The parting of the ways of Van Halen and David Lee Roth came on the back of their most commercially successful album, “1984”, and the hit singles “Jump”, “Panama” and “Hot for Teacher”. At the time it seemed like a ludicrous thing for this to occur. Behind the scenes, well, it depends on whose story you want to put faith in as to why it occurred at all. Eddie Van Halen had been pursuing keyboard and synth backing on tracks he had been composing, something that Roth was decidedly against. Eddie had begrudgingly rewritten tracks for songs on the album “Diver Down” that had included different guitar riffs and keyboard riffs under pressure. For “1984” he had continued to experiment with keyboards and synths in the writing process which continued to annoy Roth who wanted to remain in a guitar-heavy hard rock environment. The success of “Jump” had begun to turn the tide however, along with the influx of the synth into the hard rock environment of the mid-1980's. Roth had released an EP “Crazy from the Heat” in 1985 that had had middling success. The split soon came, and though each side blamed the other, the reasons behind the split – control of the band’s sound and artistic musical direction – were mutual.
Reportedly it was not an easy task to find a replacement for Roth as the band’s lead singer. It may well have been from the previous singer’s athletic and high energy disposition, that prospective singers felt they could not compete with what the band had had before. Two people who were offered the role were Patty Smyth from the band Scandal, and Daryl Hall of Hall & Oates fame.
In what seems like something that would only happen in a movie, it turns out that Eddie Van Halen had a car mechanic (as you would when you had money and owned many cars) who also served as the mechanic for one Sammy Hagar, formerly of the band Montrose and currently performing solo. He was coming off his own single success with the track “I Can’t Drive 55” which had reached #26 on the US charts, and his album “VOA” had made #32. They were introduced, Hagar auditioned, and he got the role. What no doubt also helped him to get the role was that he was also an accomplished guitar player, something that would suit Eddie and the band down to the ground going forward.
Van Halen, now with the hole having been repaired, moved into the studio to create what would be the follow up to “1984”. One further twist came to pass, with the band’s producer Ted Templeman, who had produced every Van Halen album as well as Sammy’s previous album, not available to perform the same role on this album. He had left, and instead was producing Roth’s debut solo album, which would be released four months after Van Halen’s new album. It was just another matter that stoked the fire of the great Van Halen/David Lee Roth split.
After the commercial success of the album “1984” and David Lee Roth’s departure, was there any hope for the next album? What would the band’s new singer provide, and would the fans be able to embrace him as they had done the juggernaut that was David Lee Roth? There were so many questions to be answered, and the anticipation of all fans, no matter which side of the fence they had fallen on, was electric as the release of Van Halen Mark II’s first album came with the title of “5150”.
For me at least “5150” is an album of two halves. Not light and dark, not brilliant and rubbish, but guitar-based and synth-based. Probably not even that when you truly come down to look at it. But there are definite songs where Eddie Van Halen’s guitar is prominent, the driving force of the song, and there are definite songs where it is the synth and keys that dominate the direction the song goes in. With the separation with david Lee Roth, the musical direction of the album takes a turn toward where Eddie had been looking for over the past couple of albums, and there’s no doubt that for some long term fans it was a difficult thing to live with.
From the outset, the guitar based tracks retain everything that Van Halen has brought to the table on their previous albums. The opening salvo of Sammy’s “Hello baby!” followed by Eddie guitar squeal sets off the album in style, not only offering a song that is ALL Van Halen without pretence but showcasing Sammy Hagar as a great frontman whose vocals more than hold their own in stepping into the big shoes of the band’s previous lead singer. Eddie unleashes a trademark solo through his middle section of the song – and we even get a Van Halen trademark of Hagar talking through the breakdown with just Eddie in support. Anyone arriving at this point wondering if the band was going to completely change its output now that the lead singer had changed has to be happy with what they encountered as the first arrival of the new line up. “Get Up” is a ripping track, bringing back memories of the early albums with the guitar entry and the super fast hi-hat tom and snare overlay from Alex to burst into the beginning of the song. This is 1970’s Van Halen, with the pace in overdrive and the energy cranked up to maximum. If you weren’t aware of the time period and the change in vocalist, you could easily mistake this for one of their early tracks. Everyone is outstanding on this track, though Alex in particular is the star. I’m not sure this song gets the plaudits it deserves. Perhaps by being sandwiched between the two hit singles takes a bit of the emphasise away from its glittering beauty.
The closing track of the A side of the album is “Summer Nights”, another mimics Van Halen’s earlier song structure in a more modern way, almost in a Sammy Hagar way. He sings it is his own way, but one where you can hear DLR trying to break out and do his thing as well. The mid-tempo beat set by the rhythm of Alex and Michael holds steady throughout, while Eddie riffs off another solo at the appropriate time to keep the song moving.
“Best of Both Worlds” opens up the B side of the album, and all sorts of things can be drawn from the title and the lyrics. It can be seen as the band offering the fans that this is the best of both worlds, the old Van Halen and the new Van Halen, with new lead singer here to rock your world. It can be seen as being the ebst of both worlds on this album, the old Van Halen sound mixed with the new Van Halen sound that they were hoping to go forward with. And that we are going to still be a guitar band, but we are going to be a synth keys band as well. This is mostly a guitar hard rock song, with the keys making a slight appearance underneath without being the main instrumental phase of the track. The title track “5150” is an extended hard rock song predominantly based around Eddie’s guitar riffs, and often sounds like it is an extended jam session, sticking to a rhythm riff throughout that aloows each player to bend their timing into something more individualistic. The result is a reasonable song, but it does feel overlong. And the album comes to its conclusion with “Inside”, another track that does feel like it would be better performed by the attitude and swagger of the previous lead singer than by Sammy himself.
The songs that Eddie takes on to utilise his growing fascination with keys and synths basically became the tracks that tended towards the single output, but that doesn’t mean they threw away the Van Halen house keys in the process. The first single “Why Can’t This Be Love” clambers around Alex’s tempo driving drums and Michael’s wonderfully understated bass line, and while the synth is the driving force of the track Eddie still comes in on guitar to provide enough tricks and squeals to show that he is still around. Sure, it might be a little in the back of the mix, but it is still there. Sammy’s vocals on this track are outstanding, with great support in the main from Michael. “Dreams” of course needs little to be said about it. Its synth-based rhythm through the majority of the song is what brought this other side of the band to prominence and showcased in particular the amazing vocals of Sammy Hagar as the new leader of the band. It differentiated this album and line up from the band from what had come before. It offered just how good it was and could be, and offered the fans a choice to either embrace it or stick with the albums they had already released. What this song also gives you though is the trademark Eddie solo which gives you the blend of the old and the new within this one track. The choice then was of the fans’ discretion.
“Love Walks In” is where the album may lose some people, but in return no doubt also gained a huge new portion of fandom. This is the Van Halen power ballad – probably something no one ever expected to ever utter in the same sentence. It is also the first song the band wrote with the arrival of Sammy Hagar, wrote the lyrics to the song on the spot. I mean, if he heard this music then the writing of the lyrics was not going to be a stretch. The synth maintains the mood of the track throughout, and Eddie’s guitar solo is as atypical of the genre as you can get. If power ballads are your thing, then this probably is what floats your boat. For some of us, it is very hard to take.
My first memories of listening to Van Halen came with “Jump”, which was all over the radio where I lived in my youth at the time. I may well have come across their music before this, but it is my first memory of the band. That, and “Panama” and “Hot for Teacher” were the songs that were on the radio and across the music video shows that I watched at the time, and thus the news of David Lee Roth’s departure from the band was big news in my world at the time as well. And I was well aware of the discussion around the two sides of the Van Halen / David Lee Roth argument that went on.
When this album was released, I had just begun my heavy metal odyssey, my discovery of the dark side of music, and while that’s not what Van Halen was, they of course had been a part of my music scene for a while. The album was recorded for me by my erstwhile heavy metal music dealer – my first Van Halen album as it turned out. And my memory tells me that while I thought it was okay, I wasn’t overly head over heels about it. Remember, at this time I was syphoning up every piece of Iron Maiden that existed at this time. And Ozzy Osbourne was my other obsession coming on hard. So both of those bands don’t mix necessarily with Van Halen. At least, not at that time. The singles were played on the radio, and I liked them fine, but the album didn’t really sit with me. When this album came out, there was a bit of the residual shying away from allowing this album to be good to my ears I guess. It would be traitorous to let myself actually enjoy this album, as a protest to David Lee Roth moving on from the group. And it turned out that when his first solo album came out a few months later, I DID listen to that far more than I did this album.
Flash forward two years, and I’ve started university, and I’m burrowing away in my car’s glovebox to find a cassette to put on to get me home after another confusing day. And I find this album and think “that’ll do”. And on that 30 minute journey home, I find myself thinking “why haven’t I been listening to this more often?!” Everything about it seemed to suddenly click. Maybe it was just the familiarity of the singles, combining with the less-aired album only tracks, that made it work for me on that particular day. But from then on, “5150” became an album that I was more than happy to listen to.
Over the years, that has continued. I find this album very easy to listen to. I mightn’t love it all to death, but it is an easy listen for me at any time. And that remains true to today. Listening to it again for this podcast episode has been fun, which is exactly how listening to music should be. As much as I very much enjoy Van Halen, and own all of the band’s albums from every era, they are not a band I dive into very often. But when I do put an album on, I always enjoy what I hear.
In the long run, I think this album probably highlighted its ideals better when it was released than it does now. And it probably never provided a true answer to that burning question over the better prospects of Hagar or Roth. When running a rule over both “1984” and “5150” they seem to be on a similar path, one that has forked away from the guitar heavy earlier albums. Replacing the lead singer enabled the band to move in the direction that it would appear the majority wanted to lean. And probably for both sides of the equation, the split turned out to be the best thing that could have occurred.
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