On the inside however, moods were swinging wildly. For a start, the Van Halen brothers were in a world of hurt. Eddie was suffering with a hip injury as a result of avascular necrosis, the death of bone tissue due to an interrupted blood supply, while Alex was suffering from ruptured vertebrae around his neck. Neither of these injuries made for comfortable playing of instruments. Eddie had also newfound sobriety, something not always easy for the person involved or those around them to deal with. Amongst this, the internal struggles and conflicts between band manager Ray Danniels, Sammy Hagar and the other band members were reaching a boiling point. Mixing all of this in together created a combustible atmosphere that plagued the band through the recording of the album over the three months from June to September of 1994, mostly tucked away in Eddie’s home at 5150 Studios, finally coming together to be released in January of 1995.
There are fans out there who have said quite openly that they feel Van Halen as a band was unchanged in their musical output in the 1990’s despite the direction that music headed during the first half of the decade. The more you listen to this album today, compared to having listened to it back on its release, it’s hard to stick with that point of view. There is a definite merging of the sound that Van Hagar had adapted to over their first three albums together, and the sonics that was bounding around them when they were writing and recording this album. Not so much as a grunge morphing, but a settling of the tempo of the band back to a slower, more thoughtful tone. The wider scope of songs, their style and involvement, is also a changing factor. How often would you actually choose to go in to listening to a Van Halen album that didn’t actually contain many riffs and solos from the guitar of Eddie Van Halen? Not often, right? Well, my guess is this is why “Balance” doesn’t always come up on ‘must listen to‘ albums lists.
The opening of the albums offers up a bit of everything. The opening track “The Seventh Seal” combines a lot of different factors, including both early 1970’s guitar sounds and a melody through the middle such as progressive rock bands of the late 70’s and early 80’s were fond of. It offers up an interesting riff progression from Eddie that is unlike anything the band had tried before. Despite its unusual feel it is one that I enjoy. This is followed by the mid-80's styled and themed rock ballad of “Can’t Stop Lovin’ You”, one that could easily be imagined as having been written for the “5150” album. It stands out here because it is so different from what has been offered up as the opening track. And the next track! Because then comes “Don’t Tell Me (What Love Can Do)”, which focuses again on a very 1970’s rock them both in guitar style from Eddie and vocal style from Sammy, a lower, steadier, dreamlike fashion. Eddie’s slide solo through the end is mystic in origin, and Sammy's vocals hard and to the point. Like the opening track this is unlike what you would generally class a Van Halen song but is no less intriguing or enjoyable as a result.
“Amsterdam” has a riff that dates back to the mid-80's, an idea stored for later use, with lyrics that in a retrospective interview Eddie claimed to hate as they dealt with smoking pot, without being used as an innuendo. As with “Can't Stop Lovin’ You”, it is easy to hear the 1980’s influence in the track itself. “Big Fat Money” jumps out of the gates at an increased tempo, bounding along with hard core tempo from Alex Van Halen on drums and Michael Anthony on bass leading the way and some honky tonk rock and roll piano headlining the back end of the track. “Strung Out” is a minute and thirty seconds of something Eddie recorded years ago on a piano at Marvin Hamlisch’s beach house that he rented. For some reason he threw a whole heap of stuff into this piano to see what sounds it would make and then began playing the strings like a guitar. Honestly, it is a completely unnecessary track, reminding me of things that Black Sabbath used to put on as intervals on their albums in the 1970’s.
Following this unnecessary track is what I would deem to be yet another unnecessary track. The rock ballad “Not Enough” is a join-the-dots, colour-by-numbers rendition of this genre of song. Yes, piano. Yes, searching vocals over the top of the piano. Yes, the heartfelt vocal rendition of bridge and chorus. And yes, mournful ballad guitar solo played to inch by sickening inch perfection. It was of course the fourth and final single released from the album, and it is still as painfully awful as the day this album was released. This was a major error. Awful.
And yet, following comes “Aftershock” which competes for best song on the album. Though the guitar is still puzzlingly muted for the most part through the song, Sammy’s vocals are excellent. Eddie’s solo sections come through loud and clear, but his guitar is mixed way down for the rest. It’s a strange decision from acclaimed producer Bruce Fairbairn to have it play out this way. But then, surely the Van Halen’s would have had a say in it as well.
“Doin’ Time” is basically a one minute forty drum and percussion solo that acts as an intro to “Baluchitherium”, which is an instrumental that came about through design, though that design was actually for a normal song. The original plan was for it to have vocals, but in the studio there didn’t seem to be a lot of love for the track. After some tweaking, it was felt that it did have something to offer, but just as it was rather than trying to make it something it wasn’t. It’s okay!
“Take Me Back (Deja Vu)” features a guitar riff that had originally come from a song called “No More Waiting”, whih had on occasions been played by the band live prior to releasing their debut album. Recycled and resurrected here, incorporating acoustic slide and steel string guitar, it has a 70’s Nashville feel to the song. Again, it feels out of place for a Van Halen album, though perhaps not as out of place on this album as it should. The album concludes with “Feelin’”, a six-minute-long adventure that channels the spirit of what has come before, completing an album where little has remained as it once was, but for seemingly different reasons than what was occurring around the band at that time.
Van Halen is a band that I cottoned onto reasonably late in the piece, although it was probably the same as a lot of Australians did, on the “1984” album. I was then embroiled in the famous Roth/Hagar stand-off in the mid-80's when many suggested you had to be on one side or the other. I chose... both sides and followed both Diamond Dave’s solo career and Van Halen with Sammy at the helm, enjoying both similarly. Both had their positives and negatives, but I still listened to them.
By the time this album came to be released, I wasn’t sure what to expect. The 1990’s had killed off a lot of great bands form the 1980’s or had forced many of them to change their course, none of which really worked anyway. I had had mixed reactions to the band’s previous album, “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge”, and given this was another three years down the track I was unsure of what to expect from “Balance”, and whether Van Halen could regain a bit of their original pomp and ceremony than what the direction had been that they were headed. And I was right to be unsure, because initial listens to this album failed to calm those reservations.
I mentioned earlier in this episode that it seems inconceivable that you would come to listen to a Van Halen album on which Eddie’s guitar was relegated to an inferior position within the songs and structure of that album, but that is exactly what I think of “Balance”. There is far less of his exuberance and mastery on his instrument on this album. And what there is, there is not enough of, or it has been toned down in the mix or the writing to become a secondary element. There are places where it comes to the fore, but before you know it, it has been sent back to the dungeon until the next time the sun rises.
Beyond this, the songs are reasonable. Having had this on for the past two days to prepare for this episode, and to truly recall what I think about it, I have still found some worthwhile attributes. When the album was released, I know I felt that this just wasn’t what I was looking for. Life in 1995 was about to explode in my face, and this was so dreary that I didn’t need it, given the dark veil hanging over me like a black cloud at the time. On reflection again over recent days, I find that songs such as “The Seventh Seal”, “Don’t Tell Me (What Love Can Do)”, “Aftershock” and the instrumental “Baluchitherium”, while not from the classic vaults of Van Halen, are still worth listening to. Others, such as the truly dreadful “Not Enough”, should be stricken from the record forever. Pun intended.
Of the 12 Van Halen studio albums that the band released during their career, for me I rank this as #10. Perhaps that is not a surprise. To be honest I believe most would have it that low on their lists if they really thought about it.
This was the final album of that second lineup of the band. With the differences in opinion between Hagar and the Van Halen brothers, they parted company after this tour. There was still life in the band, though the next album was to divide opinion of the fans even more than this album did. Which, at the time, appeared impossible.
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