Van Roth versus Van Hagar

[Cail]

Don't ask how I found this, but here it is.

It's a back-to-back comparison (competition?) between the riffs of DLR Van Halen versus SH Van Halen. If you're younger than 35-ish, this means nothing to you, so go away. Roth versus Hagar has become nearly as divisive as Red-State/Blue-State, and it probably always will be. I fully expect to get into a fistfight at some point in my 80s over this.

The Baddest Roth Song/riff has to be "Mean Streets". The Baddest Hagar Song/riff goes to either "Cabo Wabo" or "5150". "Mean Streets" eats it alive, and don't even get me started on "Me Wise Magic". Overall, I think Eddie (who I really can't stand) became a much, much better player with Sammy, but the songs were better with Dave.


What say you?

[Cameraman Jenn]

Don't kill me but I had to go with Hagar. I like the band BOTH ways for different reasons and you didn't have both as a poll option.

[Cail]

C'mon Jenn, you know this is like North versus South, Catholic versus Protestant, Jew versus Arab. You can't have both....Though I do listen to both, and I've seen them both live......I gotta fall in with the Roth Army.

[aTOMiC]

Hagar just rubbed me the wrong way, even before his Van Halen days. I spent my middle school and high school years listening to Dave and liking it.
What can I say?

[dANdeLION]

Sammy Hagar's great, and I like a lot of his stuff in VH, but nothing can replace the magic I felt when I first heard VH, and that was at the very beginning, which means I'm firmly in the David Lee Roth camp.

[[Syl]]

Roth. First album I ever owned was 1984. Sure, I was eight, maybe nine, but facts are facts.

[Cail]

Wow, no love for Hagar at all....I guess we're just a bunch of old farts.

[Cameraman Jenn]

Maybe it's a woman thing. I saw both live as well and while Dave was one hell of a showman, the concert that I saw with Sammy was amazing too and Sammy really connected with the audience including interacting with them and that was the tiny one thing that swung me over the fence into the Hagar camp.

[Vader]

Never liked Hagar and though DLR is fugly and can't sing if his life depended on it he's got charisma. So DLR all the way.

[Cagliostro]

Yep, I weigh in on the Roth side myself. Then again, the only Hagar song I think I heard with them was Right Here Right Now. DLR was just so much more fun. It's all pretty empty headed music anyway, but I'd rather jump.

[dlbpharmd]

I do like Hagar. 5150 was a great album for the time, but I can't hardly listen to it now. I skip through it on my ipod every time. Sammy is the better vocalist and musician, hands down.

Van Roth IMO had 2 great songs: Panama and Hot for Teacher. I really don't listen to anything else from the Roth era. Based on those 2 great songs, I'd give the edge to DLR. But, I f*ckin' hate Jump. HATE HATE HATE.

I vote Van Hagar.

[Menolly]

I'm with Jenn and Don for precisely the reasons Jenn gives. Having seen both versions live, DLR was the better showman, but Hagar was more intimate with his audience and a better musician in his own right.

Van Hagar. Hands down.
...and I'm far older than any of y'all voting so far, I think.

[dANdeLION]

I f*ckin' hate Jump. HATE HATE HATE.

Me, too. And Panama. I blame Eddy and his evil keyboard for those travesties.

[Worm of Despite]

This like choosing between one shit sandwich over the other.

[aTOMiC]

It has always seemed to me that Van Roth and Van Hagar have different sounds, so much that I really don't think of them as really being the same band. Maybe the songwriting changed with the change at lead vocalist. Maybe it changed because they were a little older and had modulating sensibilities. Maybe it was all Valerie Bertinelli's fault. I just don't know.

[Cail]

I like the evil keyboard in "The Cradle Will Rock", but yeah, "Jump" and "Panama" suck.

It's funny, prior to his joining VH, I really liked Sammy's solo stuff (V.O.A. excepted). It hasn't aged well. But his work in Montrose is spectacular, and I credit Montrose (along with The James Gang) with inventing hard rock.

Dave's not a great singer, but boy does he put on a good show. He's the perfect example of someone making up for a lack of talent with a ton of enthusiasm.

Sammy's problem with the band was that they got too serious. Van Halen's always been a party band, and their flirtations with power ballads and social commentary fell flat.

As good as OU812 is (and I think it's a great album), it pales in comparison to Fair Warning.

[Zarathustra]

This is a question I take seriously. Before Rush (and I think everyone here knows I'm a Rush fanatic), my favorite band was Van Halen. 1984 blew my junior high school mind. I immediately signed up with a tape club and bought their entire back catalog. So I jumped on the Van Halen bandwagon right during this crucial, historical divide. I've given it a *lot* of thought.

So initially, I had mixed feelings (actually that's still true--but bear with me). I really *wanted* to like the new Van Hagar. I loved Summer Nights and 5150. I thought the ballads were ok, but not Van Halen. At the same time, I was a bass/keyboard player, so I couldn't bash Eddie for branching out to the synthesizer. Especially when the stuff he did on the keys was so unlike what every other 80s band was doing. I liked Van Hagar, but I couldn't get over the fact that VH rocked harder with Dave.

But an unexpected thing happened. In my junior year of high school, I became a Rush convert. I started listening to prog rock. And I recognized the limitations of Roth VH. I started feeling a little embarrassed by the juvenile nature of their boozing and screwing lyrics. I wanted something more mature (yeah, a little silly coming from a horny 16-yr-old).

VH seemed to want this, too, at first. But they seemed to have the same quandary as I did: wanting more mature, artful music . . . but realizing their rock roots. So they released albums like F.U.C.K. and OU812. They seemed torn between this dual desire to keep their old fans--and appear just as hard-rockin' as they used to be--and to expand beyond their own cliches. This balancing act rendered their efforts mixed. Eddie did expand on his playing and, more noticeably, his sound. Sammy certainly expanded the vocal range, and added a rhythm guitar for live shows. But now their efforts to seem badass just came off as cheesy. I think this, more than anything else, is the reason why people compare them negatively to Roth VH. They should have just renamed themselves and became a new band with no ties to the past whatsoever.

But as I got older, I left this band behind. I never even bought their last Hagar CD until nearly a decade after its release. And now, Balance is my favorite Van Hagar CD. It's dark and brooding. Sure, it still has some silliness (Amsterdam), but I think it's much better than the earlier Hagar CDs. It approaches that level of maturity I was seeking in the early Hagar years.

Yet, at the same time, I'm a lot less embarrassed about the youthful immaturity of the Roth years. Maybe it's pure nostalgia, or maybe it's because I'm no longer a horny inexperienced teenager, but I feel no cognitive dissonance whatsoever with 1984 sitting next to my King Crimson CDs. I can laugh at these silly guys without feeling like a poser (there's something pathetic about a virgin choosing his self-identifying music as this sex-driven boozing rockfest).

But it's never this simple. Roth VH had its artistic moments, its ballads, its keyboards, and it's duds (Take My Whiskey Home? Dud). And Van Hagar has some truly authentic rockers.

So this is a very long way of saying: both. Purely equal, for me. Van Halen has always straddled this fence between rocking and artistic. And it's never been a perfect balance (except perhaps on 1984 . . . and Balance). In both eras, they were constrained by immaturity and sappiness (respectively). But I think seen as a whole, they are one of the greatest bands in the history of rock. Top 10, definitely. [/i]

[Cail]

Even though Eddie and Alex are the only genuine Van Halens in the band, they really should have changed the band name when Roth left.

It's funny though, 'cause I think that the Roth stuff has aged much better than the Hagar stuff.

I think DLR summed it up best...."Sammy wants to party. I am the party."

[dANdeLION]

I was a bass/

Spoiler

keyboard

* player........

*(Spoilered to protect the pure and the innocent)


.........So this is a very long way of saying: both. Purely equal, for me. Van Halen has always straddled this fence between rocking and artistic. And it's never been a perfect balance (except perhaps on 1984 . . . and Balance). In both eras, they were constrained by immaturity and sappiness (respectively). But I think seen as a whole, they are one of the greatest bands in the history of rock. Top 10, definitely.

Brilliant post, Malik. Unfortunately, I read it and immediately got the following mental image: David Lee Roth gets up (I'm assuming he gets up early in the afternoon), walks over to his computer, does a search on his name, finds this thread, reads your post, scratches his head, and has these two thoughts:

1) "Does this dude worship me, or just think I'm the best?"

2) "Who the f%#k is Sammy Hagar?"

Then Diamond Dave wanders off to snort a line or two and check out some of the local talent.

And that, my friends, is why Sammy will never measure up.

[Cagliostro]

For those of you unfamiliar with this little gem, it's probably about time you see it. I don't have sound on my computer, so hopefully it's not wrong, but from the visuals I'm seeing, it must be the right one.