If ever a back catalogue epitomised the American Dream, it’s the albums of Van Halen. Formed in Pasadena, California in 1974 by four teenage kids from families that had migrated across the Atlantic in the pursuit of a better life, Van Halen were loud, brash, shamelessly ambitious, larger-than-life, classically all-American. And so was their pioneering spirit.
Van Halen revolutionised hard rock music. When the band’s was released in 1978, had unsettled rock’s old order; giants such as and were on their last legs. But Van Halen had seen the future.
“This is the 1980s!” declared singer , boldly if prematurely. “And this is the new sound – it’s hyper, it’s energy, it’s urgent.” The key to that new sound was the late, great , whose innovative two-handed ‘tapping’ technique made him the most influential guitarist since .
But Van Halen wasn’t a one-man show. Eddie’s brother Alex went at his drum kit like a prizefighter. Bassist Michael Anthony underpinned Eddie’s histrionics and provided killer backing vocals that had him rightly described as the band’s “secret weapon”.
And then, of course, there was ‘Diamond Dave’, a wisecracking, split-jumping, super-toned blond Adonis, son of second-generation Jewish immigrants, and hard rock’s greatest showman. As Roth stated: “I once heard somebody say to the Van Halens: ‘You guys play the music, the Jew sells it’. Well, you’re fucking right!” With Roth as cheerleader, Van Halen were America.
