Cries from the Quiet World: Van Halen "Van Halen"

lunes, 22 de mayo de 2017

Van Halen "Van Halen"

Van Halen is the debut studio album by American hard rock band Van Halen. Released on February 10, 1978, the album peaked at number 19 on the Billboard 200. The album became widely recognized as the band's popularity grew, selling more than ten million copies in the United States by August 7, 1996 and being certified Diamond.

Van Halen contains many of Van Halen's signature songs, including "Runnin' with the Devil", the guitar solo "Eruption", The Kinks cover "You Really Got Me", "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love", "Jamie's Cryin'", and the cover version of John Brim's "Ice Cream Man".

In 1976, Van Halen started recording demos for their first studio album. Although Van Halen recorded a demo in 1976 with Gene Simmons, no labels discovered these demos until the following year. Guitarist Eddie Van Halen was not convinced of the quality of the material because they could not make the recordings with their own equipment. Simmons had to leave to tour with Kiss after recording the demos, but said he would make an effort to get Van Halen a record deal after his tour with Kiss.

After recording the demos, Van Halen was offered several concerts. At a sold-out show in their hometown, Pasadena, the group's future manager, Marshall Berle, discovered the band. He and musical entrepreneur Kim Fowley paired them with punk rock band Venus and the Razorblades for a gig at Whisky a Go Go. After being well received by Berle at Whisky a Go Go, the band gained the attention of Mo Ostin and Ted Templeman of Warner Bros. Ostin and Templeman were impressed with the band's performance at the Starwood, and Van Halen proceeded to sign a contract with Warner Bros. The recordings of their debut album began in October 1977 and lasted only three weeks. Together with producer Ted Templeman, the album was mostly recorded live. "Runnin' with the Devil", "Jamie's Cryin'", "Feel Your Love Tonight" and "Ice Cream Man" contain guitar overdubs. Overall, the album cost approximately $40,000 to produce.

The subsequent tour began with the band opening for Journey, along with Montrose, in the United States. Later it was with Black Sabbath again by United States and Europe.

The cover photos for Van Halen were taken at the Whisky a Go Go, a Los Angeles club at which Van Halen often performed during the mid-1970s. The guitar pictured on the cover of the album is Eddie Van Halen's famous Frankenstrat Guitar, (before he added the red paint) a Fender prototype replica of which is now housed in the Smithsonian Institution.

On August 7, 1996, Van Halen was re-certified by the RIAA for selling ten million copies in the US alone. One of only six rock bands to release two RIAA Diamond status albums, Van Halen remains one of Van Halen's two best-selling albums, along with 1984.

Van Halen went to Gold status on May 24, 1978, and then went to Platinum status just a few months later, on October 10, 1978. In less than a year the album sold more than 1 million copies just in US, meaning that the album was already a great success. However, on October 22, 1984, the album went to 5x Multi-Platinum status, in other words, with that, the album still had a lot to sell. The album went to 6x Multi-Platinum on February 1, 1989, and then went to 7x Multi-Platinum on September 29, 1993. In less than a year later, on July 11, 1994, the album went to 8x Multi-Platinum, and finally, on August 7, 1996, just two years later, the album went to Diamond status by RIAA.

Van Halen album, like Van Halen's other David Lee Roth-era albums – excepting Van Halen II, which was re-certified in 2004, to coincide with the promotion of a Warner Bros. Records greatest hits collection – was last brought by Warner Bros. Records to the RIAA for re-certification in 1996, while the 1984 was re-certified on February 8, 1999. The band's split with Warner Brothers in 2002, and subsequent agreement with Interscope has eliminated Warner Brothers' incentive for paying the [relatively substantial] fee to promote Van Halen's back-catalog by having its albums re-certified. Despite lack of re-certification, Van Halen's 1978 debut has continued to sell prolifically, re-appearing numerous times on the Billboard 200 and Billboard Top Pop Catalog Albums charts, as recently as 2014.

AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine described Van Halen as "monumental" and "seismic", while noting that it is typically not viewed as an "epochal generation shift" in the same way as the debut albums of Led Zeppelin, the Ramones, The Rolling Stones, and the Sex Pistols. He explains, "The reason it's never given the same due is that there's no pretension, nothing self-conscious about it". He commented: "The still-amazing thing about Van Halen is how it sounds like it has no fathers ... Like all great originals Van Halen doesn't seem to belong to the past and it still sounds like little else, despite generations of copycats." In Erlewine's opinion, the album "set the template for how rock and roll sounded for the next decade or more". A retrospective review by Q noted, "Hit singles came later, but this dazzling debut remains their trump card."

In 1994, Van Halen was ranked number eight in Colin Larkin's Top 50 Heavy Metal Albums. Larkin described it as "one of the truly great" debut albums of heavy metal. According to authors Gary Graff and Daniel Durchholz, writing in MusicHound Rock: The Essential Album Guide (1999), Van Halen is a "headbanger's paradise"; before its release, "no one had heard or seen anything like it". In 2003, Rolling Stone, listed it among The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, at number 410. According to Rolling Stone's Joe Levy, the album "gave the world a new guitar hero and charismatic frontman" in Eddie Van Halen and David Lee Roth, respectively. Levy credits the tracks "Runnin' with the Devil" and "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" with "put[ting] the swagger back in hard rock", praising Eddie Van Halen's "jaw-dropping technique", which "raised the bar for rock guitar". In 2006, Guitar World readers ranked it number 7 on a list of the Greatest Guitar Albums of All Time. In 2013, Rolling Stone listed the album at number 27 of the 100 Best Debut Albums of All Time.

On April 15, 2013, David Lee Roth was interviewed by Jay Mohr for his podcast, where he selected the album as his favorite Van Halen album.

Track listing
All tracks written by Eddie Van Halen, Alex Van Halen, David Lee Roth and Michael Anthony, except where noted.

Side one