Ed’s proven right:
Early in the band’s career, Eddie made his producer and bandmates uncomfortable with his interest in incorporating keyboards into Van Halen’s sound. During a studio session for the band’s third album, Women and Children First, Ed surprised Templeman by playing a Wurlitzer electric piano through a Marshall stack while the band tracked the anthemic “And the Cradle Will Rock…” Since most fans would mistake the instrument for a guitar, Roth and the band were less vocal about Eddie’s use of keyboards on that occasion. However, for live performances, bassist Michael Anthony would be the one playing keyboards on the song.

Eddie noted, “That was my first encounter with the band not wanting me to play keyboards. They didn’t want a ‘guitar hero’ playing keyboards.”

Battles over creativity, keyboards, and Eddie’s status as a guitar hero continued into the 1980s. The guitarist penned some songs from 1981’s Fair Warning, like “Hear About It Later,” on piano, even though he’d play them on guitar on the album. However, he sold the band and Templeman on an evil-sounding instrumental called “Sunday Afternoon in the Park,” which saw Van Halen utilize an Electro-Harmonix Micro-Synthesizer for the track and which was inspired by the stress of his upcoming wedding to Valerie Bertinelli.

The sessions for 1982’s Diver Down helped bring this long-simmering conflict to a head. Eddie had developed an amazing new riff on a Minimoog synthesizer and shared it with Templeman and Roth. Soon after, the pair hijacked Eddie’s synth composition for “Dancing in the Street,” a cover song that Ed disliked. In the end, Eddie told Guitar World, “Ted and Dave were happy — and I wasn’t.”

Fast forward to spring 1983, Eddie is in his new studio with no one telling him not to mess with those pesky keyboards. So he had the opportunity, finally, to do it his way. He felt he and Donn Landee were going to show the world, especially Roth and Templeman, how a Van Halen record should really sound.

1984 album breakdown:
1984
Instrumentals were nothing new for Van Halen, but they never opened an album with one.

In contrast to Fair Warning’s murky synthesized drone on “Sunday Afternoon in the Park,” which abruptly gave way to the fierce shred fest of “One Foot Out the Door,” “1984” functioned as a lead-in to the following track on the LP. Although most people only regarded it as an eerie, guitar-free introduction to “Jump,” the song marked a significant shift in the group’s sound and revealed who was in charge of that sound moving forward.

As with much of Van Halen’s history, there are two stories on the origins of the track “1984.” Ed told Steve Rosen that it came from 45 minutes’ worth of Eddie noodling that Landee had secretly recorded. But Michael Anthony’s bass technician Kevin Dugan said he and Anthony wrote it. According to Dugan, the opening title track originates from a Roland bass synthesizer passage created as an intro for Anthony’s in-concert bass solos. Dugan stated: “Edward liked it so much that he made it the intro to the 1984 album.”

Jump:
Eddie brought the first draft of a keyboard song that sounded like a mashup of the Rolling Stones’ “Get Off Of My Cloud” and Hall and Oates’ “Kiss on My List” to the band and Templeman somewhere around 1982. Later, Ed admitted to Daryl Hall that his song did influence “Jump.” Ed was so proud of it that he played it over the phone for Guitar Player magazine writer Jas Obrecht. But Templeman did not perceive it as a hit at the time. Roth responded to Eddie with his customary “You’re a guitar hero, nobody wants to hear you play the keyboards” line despite pushing for a more pop-influenced approach after the guitar-heavy and loud rocking Fair Warning album. They shelved the song for another year.

In the spring of 1983, Ed played his song ideas for Mike, Al, Dave, and Templeman, including the same “Jump” demo he played for them the prior year.

Afterward, Templeman remarked: “I signed a heavy metal band. When Van Halen uses keyboards, they should sound nasty like they do on ‘And the Cradle Will Rock…’ or ‘Sunday Afternoon in the Park.’ They should shatter your senses and make your ears bleed. This riff sounds like keyboard playing you’d hear between innings at a baseball stadium. So I’m not crazy about it.” Van Halen wasn’t a pop band to Templeman; he wanted them to maintain their edge and rawness. Ed persisted, however, and firmly informed Templeman that he was mistaken.

Later at 5150, Ed, Alex, and Landee worked nonstop to create the foundational tracks for “I’ll Wait,” “Drop Dead Legs,” and “Jump.” The first two were more rough sketches, but Templeman felt that “Jump” had significantly improved, so he asked Roth to create some lyrics.

With the instrumental recording on a cassette tape, Roth headed out to work on the lyrics and vocal melody in his own odd way: by having one of his roadies, Larry Hostler, drive him around in his 1951 Mercury low-rider while he composed lyrics in the back seat. Templeman remembers it differently, saying Ted and Dave sat in Dave’s car outside of 5150 and passed a clipboard back and forth. Dave wrote; Ted commented and offered his opinion.

After witnessing a suicide attempt on L.A.’s Arco Towers being broadcast live on local news, Roth came up with the title and the phrase “go ahead and jump.” In an interview with Rock Video Magazine in July 1984, Roth said: “I was watching television one night, and it was the five o’clock news, and a fellow was standing on top of the Arco Towers in Los Angeles, and he was about to check out early. He was going to perform the 33-story drop, and he was about to do it when I heard a large group of people shouting, ‘Don’t jump, don’t jump’ from the parking lot below. I recorded it, and it eventually appeared on the record, albeit in a much more positive light. It’s simple to interpret it as a ‘go for it’ mentality and a positive type of affair from how you hear it on the record.”

The song’s original working title was “Go Ahead and Jump.” And at one point, it had the famed “Panama” engine rev sound on it. Ed told writer Steve Rosen: “We have a song called ‘Go Ahead and Jump,’ which is a synthesizer song and sounds real good. We did it at an out-of-the-way studio, and Donn (Landee, engineer) and Ted (Templeman, producer) are mixing it right now. The chorus goes, “Go ahead and jump, jump wvwrrrrrooooommmmm.”

After the song was proven a success, Roth’s response when asked about vetoing the song two years earlier was: “Man, there is so much music, so many snippets of good riffs and bad riffs — who knows what is getting thrown out after a while? I don’t remember from two years ago. Maybe it wasn’t right for two years ago. We hear all these bits and pieces, and then we have to sift through them. We can’t possibly put everything on the album. ‘Jump’ made it there eventually.”

Jump video:
At the time, MTV was gaining popularity, along with late-night video programs like Night Tracks and Friday Night Videos, so “Jump” almost immediately decided upon as the first single, a music video needed to be made. The band decided to take a far more minimal approach for “Jump” after investing a lot of time and money in the “(Oh) Pretty Woman” video from Diver Down, only to have it banned by MTV. In contrast to the other higher-production videos at the time, it would be more personal.

The director of the “(Oh) Pretty Woman” video, Robert Lombard, was brought in to produce “Jump.” Van Halen’s lighting director and Roth’s creative partner Pete Angelus was there too. According to Lombard, “Pete Angelus operated one of the cameras, but we never used any of his footage because he didn’t know how to operate a 16mm camera to save his life.” Lombard had hired David Lewis, who actually shot the footage.

With the band’s fracture over Roth starting to mount, Lombard told the band he would shoot the video in sections. Lombard said: “I didn’t shoot them together until the end of the day. I was trying to keep the peace because I felt tension amongst them. David thought he was bigger than the rest of them.”

Roth preferred more than just a simple video. He wanted more focus on himself. According to Lombard, “Dave wanted the performance video intercut with him doing crazy shit, like driving his chopped Merc hot rod and hanging out with midgets and girls in maids’ outfits. So we shot hours of footage.”

Lombard disagreed, so he had the video edited and used none of the extra Roth footage, taking it to Eddie and Alex for approval. The guys agreed with Lombard, but two days later, the band’s manager fired him for bypassing Roth; Noel Monk, their manager, said, “You don’t do that — you don’t go behind Dave’s back. Here’s your check, never want to see you again.”

The $6,000 — or $600 according to Roth — lo-fi video would premiere on MTV at midnight on January 1, 1984 and be nominated later for three MTV awards, winning Best Stage Performance.

Why have we all heard that it was Roth and Angelus behind the brilliant simplicity of the “Jump” video? Because if Roth perceived you crossed him, he would just cut you out and take credit himself. Lombardo would never be thanked, and Roth would move forward like Angelus and Roth were the key people that made the video happen. Angelus would later be deprived of his credited efforts when Roth parted ways with him.

On February 25, 1984, “Jump” became Van Halen’s first and only Billboard #1 song, dethroning Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon.” It was the group’s biggest hit, topping the charts for five weeks, and one of the best-selling rock songs of the 1980s, selling over 3 million copies.

Panama:
Hardcore fans that may have been bummed out by the keyboard-driven poppy “Jump” were quickly satisfied by hearing the third cut off of 1984. As with most Van Halen songs, two essential parts were the genesis for “Panama”: the lyrics and the guitar riff.

When Roth realized that he hadn’t written specifically about a car and was constantly asked if his lyrics were only about unending partying and sex, he set out to do something different this time. That ultimately inspired the lyrics for “Panama,” which were based loosely on a stripper he knew from Arizona and a dragster car called “Panama Express” he had seen in Vegas.

Eddie provided the guitar riffage by paying homage to the AC/DC track “Dog Eat Dog”.

Back in 1981, Eddie’s wife Valerie had bought a Lamborghini from Rod Stewart and had given it to Eddie as a wedding present, and at one point, Eddie brought the 1972 Lamborghini Miura S to the studio to record the engine’s rumble as a sound effect, but it wasn’t initially intended for “Panama.” This idea came up later after Roth added the vocal track.

Panama Video:

Two months into the tour, the band shot the video for “Panama,” over three days in Philadelphia on March 19, 20, and 21.

It would seem that Roth, working with director Pete Angelus, had his revenge on “Jump” video producer Robert Lombard by making sure the action scenes Dave had shot for “Jump” appeared in the “Panama” video. And yes, the footage of Roth being arrested was staged.

Roth had suggested a different video for Panama involving a Club Med location in Haiti. He envisioned a Broadway setting, mixed with Haitian folklore and 26 female dancers with white feathered wings. There is a six-page proposal that was auction off

In the video, Michael Anthony’s bass, shaped like a bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey, made its world premiere. Anthony’s bass tech Kevin Dugan said Anthony asked him to come with a custom bass that would be associated only with him — like Eddie with Frankenstein. The conversation occurred while the two passed a bottle of JD back and forth. So Dugan suggested to Anthony: “What if we make your bass like a bottle of Jack Daniels?” At first, Anthony thought it was the dumbest idea, but after a couple of days, he told Dugan to run with it. The first thing he did was get permission from Jack Daniels. They made a handshake deal that they’d never produce more than three of them without their permission. The bass got built and became iconic in its own right.

The “Panama” video and single was released mid-June 1984, and the song peaked at #13 on Billboard.

Top Jimmy
Guitar builder Steve Ripley had handed Eddie a prototype stereo guitar to try out, which Ed would use on “Top Jimmy.” Eddie was able to designate each of the guitar’s six strings to either the left or right speaker of a stereo system. As a result, the opening harmonics — the chime-like notes — could ping-pong between the left and right speakers, which the listener hears more clearly when wearing headphones.

“Top Jimmy” started out as an instrumental named “Ripley.” Later, Eddie would use the name “Ripley” for a piece of music in his score to the 1984 film The Wild Life. He also reused the original music for the song “Blood and Fire,” which appeared on Van Halen’s A Different Kind of Truth in 2012.

“Top Jimmy” represented one of the few times when Roth’s lyrics had some conventional biographical and factual content rather than just conveying excitement. James Koneck, the frontman of a band called Top Jimmy & the Rhythm Pigs, was the Top Jimmy in the song. His nickname came from his day job running a Top Taco stand outside the A&M Records lot in Hollywood. Around the end of 1980, Roth joined Koneck’s circle of friends by taking on the role of “unknown financial benefactor” for the Zero-Zero, an after-hours establishment that at the time was passing for an art gallery due to its lack of a liquor license. Onstage, Roth frequently performed with Top Jimmy & the Rhythm Pigs. Additionally, Jimmy did indeed possess a pig named Nadine.

The Zero-Zero’s regulars included most of the members of L.A.’s exploding punk and alternative scene, as well as notorious party animals like the soon-to-be-dead John Belushi. Somehow Top Jimmy got the attention of aging comedian legend Lucille Ball. [Insert video of Ball saying their name.]

Zero-Zero is where Roth would also meet Black Flag’s Henry Rollins, who would later be instrumental in Roth’s book Crazy from the Heat.

Drop Dead Legs:
For the next track on 1984, Marilyn Monroe, long regarded as the ultimate American sex icon, served as Roth’s lyrical inspiration for “Drop Dead Legs.” “Dig that steam,” a line from the song, alludes to a scene in Marilyn’s 1959 film Some Like It Hot in which she strolls alongside a locomotive blowing off steam while toting a violin case. Roth thought, “I wish I could have been that violin case she was carrying.”

Considered one of 1984’s best deep album cuts, “Drop Dead Legs” was also one of the first songs demoed for 1984 and was another AC/DC-influenced song. Ed said: “That was inspired by AC/DC’s ‘Back in Black.’ I was grooving on that beat, although I think that ‘Drop Dead Legs’ is slower. Whatever I listen to somehow is filtered through me and comes out differently. ‘Drop Dead Legs’ is almost a jazz version of ‘Back in Black.’ The descending progression is similar, but I put a lot more notes in there.”

Some of those extra notes are played during Ed’s ’58 Gibson Flying V outro solo, which, according to him, was motivated by legendary prog-rock guitarist Allan Holdsworth. Many months prior, Ed and Ted Templeman worked together to get a record deal for Holdsworth.

The Holdsworth-Eddie-Templeman story in itself is filled with drama and rumored betrayal. Eddie wanted to play with his hero, Templeman wanted a record he could sell, and Allan wanted to create his own music with band members of his choice. In the end, no one got what they wanted.

Post-release of the mentioned Holdsworth album, Road Games, Eddie would say Allan was impatient and could not wait for him to be free to work on the album, and Allan would state he never wanted Ed to play on it in the first place. Both Allan and Templeman agreed they didn’t like working with each other. Commercially, Road Games failed, but fans of Holdsworth thought it was another classic Holdsworth album. If you want to learn more about this interesting tale of a rock star trying to help his idol, I will add links in the description, but all of it goes horribly wrong.

Hot for Teacher:
The true spirit of Van Halen arrived on this track with a vengeance. Its raunchy, roadhouse-worthy riff would inspire Roth to conjure up a leering scenario of scholastic smut. “Hot for Teacher” would be the fourth and final single off of 1984, recorded in the late summer of ‘83.

On “Hot for Teacher,” you can hear the Van Halen brothers drawing inspiration from two classic songs. One of Eddie’s favorite bands, Cactus, and their “Parchman Farm” song from the 1970s was the inspiration for the guitar boogie and beat. And it sounds like Alex copped his double bass drums intro from Billy Cobham’s “Quadrant 4.”

Depending on who you listen to, once again, there are varying stories of how Alex got the intro drums to sound the way they did. According to producer Ted Templeman, the first five seconds of Alex’s drums are not drums but the exhaust of Ed’s Lamborghini. He said engineer Donn Landee found a way, after much tinkering, to match the drums to the sound of the idling engine. With space being an issue at 5150, Alex used an electronic Simmons drum kit to cut out any bleed-over.

If you dig around on the internet, you will find many people who say it’s not a Lambo in the beginning, but just Al with his sticks and kit. Their theory is that Alex had adjusted his electronic Simmons drum kit so that the tom-toms and kick drum sounded almost identical and so was able to play the song’s stuttering, idling hot rod of an intro in a single shot. Alex did say the drums were done in one take but never answered explicitly if it had an exhaust sound at the start.

So in the beginning of “Hot for Teacher,” do we hear a Lamborghini or innovative drumming by Al? Roth and Ed both publicly stated that Templeman had very little to do with the sound of 1984. But it is worth noting that there is a strong indication that Ted was actually in the control room during the cutting of “Hot for Teacher.” So maybe there was a studio experiment with the engine noise and the Simmons drums, and that’s what Templeman remembers, but then Alex figured out a way to make the drums sound like an engine. Backing this theory is a quote from the must-have Van Halen book Eruption: Conversations with Eddie Van Halen, where Ed says, “When he started putzing around with that, we were going, “Holy shit!” It really does sound like a hot rod or dragster. You can only pull that off with the Simmons drums. It’s so unique. On regular drums, it doesn’t sound the same.”

Eddie once again played his Gibson Flying V to record this, which allowed him to switch between pickups for the quiet and loud parts of the song. There is a rumor that Ed played the bass parts instead of Anthony, and he had to dumb it down a bit so Anthony could play it live. Ed lifted the song’s bombastic ending from one of Van Halen’s 1977 Warner Brothers demo songs, “Voodoo Queen.” (By the way, the main riff from “Voodoo Queen” turned into “Mean Streets” off Fair Warning.)

One story credits Roth — whose mom Sibyl was a music and language teacher until Roth was born — as the one who came up with the idea to give the track a middle-school vibe. Dave set up a little classroom in the studio with bottles and cans on some school desks. Landee set up a mic and rolled tape while the guys were wisecracking and knocking shit over, sitting at these school desks. Somehow the radio censors missed the “What the fuck, man!” in the background.

However, it’s far more likely that the idea for the “Hot for Teacher” video did not come from Roth. For years, we have all thought it was Diamond Dave and Pete Angelus’s vision, but our exhaustive research points to this being another of Roth’s fabrications or, at the very least, misguiding people to believe it was him and Angelus who were the leading creators. Don’t forget Roth was in Europe on tour until just days before the shoot started.

The man who came up with the vision for “Hot for Teacher” was Jerry Kramer. During the ‘80s, Kramer was the go-to video producer from Michael Jackson to Van Halen. For Van Halen, he produced “Jump,” “Panama,” “Hot for Teacher,” and went on to produce Roth’s solo videos.
Kramer storyboarded the “Hot for Teacher” video, found the location of Leonard DiCaprio’s alma mater John Marshall High School, in Los Angeles, and did all of the casting with the actors. Even comedian Phil Hartman did the voice of Waldo because he was a close friend of Kramer’s.

Kramer also put together a first-class video crew, including cinematographer Daniel Pearl, who started his career with Texas Chainsaw Massacre and has since worked with everyone from Michael Jackson and Guns ‘N’ Roses to The Rolling Stones. Kramer also knew it was key to have a brilliant stage designer and hired Ron Volz. Volz was responsible for the Alice Cooper stage shows from the early ‘70s and many music videos in the ‘80s and ‘90s, including Roth’s post-Van Halen videos. Kramer also brought in director Rick Friedberg who would help cast and plot out the video shoot. Friedberg and Roth would clash, which led to Friedberg being fired after most of the shooting had been done.

After the shoot, Kramer brought in “Panama” video editor Christopher Willoughby to put it all together. Willoughby told me the sound of Waldo “screaming” is an owl, not a whale, as reported elsewhere.

Did Roth and Angelus add any value to the video shoot? Absolutely. Things like wardrobe and performance were 100% Roth and Pete. But the video’s vision and execution were all the work of Kramer and his talented video crew. Roth and Angelus taking credit for “Hot for Teacher” would be like De Niro taking credit for Goodfellas instead of Martin Scorsese.

Some other facts about the “Hot for Teacher” video:
Eddie gave one of his guitars to Brian Hitchcock, who played the young Eddie in the video. Hitchcock would sell the guitar in 2020 for $50k. In late 2022, it went up on eBay for $220k. And in May 2023 Eddie’s actual guitar in the video sold at auction for $3.9 million.
According to the kid that played Michael Anthony, Yano Anaya, at 10 am during the shoot, Alex gave him a beer and challenged him to shotgun his beer even though he was only 13. If Yano looks familiar, you might remember him from the movie A Christmas Story.
Some Van Halen fans believe there is a hidden message on the chalkboard. When deciphered, it supposedly spells out “Holy Shit” in reverse. Each number corresponds with its placement in the alphabet. 20 = T 9 = I 8 = H 19 = S 25 = Y 12 = L 15 = O 8 = H. Four of the five people we interviewed that were part of the video knew nothing about this, but one said it’s 100% true.

The $200k video would premiere on MTV on September 23, 1984, and almost exactly a year later, Big Brother would play it for the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee.

Conservatives and the strict sect known as the “Washington Wives,” wives of the political elite in Washington, D.C., criticized the clip’s imagery of scantily dressed women in positions as educators. The Parents Music Resource Center (P.M.R.C.) co-founder Tipper Gore mentioned the video in a Newsday article titled “The Smut and Sadism of Rock.” She stated, “When my eight-year-old asked me, ‘Why is the teacher taking off her clothes in school,’ I started paying attention to the videos my children watch.”

On September 19, 1985, congressional hearings began to address the growing fuss over music lyrics. First to speak was U.S. Senator Paula Hawkins, a Republican from Florida. She held up a series of “offensive” album covers like Def Leppard’s Pyromania and W.A.S.P.’s Animal (F**k Like a Beast), before adding “values in rock videos, which are viewed by the kids” to the mix.

Hawkins proceeded to have the video “Hot for Teacher” played in the hearing. When it was stopped — right in the middle of Eddie’s solo — scattered laughter and applause broke out in the chamber.

I’ll Wait:

“I’ll Wait” arguably is the closest the Roth incarnation of Van Halen ever came to a love song and the only time Roth sang about delayed gratification.

“I’ll Wait” was another track that caused division between producer Ted Templeman and Ed. Templeman would bust Ed’s balls by humming Argent’s “Hold Your Head Up” when he played it for him. The divisiveness remains today in the various versions of how the song even came to be.

The song was one of the earliest tracks demoed, but by the fall of 1983, it still needed to be completed. On one side, Ed championed it, while on the other side, Templeman hoped it would go away. But Ted understood the passion for the song felt by Ed, Alex, and Landee, so he decided he should be a team player and push it forward by laying down the track. Templeman commented, “To be frank, it hadn’t grown on me since I first heard Ed’s demo back in April. It slogged along like a jeep stuck in the mud. Maybe I had it all wrong, but I just didn’t love Ed’s new keyboard stuff.”

Templeman gave the nod to Roth to move forward with the track. But Roth couldn’t come up with a melody or lyric to go with Ed’s keyboard track. Templeman was stumped too. Then Roth suggested bringing in one of Templeman’s good friends, Doobie Brothers songwriting legend Michael McDonald, who said, “sure.” McDonald was very much in demand in the songwriting department, so this was a significant get for the band.

According to McDonald, Templeman gave him a copy of the instrumental track, and then he created the lyrics and melody on his own and recorded himself singing over the top of the uncompleted song. Templeman then had Roth and McDonald meet in his office to make sure Roth was good with it. According to McDonald, none of his lyrics were changed. If this is true, then Roth’s story of where he came up with the lyrics while looking at a Calvin Klein ad with a girl in men’s underwear is another Roth fabrication to make him, in his mind, look cool.

Later McDonald would be rightfully furious when the album came out, and his name was not included in the credits. According to Templeman, the ball was dropped somewhere in the Van Halen camp, but who did it is unknown.

Ed’s side of the story is this: He believed Templeman secretly recorded McDonald when they met in Templeman’s office, and then later Templeman and Dave tried to hide this from Ed when they were in the studio. Ed said: “Ted was using a little microcassette recorder he held under his desk to record what Michael was improvising to it. Ted came up here the next day. I saw Ted with Dave in the control room, and he was playing something to him on this cassette recorder. I asked, ‘What is that?’ and they both went ‘Oh, nothing. Don’t worry about it.’ So when they got sued by McDonald, Ed stated he didn’t know anything about it. Templeman stands by the fact that everyone knew McDonald co-wrote the song.

Maybe the story Ed tells has a grain of truth. My speculation is that maybe Roth and Templeman brought in the tape of McDonald singing on the tape he gave them as a guide for Roth. And with Roth’s fragile ego, he didn’t want Eddie to think he needed help from McDonald, so they steered clear of letting Ed know McDonald came up with the lyrics and melody.

McDonald would win his case and make tremendous money from it, saying, “It’s probably one of the more lucrative things I have ever done in my entire career.”

Ironically, in 1978, McDonald and Ed had contributed to Nicolette Larson’s Templeman-produced debut album, but on that one, McDonald was credited, and Ed wasn’t.

The Warner Brother execs wanted to stay with the keyboard-winning formula of “Jump,” so they decided to rush “I’ll Wait” as the second single off 1984. There was not enough time to make a video, but it still hit #13 on the Billboard charts.

Girl Gone Bad:
The intro to the second-to-last track was a bit of an instrumental departure for the band. Eddie started the song with big, airy plucked-out chords reminiscent of Jimmy Page in the opening of “Achilles Last Stand.” Under Eddie’s guitar work, you can hear Alex’s fast ride cymbal building a lot like Rush’s Neal Peart in the opening of “La Villa Strangiato,” except Alex’s beat was more swinging. As they hit the changeup before going into the main song, Eddie ripped a series of wicked arpeggios, not unlike Rush’s Alex Lifeson, and again Alex hammered out a Peart-like run on the toms.

As most fans know, when Eddie got the idea for this particular song, he hummed and whistled it into a microcassette in the closet of a hotel room while Valerie was sleeping.

As mentioned earlier, hints of “Girl Gone Bad” were first played for the public at the US Festival during the breakdown of “Somebody Get Me a Doctor.” But Ed has mentioned that he disliked playing the tune, saying: “I often dreaded playing the intro of ‘Girl Gone Bad’

House of Pain:
“House of Pain,” one of the band’s heaviest tracks, had been around in various forms even before the group had a record deal. When they initially signed with Warner Brothers in 1977, the song was once again demoed, but it did not make the cut for their debut album. Additionally, it was included in the mix during the Diver Down recording sessions. But the classic, bashed-out Van Halen album closer didn’t come to be until Alex had the notion that a new, revised version should be recorded for 1984, with fresh lyrics and a more flowing arrangement.

In the song, the main guitar part was sort of a 1980s version of a classic Black Sabbath riff, chunky, heavy, and low end with Eddie bending flourishes at the end of each phrase. But the drum sound was very Alex Van Halen with a wash of cymbal crashes and punctuated toms over the constant double kick drum. Later during the solo, the music channeled a different take on the middle of “Panama.” Then the band just broke out into a fast Sabbath romp with Eddie melting down over the top before quietly shifting into a classic Van Halen blues riff (a la Women and Children First) with Roth humming in sync with the guitar.

Future box set bonus cuts?:
With only nine songs on the album, there has been speculation that a few more were recorded but left off. Eddie confirmed this in a 1983 interview with Steve Rosen, claiming they had tracks finished for 13 tunes. However, Eddie didn’t like putting more than 35 or 40 minutes on a record because he felt that you lost fidelity the longer a record was.

Or you might blame left-out songs on Roth and Templeman. Ed had plenty of tunes. He told Editor-in-Chief for Guitar for the Practicing Musician Magazine John Stix, “I wrote 15, 16 tunes, and we put them all down. Then it was, ‘Should we use this one or that one?’ The guys got pissed at me because I wouldn’t stop writing. I’m serious. Ted Templeman and Dave really got uptight. They were seriously pissed. They said, ‘Cut this shit out; quit writing.’”

Wilson Pickett’s “In The Midnight Hour” was the band’s only cover song confirmed to have been recorded. Roth and Templeman wanted to cut the track for the previous Diver Down album, but Eddie had protested. The song was brought up again for the 1984 sessions and, by some accounts, was even one of the first things they worked on at Eddie’s new studio. Again, Eddie vetoed the idea of releasing it, and, to this day, if it was recorded, it remains unreleased. Roth suggested “Just a Gigolo,” but that also got rejected.

Other Van Halen tracks rumored to have been recorded were – ”Anytime Anyplace,” “Eat Thy Neighbour,” “Baritone Slide,” and “Lie to You.”

Handing over the master tapes:
By late October 1983, recording the tracks was done. Producer Ted Templeman believed the mixing was done as well, so it was time to master the album. But by November, Templeman had still not received the mixed tapes from Ed and Landee. Templeman had an analog backup copy of the masters, but the quality would be diminished if mastered with those.

Templeman went over to 5150 to get the tapes, where he was met by Ed, saying that Landee had the recordings, but he didn’t know where he was. Landee was actually on the property with the tapes and a walkie-talkie. Once Ed got rid of Templeman, Landee would come back into the studio, and they would continue mixing.

Ed said this game of cat-and-mouse was because he was still unhappy with the mix. Templeman was concerned about the tapes for many reasons, not the least that Landee and Ed were staying up days on end snorting copious amounts of blow and drinking. Valerie Bertinelli would verify this by asking Templeman to step in and help. Templeman said she was just as worried but more for her husband than the tapes.

It got so heated that, reportedly, it may have gotten physical. The September 1984 issue of music magazine Hit Parader reported:

“Reports emanating from Los Angeles describe an alleged fight that took place between Edward and the band’s long-time producer Ted Templeman. Evidently, Templeman, who is also a vice president at Warner Brothers, the band’s record label, criticized Edward’s increasingly egotistical attitude. This forced the axe-slinger to retort with verbal and physical force. The confrontation may sever the long-standing partnership between Templeman and the band. ‘Actually, the situation had been building up for quite awhile,’ a West Coast source reported. ‘The band produced virtually all of 1984 by themselves, and they only put Templeman’s name on the record out of a feeling of commitment… Ted wasn’t thrilled by being left out of the recording process, and guess there was a bit of hostility on both of their parts. It’s something that’ll probably blow over in a couple of months.’ The band would neither confirm nor deny the reports of the Templeman/Van Halen feud.”

With Templeman being not only Van Halen’s producer but also a Warner Brothers Vice-President, he had to find a solution.

During the second week of November, Templeman grabbed Warner Bros. chief engineer Lee Herschberg and entered Sunset Sound with the 16-track safety reels. Working as quickly as they could, they mixed 1984 from scratch. Templeman felt Landee and Ed were out of their minds and may never deliver the master tapes. Finally, Landee showed up with the master tapes, but according to Templeman, “He’d been up for days; he was just manic, and all messed up, sweating and crazy.” Landee handed over the tapes, and the mastering process was finished.

Ed said later: “Nobody was happy with Donn and me. They thought we were crazy and out of our minds. Ted thought that Donn had lost it and was going to threaten to burn the tapes. That was all BS. We just wanted an extra week to make sure that we were happy with everything.”

It should be noted that on the next Van Halen album, 5150, Landee would again be accused of holding the master tapes hostage, but this time the accusation would come from producer Mick Jones. Jones said: “Landee locked himself in the studio for a day and threatened to burn the tapes.” They resolved the issue after a tense stand-off.

Ultimately, it’s unclear whether Ted Templeman actually produced the 1984 album. It was no secret that Ed wanted to show Templeman how to produce Van Halen the way Ed saw fit. So did Templeman actually do any producing on 1984? Surprisingly, the band member closest to Templeman at the time said he didn’t do much.

In March of 1984, several newspapers ran an article with surprisingly harsh words from Templeman’s one-time ally David Lee Roth, who said: “After five years of compromising, we just said, ‘No more. This time, there was a big altercation about who was going to mix the record. It was mixed almost entirely without Ted Templeman. Ed and the engineer Donn Landee did all the mixes on the songs, and the sound is radically different, I think, than any of the other Van Halen albums. There are a lot more subtleties, a lot more overt tricks. The most abominable-sounding record we ever made was the second one, and that’s ’cause it was entirely in Ted’s hands. It was thin and vapid-sounding, and everybody was disgusted with it. There are some fabulous songs on there that went unnoticed because they made no impression sonically. So we started getting involved more and more.”

When asked if Templeman would be on hand for the next album, Roth said: “Who knows what it’ll be the next time around? I know, but I’m not going to tell you. I don’t want to get anybody upset before we burn the bridge.” According to the paper, Templeman could not be reached for comment.

Album Cover:
For the most part, Van Halen was never known for great album covers. Many felt the artwork for 1984 changed that perception, at least for that one album. Graphic designer Margo Nahas created the painting that became the 1984 cover, but Nahas had initially declined to create anything for Van Halen. More specifically, the band first asked Nahas to create a painting of four chrome women dancing in various stages of undress, which she refused. Two hours after the refusal, Warner Brothers called to see more of her work. Nahas’ husband took her portfolio to Van Halen, which included the smoking angel baby. The band chose the existing painting of the cherub. (The same year, her husband designed Prince’s lettering on the cover of Purple Rain.)

Nahas created the artwork in 1982 by modeling the cherub from her friend’s son, Carter Helm before Van Halen was in the picture. Helm sat enjoying a pack of candy cigarettes while Nahas made the artwork. It was the only illustration Nahas had ever designed for herself in all her years as a working artist. It was initially commissioned and illustrated for a divider page by Art Director Craig Butler for a reference art publication called “The LA Workbook.” Then it became a greeting card. But until Van Halen came along, it got little recognition.

To this day, Margo still owns the copyright to her image; she smartly only licensed the art to Van Halen versus selling them the copyright. She gave the original artwork to Carter’s parents.

Before the 1984 album was released, Van Halen’s manager fretted over possible “criticism from tight-assed conservatives.” Nahas found that notion funny because her vision for the painting was innocuous. She said, “The way I envisioned it in the first place was the little rebel cherub came down to earth and decided to try a smoke. Knowing it was wrong, he glanced up to heaven to see if God was watching.”

The album cover would be censored in England by sticker, and the cigarette was airbrushed out in Korea.

At the time of release, the speculation was that the cover was created in Roth’s image as a kid. Never wanting good folklore to go to waste, Roth would use a photo of himself all grown up with a set of wings for the cover of his single “Just a Gigolo.”

On October 6th, 2020, when Margo heard the devastating news of Eddie Van Halen’s death, she started to cry and felt alone. She had protected the 1984 Angel for 34 years, trying not to let anyone copy it or use it for any unjust cause. But by that time, the Angel belonged to the Van Halen world, and she didn’t want to be alone and needed to share her grief. She took out one of the Angel prints and put a tear in the baby’s eyes. She then posted it on Facebook for Van Halen fans to know they weren’t alone either.
The inside cover of 1984 looks like some huge bullets, an ashtray, or an assembly line of R2-D2s. They are “par cans,” part of the lighting rig for a rock concert. The futuristic numbers were Roth’s idea; he wanted them to look like the comic books made by Mœbius. (Which was the pseudonym for Jean Giraud, a French artist, cartoonist, and writer.)

Title:
Before Van Halen’s album was released, there was only one thing that people associated with the number 1984: George Orwell’s dystopian social-science novel that had been released in 1949. Although Roth was well-read, the band’s decision to name their new album 1984 — stylized in Roman numerals as MCMLXXXIV — had nothing to do with the classic book. Reportedly, the band was insistent that they not be rushed to complete this album for a 1983 release date. The title 1984 was intended as a little jab at the record label to reinforce further the idea that the album would not be coming out any sooner than the year it was named after.

Reception:
Critical reviews for 1984 were generally favorable, even with the most-read rock magazine at the time Rolling Stone. In 1978 when Rolling Stone magazine reviewed Van Halen’s first album, the writer said, “Mark my words: in three years, Van Halen is going to be fat and self-indulgent and disgusting, and they’ll follow Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin right into the toilet.” In contrast, the magazine’s 4 out of 5 stars for 1984 said, “Van Halen is one of the smartest, toughest bands in rock & roll.”

According to Eddie sympathy for Michael Jackson kept Van Halen’s album from the number #1 spot. The week the 1984 album was projected to go to number one on Billboard, Jackson burned his hair during the filming of a Pepsi commercial. Eddie said, “When that happened, everyone was going, ‘Oh, poor Michael burned his hair. We’d better go by his record.’”

Hardcore fans were split. On the one hand, you have classic-sounding Van Halen with “Panama” and “Hot for Teacher;” on the other, you have the more poppish keyboard songs with “Jump” and “I’ll Wait.” Mainstream music fans came to the Van Halen camp in droves. 1984 is the second of two Van Halen albums to have achieved the rare RIAA Diamond status, selling over ten million copies in the United States. (The other record is their first album.) Since its release, it’s estimated 1984 has sold over 20 million copies worldwide. By far the biggest-selling Van Halen album; sorry, Sammy. But the exact number is unknown since no certifications have been done for decades.