Best/favorite Van Halen album

[|iR|Focalor]

Me... I like Van Halen with David Lee Roth a little more, but I don't discount Sammy Hagar's contribution to the bands history either.

I picked 1984. Some people fucking HATED the synth shit in Van Halen. I kinda liked some of it. It was the fuckin' 80's man! Everybody was going synth. Even ZZ Top.

[haunted]

Dude is this a serious question? 1984 max volume in my ol' 97 tacoma doing donuts and raising hell on the beach. All day, every day.

[quadz]

That was tough. I picked Van Halen II, but I could as easily choose the first album or 1984.



(Wait a minute - somebody said "Fair Warning", Lord...!)

[|iR|Focalor]

That was tough. I picked Van Halen II, but I could as easily choose the first album or 1984.



(Wait a minute - somebody said "Fair Warning", Lord...!)

I kinda got into buying vinyl LP's back in the 90's from local thrift stores and consignment shops. BEFORE IT WAS "re-COOL". Before the hipsters were old enough to have money and to cause these dipshits to start printing vinyl again at ridiculous prices. One of the albums I was able to find for cheap was Van Halen II. Can't remember what I paid for it, but probably less than 5 dollars I'm sure. Also bought a copy of Black Sabbath's Technical Ecstasy for 1 dollar I think. It was one of their most forgettable and worst albums in the opinion of almost EVERYONE, but even their "bad" stuff I still enjoyed. Honestly, I like Never Say Die more than Black Sabbath's first album.

Fair Warning was okay... and Unchained is one of the best, most high energy intros to a song ever... but the NFL effectively ruined that song for me by CONSTANTLY playing it over the speakers for every other fucking kickoff during a football game. They do the intro to that song, and the intro to Ozzy's Crazy Train. BOTH songs have effectively been raped, killed, and buried by the NFL. I don't want to fucking hear them anymore. Ever.

Dude is this a serious question? 1984 max volume in my ol' 97 tacoma doing donuts and raising hell on the beach. All day, every day.

1984 was my first introduction to them via music videos on MTV back in 85 or 86.

It also was their best album cover in my opinion. A baby cherub smoking what looks to be a pack of Lucky Strikes. In middle school someone gave me an empty LP sleeve for that album and I trimmed it up with scissors and slid it down into the clear front of a 3-ring binder I used. He also gave me an empty Megadeth sleeve too, Peace Sells But Who's Buying. I wonder if I still have those things in a closet somewhere around here...

1984 also had this song, which never got radio play as far as I know, but sounds incredible. He's obviously double tracking two guitars, one panned left, the other right, and is pretty spot on matching both tracks. Can't really tell exactly what kind of guitar he's using, but it sounds like probably single coils, either something with soapbar p-90's or a Stratocaster.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7SHNmoHWyY

That's something I wish Eddie would've done from the very first album. If you'll notice, on all of the David Lee Roth VH albums, Eddie's guitar is always panned about 25% or more to the left and you still hear the reverb effect at full volume in the right side. I dunno why he did that. Perhaps to allow Michael Anthony's bass to have one channel to operate in alone to hear it more clearly... I dunno. But from 5150 onward, the guitar was in both sides like you'd normally expect any band to do it.