“Dirty Movies” is the second track on Fair Warning.
DLR spins a seedy tale of a prom-queen-turned-porn-queen, and Eddie matches him with a suitably lewd-sounding guitar melody.
The intro to this song is pure genius and hauntingly beautiful. Starting with Alex Van Halen’s iconic drumming and his brother’s swirling surreal guitar intro, not less adventuresome than “Mean Street” but perhaps more precise, “Dirty Movies” launches into a guttural explosion of instruments, then immediately into another classic Edward Van Halen riff, onto which Roth’s heartstricken lyrics meld perfectly. While “Mean Street” might be a more memorable track, “Dirty Movies” is just as incredible. Its a shame that it very rarely, if ever, gets any play on classic rock radio.
This, Eddie’s second instance of recording with a slide (after “Could This Be Magic“), was recorded on a Gibson SG with a Les Paul Junior neck. Eddie couldn’t reach high enough up on the fretboard, so he had Ted Templeman hold the guitar’s lower horn while he sawed it off with a hacksaw, right there in the studio.
David Lee Roth’s original hand-written lyrics from 1981:
