. Continued from Part 1, Part 2 & Part 3 Los Angeles also provides Roth’s canvas for "Top Jimmy", but this time the picture he painted was more grounded in his day-to-day life. Easily the oddest cut on the album, it features Eddie sounding as if he is playing a guitar strung with elastic bands—partly the result of the fact that he is often slapping the strings. It is one … [Read more...]

Continued from Part 1 & Part 2 Opening with the unexpected sound of a warm electronic swell, MCMLXXXIV/1984, seemed to herald the arrival of some new mutant, synth-driven, Van Halen. But the truth was that the synths had taken outings on the previous two Van Halen albums, as well, and would likely have featured more had Eddie gotten his way earlier. The short instrumental … [Read more...]

Story by John Scanlan (Author of Van Halen: Exuberant California, Zen Rock’n’Roll) Continued from Part 1. Roth’s return from the Amazon was just in time to prepare for a giant outdoor show Van Halen were co-headlining in San Bernardino County, California. The US festival, styling itself as a latter-day Woodstock, had been named “us” as in ‘we’—not US, or “United … [Read more...]

Story by John Scanlan (Author of Van Halen: Exuberant California, Zen Rock’n’Roll) The singer, on one of his many exotic adventures, is lost in the Amazon rainforest weeks before the biggest gig the band will ever play. The guitarist is threatening to burn the master tapes of the new album, which is taking considerably longer than the usual five days to record. Drunken insults … [Read more...]