because in certain important respects they come down to the same thing! In the space of one album (from 1984’s 1984 and 1986’s 5150) Van Halen went from a band that was the personification of pure exuberance, wit, pop fun, and sheer flamboyant elan to a drab machine, and things went steadily downhill from there. It was like history worked backwards, and instead of moving from the Dark Ages to the Renaissance Van Halen did the opposite.
Some precipitous band declines are mysteries—the ghost leaves the machine, and no one knows why. In the case of Van Halen everyone knows why—Mr. Entertainment Hizzownself, David Lee Roth, walked.
Walked after the band hit it high-water mark with 1984, easily the best and most entertaining glam metal record of the decade, and perhaps of all time. (Some fools would brand it a sellout because it had, gak, synthesizers on it.) And after “Jump,” arguably the most infectious pop confection of the eighties. And he took the joy, the wit, the flamboyance, the spirt, the fun, the stage lights, the hilarious asides, the backflips, and even Eddie Van Halen’s shit-eating grin with him. Roth was rock’s consummate ham, but without him Van Halen turned into a turkey.
Roth was irreplaceable, but Van Halen did itself no favors by bringing former Montrose frontman and tequila entrepreneur Sammy Hagar on board, after first being turned down by (and this speaks volumes about Eddie Van Halen’s suspect picker) Patty Smythe and Darryl Hall. Replacing Roth with Hagar was kind of like replacing Dean Martin with, well, Sammy Hagar, who seems like a nice guy but speaks entirely in platitudes and has all the wit of Ayn Rand.
Several inexplicably successful “Van Hagar” LPs followed, but the pizzazz had gone pfft, and then Hagar left and (after the possibility of Roth’s returning led to nothing but a few songs) Eddie VH went totally left field and replaced Hagar with Boston-based band Extreme’s lead singer Gary Cherone. It was not an inspired choice. I’d have gone with the Dictator’s legendary frontman Handsome Dick Manitoba myself.
This was in 1996. Van Hagar had sold a shitload of records, won some awards, and in general offered spiritually demoralizing proof that a large segment of the music-buying public will buy just about anything, including faceless albums with lackluster power ballads on them. But the worst was yet to come with that same year’s Van Halen III. (That would be XI if they were Chicago, because it was actually VH’s eleventh release, but that III represents “Van Halen Mark III.”) The prospect of a Van Halen IV had me scared witless me for years. I still occasionally wake up with nightmares, which didn’t end when Eddie passed way. I see, and it’s enough to make me wake up screaming, a headline that reads “Anthony Kiedis To Join Van Halen.”
Van Halen III is the band’s low-water mark, and I don’t much blame Cherone, even if he’s faceless, has all the charisma of your average energy vampire and spends much of Van Halen III doing what sounds to me like a Sammy Hagar imitation. Why would anyone want to sound like Sammy Hagar? No, I blame Eddie, for the interminable songs (Roth could have told him that brevity is the soul of wit), the lack of undeniable hooks, and the album’s sub-zero joy quotient. This baby doesn’t even sound like it’s wearing atrociously patterned spandex!
There is also something else at work here. Van Halen III is, in effect, an Eddie Van Halen solo album. Bassist Michael Anthony plays on only three tracks, with Eddie handling bass duty on the rest of them. And although Eddie’s brother Alex receives credit for playing drums on the album, he was in effect a no show—that’s Eddie behind the kit from start to finish. Basically it was the Eddie and Gary show; VH’s powerhouse rhythm section, one of rock’s best, were off building ships in bottles or drinking bottles on ships or something.
The album’s a mishmash, and the only thing that connects its twelve tracks is they don’t work. You get two brief throwaway instrumentals, one (“Neworld”) a pretty little thing with Eddie doing some nice finger-picking and co-producer Mike Post, TV theme song writer extraordinaire (Hill Street Blues, Law and Order, The Rockford Files and so many more!) on piano. “Primary” is a dullish sitar workout that goes nowhere. I would call them wastes of space, but “Neworld” could just be the best little nothing on the LP.
One of the album’s besetting ills is that its shortest songs (excepting the two above) clock in at around five-and-a-half minutes, and four top the six-minute mark. And they all sound like they go on much longer. Even the few rave-ups drag. The pithy pop song, the radio irresistible, disappeared along with David Lee Roth, which leads me to think he wasn’t just the funny guy—he was Van Halen’s pop compass. These songs are drab, joyless affairs. There’s no jump in Van Halen III, and there’s certainly no “Jump.”
Let’s dispose of these undesirables as quickly as possible. A radio edit of the hard-hitting “Without You” went to Number One, but the album version drags on for six-and-a-half minutes, and reminds me uncomfortably of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Eddie gets a lot of great mind-and-fret-bending licks in, but Cherone adds no color and when push comes to shove the only truly likable parts of the song are the melodic choruses. “One I Want” is a colorless, chorus-free riff recommended only for its extended guitar solo; Cherone makes a big noise, but to no purpose, and boredom settles in very quickly.
“From Afar” opens in ballad mode, then Eddie’s trademark guitar comes in, but the song is a slow crawl and drag without a discernible (forget about catchy) melody that ceases to interest in the first minute. Truly a terrible song, and Eddie’s pyrotechnics don’t come close to saving it. A promising title, “Dirty Water Dog,” but Eddie’s drum intro is boring primeval and what follows is utterly devoid of cool hooks or a fetching melody. Eddie does a lot of finger picking, the song goes nowhere, and takes much too long to get there, and brother Alex’s drumming is sorely missed.
The almost eight-minute “Once” is a piano ballad and proof that it’s possible to go on longer than forever, and it lacks a single redeeming characteristic. Three Dog Night couldn’t have turned it into a hit, and that tells you everything you need to know about it. “Fire in the Hole” features a huge AC/DC riff and is as close as the album gets to a listenable cut, but once again—where’s the melody? It’s all sound and fury signifying so what, and Cherone’s big pipes are good for naught. Eddie plays a primo guitar solo, but he could do that in his sleep—here it’s mere lily-gilding, because the song isn’t joyous or infectious or catchy—it’s a pointless exercise in brute force. Where’s the elan?
“Josephina” opens with some beguiling acoustic guitars, Cherone’s in romantic mode, but the song meanders, the drum work is clumsy, and the melody is MIA. It’s like Eddie had forgotten to put how a song together, how THINGS WORK, like “Jump” and “Runnin’ with the Devil” and “Ain’t Talking about Love” and “Panama” had been written by some completely other guy.
The delicate guitar opening of the interminable “Year to the Day” sounds like Journey to me, Cherone’s vocals are medieval baroque, and on it goes all sensitive like until Eddie cranks up his guitar, Cherone gets loud—and then we go back to the boredom. And back and forth again. Even Eddie’s obligatory extended guitar solo, while awesome of course, takes us nowhere but back to the grind. The ending is a whammy, I’ll give it that much, but I had to force myself to make it to the ending, and frankly it just isn’t worth the slog.
“Ballot or the Bullet” proceeds at a muscular clip, Cherone sings like he has something at stake, and in general the song is worth a listen, even if (once again) the catchy hook ain’t at the end of the rod, and Eddie seems to have forgotten how melody works. Closer “How Many Say I” is often the song detractors point to when denigrating Van Halen III, but as awful as it is, it’s the album’s only interesting song. Basically it’s a slow one with Eddie playing baroque lounge piano and singing (with Cherone singing backup), and I actually like Van Halen’s ragged voice.
He spends way too much time singing “How Many Say I,” the strings that come in are a case of cloying overreach, and I would advise you to steer clear of the lyrics unless lines like “Have you ever looked down when the homeless walked by?/Or changed the channel when you saw a hungry child?” are your thing. The minute a glam metal guy goes the hungry orphan route I smell a rat. And it goes on for too long, by minutes. But for the only time on the album Eddie Van Halen not only surprises but demonstrates that he has an actual personality, and isn’t simply a life-support mechanism for his electric guitar.
Van Halen III put paid to Van Halen until 2012, when they returned with Diamond Dave in tow and released a pretty good album I never listen to because by 2012 Van Halen was at least a decade past its sell-by date and I couldn’t summon up the energy to care. Van Halen’s 1984 may not be the pinnacle of Western Civilization, but it’s the pinnacle of Glam Metal Civilization, better even than Guns N’ Roses’ epochal 1987 release Appetite for Destruction because it packs more exuberance and has both a leer and a wink in its eye.
After that? Van Halen became the most talented band of hacks you’ve ever heard, humorless power balladeers, which should have surprised no one. Diamond Dave may have played the fool, but he was Showbiz Incarnate, and when he left the fold the neon lights went out, leaving virtuoso Eddie shredding in the dark.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
D-
