To know Van Halen is to know the band’s struggle for identity. The Van Halen brothers owned this band given their skill and interplay. David Lee Roth served as their foil, master showman and detailed quality controller. Michael Anthony gave them everything he had (especially in perfect harmonies) and still left feeling like the new kid.
As the band grew from legendary backyard party band to legendary Sunset Strip party band, it was Edward that stepped away from the party life to serve as its master creator. What you know is his astounding prowess on spotlights like “Eruption,” “Spanish Fly” and the introduction to “Little Guitars.”
However, to benefit the band, his real skill was essentially composing “a symphony of sound.” By the time Edward learned to just go to his hotel room and keep playing, his trick bag grew in size … even if the magic tricks could be inserted quickly into a song.
With “Van Halen I” and “Van Halen II” cementing their status, Eddie’s panoply of ideas matched songs perfectly. His guitar weeps in “Jamie’s Cryin,’” sounds apocalyptic at the beginning of “Atomic Punk” and effortlessly blends chording and tapping on their first Pop hit “Dance The Night Away.”
Now forced to no longer dip into their catalog, just the discovery of a different sound could lead Eddie to a song (a phase-shifted piano through his Marshall stack is the otherworldly background on “And The Cradle Will Rock”). Fusing the Pop song with an extended intro on tracks like “Everybody Wants Some” became the standard as the spotlight jumped from Eddie to Dave and back again.
“Fair Warning” was tough, and “Diver Down” was overtly commercial; however, both managed to give Eddie room to make his guitar sound less and less like a guitar (quick cuts with the volume knob on the beauty “Cathedral”) and bring in the synthesizer (a steamy cover of “Dancing In The Street”). The introduction of the keyboard gave Eddie another way to invent; pair that with the construction of his home studio, and the output would be endless (his uncredited solo on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” was just something he did at home; he literally knocked it out and kept the knock on the door in it).
When it came time to turn the home studio into a full-fledged recording studio to make the next record, Eddie was left to play with his synthesizers – and so “1984” came into existence with “Jump” and “I’ll Wait.” Eddie played everything like it was to be composed, and the most natural extensions of what he did had to look effortless while being physically astounding.
Seeing Van Halen in 1986 in Jackson, it was so easy to get wrapped up in the spectacle. With Roth gone and Sammy Hagar in place as guitarist and singer, Van Halen capitalized on those years of hard work. When they took the stage, men in white suits holding lights above them framed the stage. This was a show to morph all the other shows into with the goal to sing louder, play longer (Alex’s endless solo punctuated by him shrieking “5150!”) and drink more (during his solo, bassist Michael Anthony drank an entire bottle of Jack Daniels that resembled sweet tea).
Then it happened. The light men above focused on Eddie, and he played “Eruption.” Every guitar player in the place was slack-jawed and standing on their tiptoes hoping to catch just a glimpse of how he did it. Eddie never bothered to even look at his hands on the fretboard, choosing to flash that grin that indicated how he was always mostly out to amuse himself.
NEW THIS WEEK:
MATT BERNINGER
Serpentine Prison [LP/CD]
(Book/Concord)
Separated from The National, singer Matt Berninger allows his “orphaned” songs from the group to find a warmer climate. Working with producer and legend Booker T. Jones, these songs feel more lived in. Some work their magic quickly (the duet “Silver Springs” with David Bowie’s bassist and vocalist Gail Ann Dorsey) while others need time to percolate. In that measure, Jones and Berninger have assembled a fantastic cast of support including Andrew Bird, Mickey Raphael from Willie Nelson’s band, and the secret weapons Walker Martin and Matt Barrick, veterans of the woefully underrated Jonathan Fire*Eater and The Walkmen. Under Jones’ guidance, no songs sound like the parent band they were written for. Berninger tries out Country (“Love So Little”) and even tosses in some brass (“Take Me Out of Town”). In short, “Prison” is freeing for Berninger and great for fans of the National too.
DISCOVERIES
Discoveries of the week include “Music for Leisure” by Public Eye, “Specialtronics Green Vision” by KnowSo and “Tape 3 & Tape 4” by Felbm.
Portland’s Public Eye takes on politics on their Punk-charged album by flooding Beatlesque chords with garage fuzz (“Descending”) and fusing Wire-ish minimalism with Parquet Courts panache (“Awful Questions”) to make an album that is Punk enough not to rip your head off.
The spirit of classic Cleveland (Rocket From The Tombs) returns in the striated, angular toughness of KnowSo, whose best songs build mercilessly over them playing the same notes in unison (“Prophecy”) while redefining the simultaneous machine-like Devo-ish stops and starts (“Peaceful and Extinct,” which boasts, “Mellow is the man who can’t see the open road”).
Dutch producer-composer Eelco Topper wants to make “therapeutic” music with his acoustic guitar, synths and four-track recorder. As he shifts the focus of synths from “Tape 1 & Tape 2” (which contains a beautiful cover of Brad Mehldau’s “When It Rains”), Felbm’s music grows in feeling (the thematic “Filatelie” and the tropical “Tartufai”) and wonderment (the outstanding Library music-level “Herausweh”) without trying to make a statement.
A GHOSTLY READ
As we escalate toward Halloween, Ghost stories are appropriate – yet, they are always in season. Who among us has not put a flashlight under our mouths and crafted a story from the Frankensteinian list of parts handed down in urban legends, campfire tales, or those Foxfire books that were common in all of our homes?
The Ghost story itself goes back far in the history of Literature. Ghosts appear to warriors who are still on the battlefield after years of fighting to educate them of their possible fate. The ghostly house makes its first appearance in the framework of “One Thousand and One Nights.” Shakespeare turns Hamlet’s father into a ghost that guides his movements long before the ghosts of Catherine and Heathcliff roam the Moors in the Gothic romance “Wuthering Heights.”
The point is the Ghost Story may be the most universal of Halloween tales. Its framework must be easily identified because, without it, the suspense of not knowing where or when this apparition will turn up is lost. So, a modern Ghost Story I will recommend first is Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s “I Remember You: A Ghost Story.”
Like Stephen King’s “The Shining,” we follow three friends who move to a remote island to rebuild a country house. From the start, their trip is haunted by the loss of the friend (and husband) whose inspiration this really was. Sigurdardottir does an excellent job of leading from how loss hangs over us to true gloom. As their story clashes with the suicide of an elderly woman coping with the disappearance of her son, the tension is ratcheted up until you may be left reading this book and not sleeping … or not sleeping because you read this book. Either way, the choice is only to keep reading.
Mik Davis is the record store manager at T-Bones Records & Café in Hattiesburg.
