Dust off your old Van Halen I CD. Put on Eruption. Crank up the volume.
What you’ll hear is an innovative band, hungry to take over the world. When I listen to this album I’m always reminded of the first time I put it on. I had never heard or seen a band like this. And, to tell the truth, I never have since. While the bands today have become expert at recycling the sounds of yesterday - none have ever replicated Van Halen’s sound or explosive early live performances.
When they arrived on the scene in the late 70’s they delivered the unexpected. Their heavy metal predecessors played brooding under menacing dark clouds. Van Halen however, literally came smiling out of the sunny state of California with an acrobatic front man. Metal bands never smile. Actually, wait, they weren’t a metal band - they were too peppy. Their early arrangements were too complex to be defined as rock - and too simple to be described as progressive rock.
Really, there is no clean category that they fit into. They were just Van Halen.
And this band was hungry. Their first album was recorded with little overdubs in just a few short weeks. They even left the mistakes in there to give it more of an authentic and live sound. Put on I’m the One. Listen to the intensity of the guitar.
And speaking of the guitar…
The feedback, the two-handed tapping, the vibrato bar, the rapid playing, the Frankenstein guitar, the modified amplifiers — none of them premiered by Eddie Van Halen. Yet just like Apple’s iPod they came packaged in a new way that revolutionized music.
When you listen to Eruption you are listening to what has become one of the most influential turning points in guitar history. This “song” was a collective wake up call to all guitarists.
And then there’s Diamond David Lee Roth.
While singers of the time where wobbling on stage half-drunk or sulking behind their stacks of gear, this guy was doing gravity-defying roundhouse kicks. Look on YouTube for some of the old live performances. Unlike bands today, there’s no quick cuts and fancy camera pans to make the performance looking energetic. This guy was on fire — the whole band was on fire. Hell, they even had a song On Fire.
So what happened? When and why did Van Halen loose it’s edge?
Their creative ups-and-downs can be heard throughout the Roth years, but the clean break for me was 5150 with Sammy Hagar. Now let me say that I’m a big Sammy fan, and I loved the albums that he did with the band. But this wasn’t Van Halen anymore. Without Roth in the band and with Eddie producing, the creative tensions were lost. The albums were cleanly mixed to precision and had lost their live feel. Eddie’s guitar was over-produced and lacked its raw distorted imperfection.
While the Sammy albums hit the tops of the charts - their low point can be summarized in a review of 1993’s Live: Right Here, Right Now, which simply read “Right now, Van Halen sucks.” The old Van Halen said they’d never do a live album. Their albums were live.
They had lost their way.
To put it another way: they got big, successful, and content. They let politics and egos cloud their vision and influence their mission.
In another context, this kind of sounds like a lot of companies and products out there. And I count agencies and creative individuals among them. For many, success breeds complacency, innovation gets swallowed by scale. We forget who we are and what inspired and drove us to succeed in the first place. Reckless enthusiasm is replaced by calculated risks. We pile on more features or services, we extend our brands. We over-produce, over-think, over-analyze.
Van Halen I is a reminder for people and companies alike of the power of new ideas and the successful reinvention of old ones. It shows us how mistakes are OK (great even), and that we need to have fun in the process of creation. It also shows that while one moment of innovation can jump-start a revolution, it’s not enough to carry you indefinitely. You need to stay hungry, remember why you exist — a kid in a basement can make your product, service or business irrelevant overnight.