On this day in 1995, Van Halen released their tenth studio album Balance. It would be the band’s fourth consecutive number one studio album and went double platinum just two months after its release.
Before we ask you to vote for your favorite track from the album, here’s a little bit more on what would be the final studio album the band recorded with Sammy Hagar as lead singer:
Balance was recorded in just over three months—May 25th through Sept 2nd of 1994. Most of the album was recorded at Eddie Van Halen’s 5150 Studios. Five of the lead vocal tracks were recorded in Vancouver, Canada to give the late great producer Bruce Fairbairn more time to spend with his family.
As for the album cover, the image of twins on a teeter-totter was created by Glen Wexler. He photoshopped together two photos of the same child. Although the child was rumored to be Wolfgang Van Halen, it was not.
“The image was created by photographing a 4-year-old child model who was cast in Los Angeles,” said Wexler. “Wolfie was two at the time, had dark brown hair, and was never a consideration.”
Alex commented on the cover during a 2/20/95 interview on Rockline.
“It’s kind of a duality,” he said. “It has to do with one person. What you do to another, it comes back to you pretty quickly. It has to do with a balance within everybody, the age-old struggle between good and evil. And before I get too deep, ‘Balance’ is really the title of the picture.”
One last note on Balance and that is the the Japanese version of the album, which includes the extra track “Crossing Over”. This version also has only one child on the cover due to the Japanese taking offense at the conjoined twins.
The band tossed around the idea of using the second child in the background as a ghost but that idea didn’t go over well either so just one child was shown. Balance was the first Van Halen album to hit #1 on the Japanese charts.