![]() While 1984 is still a band record, distinguished particularly by Alex Van Halen’s powerful drumming and David Lee Roth’s street-poet lyrics and inimitable vocals, it also offers one of the most pure visions of Ed’s musical talents and breadth that he’s ever produced.ġ984 may have been released 3 decades ago, but Ed Van Halen still fondly remembers many fine details of the album’s creation. alone.ġ984 is further notable for being one of the best-selling hard rock albums of all time, sharing lofty heights with company like AC/DC, Def Leppard, Guns N’ Roses, Led Zeppelin and Metallica.Īlthough Ed has never recorded a solo album and apparently never plans to, 1984 may very well be the closest thing to a Van Halen solo album that the world will ever get, as the record is overflowing with his creative input and inspiration. 1984 went on to become one of Van Halen’s all-time best-selling albums, matched only by their debut album, which also sold more than 10 million copies in the U.S. In total, the album delivered four singles-“Jump,” “I’ll Wait,” “Panama” and “Hot for Teacher”-which all remain staples of classic-rock radio today. The fact that every song on the album was as strong as anything else in Van Halen’s catalog up to that point in time is also impressive. ![]() The pumping groove of “Panama” and the heavy-hitting “House of Pain” rocked as hard as anything the band had offered on its five previous albums, while “Top Jimmy” and “Drop Dead Legs” introduced entirely new territory that paved the way for the band’s next chapter.Įd’s dazzling guitar solos even elevated the keyboard-dominated songs “Jump” and “I’ll Wait.” The showstoppers from a guitar perspective are “Hot for Teacher,” with its hot-rodded blues boogie shuffle, and “Girl Gone Bad,” featuring Van Halen’s signature harmonics, a dynamic progressive rock structure and a blazing solo filled with Allan Holdsworth–style legato runs. While three of the album’s nine songs are dominated by synths, the entire album features some of Eddie Van Halen’s hottest and most impressive guitar playing ever. Music store keyboard departments were soon filled with the sounds of aspiring musicians playing ham-fisted versions of “Jump,” much the same way that guitar departments were subjected to novices attempting to play “Stairway to Heaven.”īut there is much more to 1984 than “Jump,” which incidentally was Van Halen’s first and only song to reach the Number One spot on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. ![]() Van Halen’s use of a synth on “Jump” ushered in a new era of appreciation for the instrument, which previously was associated mostly with new wave bands and electro pioneers like Kraftwerk, Gary Numan and Tangerine Dream.Īlmost overnight, sales of synthesizers increased exponentially, similar to the revolutionary boost in guitar sales that Van Halen influenced after the first Van Halen album made its debut and fortuitously coinciding with the introduction of the first affordably priced polyphonic synths. ![]() With the album’s initial single “Jump,” Ed proved that he could play keyboards every bit as well as he could play guitar, but even more importantly he also showed the world that he could craft a pop song that was as good as, if not better than, anything else out there at the time. In fact, the first note of Eddie’s guitar wasn’t heard until two minutes and 10 seconds into the album’s first two songs. Six years later when Van Halen released their 1984 album, there was absolutely no doubt that a synthesizer was generating the majestic and mysterious sounds that they heard this time around. When rock music fans first heard Eddie Van Halen’s radical, innovative tapping technique at the end of “Eruption,” many mistakenly thought that they were hearing a synthesizer.
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