Search This Blog

Friday, February 17, 2017

Album Review: Van Halen - 1984 (1984)

Van Halen is a name that frequently comes up whenever somebody tries to conjure up ideas for air guitar songs.  Well, let's be honest - nobody gets up on stage or in front of groups of people and flop about the place pretending to shred to the likes of Lonnie Donegan or heaven forbid, John Denver.  But they often do to Van Halen, on account of the fact that Eddie Van Halen is a well-known guitar legend.  Initially I took little interest in Van Halen on the radio, until I picked up a compilation CD featuring "Jump", which just happens to be track #2 on the album that I'm reviewing here, 1984, released in, you guessed it, 1984.  And from there I picked up a copy of Best Of - Volume One.  I was immediately hooked.  This was the missing link in my life as a music lover.  "Eruption" left me catatonic - it was fast, complex, brutal.  I had never heard anything like it.  And I wanted more.  Within a few years I had all the studio albums, including the legendary album I'm currently writing about.  Van Halen's 1978 album is easily their best record, but 1984 follows not too far behind.  And it's a special album too, on account of the band's decision to incorporate synthesizers into the hard rock/metal mix.  And all up they've done a pretty good job with them too.  The prelude opening track, "1984" has a sort of eerily 80s future utopian feel to it, but it sounds good nonetheless.  Some of the band's biggest mainstream hits are here on this album - "Jump", "Panama", "Hot for Teacher" all made the airwaves down here in the land of the long white cloud, and still do the rounds of the classic rock station playlists to this day.  "I'll Wait" starts off with a bit of synth overkill but settles down and plays out like the good 80s synth rock song that it is.  "Top Jimmy", "Drop Dead Legs" and "Girl Gone Bad" aren't too bad either, but still inferior to the radio hits.  Great album, and one you must own if, like me, you're into Van Halen in a big way.  A-


No comments:

Post a Comment