1984 (Van Halen)

Van Halen is all right. I don't share the whole "let's play every song they ever recorded on the radio" mentality that dominates American classic rock radio. Even the satellite stations, with their promise of greater musical diversity, somehow manage to sneak the band on to many of their channels. Undoubtedly, Eddie Van Halen is a great guitarist. I'm not going to diminish that, but it is a real stretch to call this band "metal". In fact, if you look at the tags, I don't. They're a rock band with a really strong guitarist. I guess some people such assume that wild, epic solos make you metal. They don't. I once read a book, a very academic one, that put metal under the microscope. The author was kinder than I, as she called bands like Van Halen "pop metal". Pop metal resulted from the fragmentation of 1970's movements like NWOBHM and into groupings like power metal (Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Dio), thrash (Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax), and pop metal (Van Halen, Poison, most L.A. hair metal bands). These movements, particular the first two, would fragment even further, with pop metal really eliminating anything the sounds like what anyone would call metal, resulting in the "it seemed like a good idea at the time" power ballad.

To Van Halen's credit, they didn't quite fall into the ballad rabbit hole. Although the source of endless debate, the break with David Lee Roth following this album put a little more energy into the band. 1984 is not a bad album (it's the only one I have for a reason!), but songs like "Jump" and "I'll Wait" (co-written by heavy metal legend Michael McDonald) are a different kind of Van Halen. Other hits have the more standard VH sound ("Panama", "Hot for Teacher"), but again, not screaming "metal". However, the notion that there is some "metal" left in the band shows up on the final two tracks ("Girl Gone Bad", "House of Pain"). Admittedly, I did not buy the album for those tracks, but upon another late-in-life listening, I realize these two actually have the most going for them if you consider Van Halen metal. In the end, I guess the secret to Van Halen is in the tracks that never make it to the airwaves. Of course, I'll have to partially revoke my second sentence, since clearly they didn't play every song they ever recorded on the radio!

Finally, the cover art. The notion of babies (even angel babies) smoking didn't sit particularly well with many even back in 1984. For once, however, it was the British album that was censored, with a big sticker over the offending coffin nails.