For day 3 of "Fair Warning Week" celebrating the 30th anniversary of the album, we have an extensive Fair Warning review written by longtime fan and VHND reader Scott Esman of Glendora California, along with all three of Eddie Van Halen's isolated guitar tracks from the album, which have circulated only because fans were able to separate and extract the guitar track from songs … [Read more...]
Dark Victory: Billy Corgan assesses his favorite Van Halen album, Fair Warning
It's Day 2 of VHND's "Fair Warning Week" celebrating 30 years of Fair Warning. So grab a cold one. First, here's what Smashing Pumkins founder, Billy Corgan, said about the album (from the April 1996 edition of Guitar World): If you've ever seen the "Unchained" video, you've seen a band at its public epiphany. Beautiful and free, Van Halen ruled the world with a wink and a … [Read more...]
Celebrating the 30th Anniversary Van Halen’s Fair Warning
To celebrate the 30th Anniversary of Van Halen's magnum opus, we're declaring it "Fair Warning Week" at VHND, were we're featuring a different story about the album every day for the next seven days. Happy Birthday, Fair Warning. On April 29th, 1981, Van Halen unleashed their darkest album. From the opening out-of-this-world sounds of "Mean Street" to the insane fade … [Read more...]
Q&A with Sammy Hagar autobiography author Joel Selvin
Examiner.com conducted a rare interview with Joel Selvin, the author of Sammy Hagar's bestselling autobiography, Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock. Excerpts are below. One milestone that Sammy’s always stood by—and it appears again in Red—that I’ve always been confused by is his insistence that he sold more records with Van Halen than David Lee Roth, but an RIAA search reveals … [Read more...]
Rudolph and Michael Schenker on Van Halen
Rudolph Schenker (Scorpions) and brother Michael Schenker (Scorpions, U.F.O., Michael Schenker Group, etc) discuss Van Halen. From the book, Van Halen 101, by Abel Sanchez. Rudolph Schenker I have known Edward since 1979, when Van Halen played in Hamburg while supporting Black Sabbath (a great concert). Klaus and I were sitting in the fourth row, and Eddy came directly to … [Read more...]