Not surprisingly for a man of my age, my introduction to Van Halen came in the mid 80s with the massive hit...and then again in the slightly later 80s with the other massive hit.
'Jump' and 'Why Can't This Be Love?' are both fine pop tunes in their own right, and in the privacy of my own home (sometimes in public!) I can't help but switch from air guitar to air keyboard and back again when I hear these songs - still! The fact that one song was from VH MkI and one from VH MkII made this pretty confusing for me as I naively wondered how they could still be the same band if the personnel were different. In the years since, of course, this has turned the band's story into the stuff of Rock Legend.
I consider VH to be my No. 1 guilty pleasure musically speaking, because they do sit at odds with the very large, very intense, very serious, not very Rock 'n' Roll section of my CD collection. There is no doubt that Edward is simply one of the finest exponents of the electric guitar that we will ever see. Alex is a groove king with riotously OTT kits. Michael can wield the bass ably enough for this brand of Rock, and sing nice harmonies, too. Dave is one the most entertaining front men in Rock history. Sammy possesses one of the top 5 Rock voices of all time. The band have sold millions of albums etc. etc. But, it's still just disposable Glam Pop Rock with tongue planted firmly in cheek. How could I possibly like it?
Here's the rub. I was not a teenager in the US in the late 70s / early 80s, but if I had been I would have known that the aforementioned tunes represent so little of what Van Halen is about. It was only in the very late 80s, as my tastes transitioned from Adult-Orientated Soft Rock to Hard Rock, that I first heard Van Halen. Turns out they had much more in common with Led Zeppelin, Kiss and Queen than with Duran Duran, The Human League or The Thompson Twins.
I can't remember which album was the very first that I borrowed from my VH-championing school chum*, but I'm pretty sure it was the band's debut album, Van Halen I - being mathematical fiends, we were also fans of chronology, and proper order, and things like that ;) As with so many impressionable kids before me, and probably a few more since, this felt like real Rock music. It was BIG but not overwhelming, it was HEAVY but not stodgy, it was FUN but not silly (ok - it was silly!). And, man, the guitars were from another planet. Truly, WTF? Jimi who? This was the kind of music I wanted at my parties from now on!
It wasn't very much like other bands that often get mentioned in the same breath: Kiss, Twisted Sister, Ratt, Motley Crue, and so on. There were definitely more progressive and quirky elements at play, and this would become more pronounced on subsequent albums. It's not really possible to get away from the fact that Van Halen were a good-time, arena-sized bar band. They played a ferocious brand of RAWK, and stole lyrics from a teenage male fantasist's diary. It would be possible to say that they contributed massively to the Rock soundtrack of late 70s / early 80s USA. The release of 'Jump' and the following album, '1984', broadened their appeal to mainstream Pop audiences. And it stretched even further into the late 80s - to different continents and different generations. For me, music has a particular ability to be able to create timestamps in my life. I felt transported to another time and place, and doesn't that demonstrate the power of art, no matter how disposable?
*I also had fellow champions for Rush and Kiss during this time. Iron Maiden were my chosen Kings for those days, so we had lots of grounds for debate....and a wealth of Classic Rock material to trade!
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