“Classic Van Halen wanted you to drink, dance and F**k, current Van Halen advises you to drive a Nissan and maintain a relationship”. David Lee Roth made this cheesy remark about Van Halen’s darkest album, Van Halen 3. Fans felt that its the only Van Halen record that deserves to be trampled underfoot.
1998 is the year and Van Halen are back with a dozen stories, of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll…not! Eddie, Alex and Michael, the trio remain the same, they rope in Boston’s blue eyed operatic soul singer, Gary Cherone. 1998 was also the time where bands in the US were fading out, hair metal bands singing their own dirges and digging their own graves. Van Halen could have picked any of the run of the mill singers from bands like Motley Crue, Warrant, Tesla, Poison, Et Al, but Cherone landed the gig.
Van Halen was the band that played Rock ‘n’ Roll with a broad smile, filled with sexual innuendo, but here was Gary Cherone who was at the height of his Christian fervour and had previously headlined arenas with Extreme singing songs of a God shaped vaccum, ‘Hole Hearted’ and ‘God Is’nt Dead’ from the 1993 conceptual (almost Christian) album ‘III Sides to Every Story’ But THEY don’t like it, the old school VH fans hated this configuration! Come on, THEY thought Sammy Hagar was unfit even after successful albums like, 5150, Balance, F.U.C.K and OU812.
Anyways, apart from the sex and the Jack Daniels, Its official that the Brothers Halen and Michael Anthony are mad about the music on stage/in the studio and Van Halen 3 is probably their best studio production till date. Eddie plays an acoustic guitargasm ‘Neworld’ using passages from the corresponding track ‘Without You’, innovative totally. Michael seems like he took some lessons from an intensive bass boot camp, resulting in some groovy-bottom-end-phrasing. Alex’s crisp drumming can be distinctly heard on each track, its a lot different and better than old school Van Halen. Keyboards/ Piano, Edward Van Halen has always been a genius and does show off his ebony and ivory chops on the closing track ‘How Many Say I’.
Gary Cherone was raised on opera and Freddie Mercury and one can hear those shades all through the tunes…’Josephina’ and ‘How Many Say I’ being the finest examples.
“Returning home of the prodigal, holding the intangible, To believe in a miracle, believe it, can you believe it” - Once
” I don’t wanna find religion, or another man’s opinion Can’t choose whats not my decision, when there’s only one under the sun ” - Dirty Water Dog
” There must be some kind of way that we can make it right But i, i just can’t do it all without you, without you ” - Without You
Van Halen 3 is dark, but sophisticated, profound yet an intricate collection of songs, it was also the first time in Van Halen history that the lyrics came before the music, unlike the previous records where the music came first. Cherone wrote all of the lyrics for Van Halen 3. Being a devout Christian, Cherone brought songs of grace and a positive attitude towards life. Probably the reason for the album’s let down, the themes did’nt sync with the image of the band. Cherone got fired soon after the album’s failure and the band hasn’t done anything significant after Van halen 3, their comeback tour in 2007 didn’t do any wonders either, but thats a different story.
Its hard to believe Van Halen songs with deep themes as these, fresh and soothing, but the album failed, quite miserably. Maybe people wanted to hear radio friendly music with whammy bar dives and “reach down, between my legs….oooohhhh” and “gotta bleed for it baby” lyrics. Maybe fans are right when they said that its worthy of being trampled underfoot, but probably it wasn’t made for the fans. Maybe David Lee Roth was right, but hey, isn’t life great driving a Nissan and maintaining a relationship?
Van Halen 3 is great story on record that needs to be heard, over and over again, IMHO.
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appleo
Oct 3rd, 2010 at 2:10 am | #
Musically I think this was a step in the right direction… You can hear tbe group trying to push themself and write interesting & challenging riffs. I read an interview online where Edward says the sound of the album on analog tape was great, but the finished CD sounds horrible. It sounds like a typical problem where good mastering or less compression would have fixed the issue (google the Bob Dylan audio scandal, a good article about how the record company ruined the CD version of his recent music when mastering for CD). I found a cassette of III and digitized it, to get around any of this, but I don’t have the CD to compare to so not sure. What I would really like is a version w/o the vocals. Maybe I’ll try finding a plugin and removing them karaoke style. The big problem and the reason everyone hates this album is that the singer Gary Cherone sounds like Sammy Hagar. It’s not BAD per se, but then again after OU812 (which I thought was decent - a little “adult contemporary” at times, but in a good way) to me it sounds like Sammy Hagar is trying to sound like Sammy Hagar. I think the band just lost creative inspiration after the 80s and the frustrating thing about “III” is that musically at least they seem to have got it back, if only it wasn’t for the singer. They probably got along with Cherone fine and he probably was a little intimidated by playing with his heroes, and trying to fit in musically just fell into the same old sound they had on the last couple of albums. So the album came out and the public didn’t buy it and criticized it, and the band understandably takes it personally (especially after all the hard work on the music and the disappointment with the sound of the CD) and that is why we haven’t heard a new VH album since 1998. What would tickle my fancy would be to hear them take the original tapes for III, and have DLR write new lyrics & melodies, and record his vocals over everything (or maybe Jack White! Am I the only person who sees a little classic VH in the White Stripes, not to mention their color schemes? Listen to the heavy guitar in “Dead Leaves” and then “Runnin With the Devil”!). Redo the vocals then mix & master it in a way that doesn’t ruin the sound. Because this is kind of a great lost unfinished album for VH.