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Post by Monsters of Rock on Mar 5, 2021 10:12:49 GMT 10
Valen Halen: Van Halen II
While rarely cited as one the group’s best works, Van Halen II, features some of the band’s best individual tracks and may well showcase Van Halen at its cohesive best. Where their 1978 debut album was a fantastic showcase for guitarist Eddie Van Halen, this 1979 follow-up finds the rest of the band bringing it up near his level to give the album a greater sense of parity. Produced by Ted Templeman, this album is much more than just a carbon copy of the debut. It may have been the best example of a group successfully following up on a brilliant debut album since Led Zeppelin did it with Led Zeppelin II a decade earlier.
Following the tremendous success of their debut, Van Halen embarked on a world tour through much of 1978 before returning to California in December to immediately begin work on this second album. Warner Brothers decided to give the group a smaller recording budget, in spite of the first album’s phenomenal success. Because of this, there was very little studio time allotted to get the recordings done and many of the recordings were first takes. Further, with little time to compose new material, they drew some material from the demo tracks they recorded prior to the first album.
The entire recording process was completed in three weeks, and this frenzied pace spawned some sonic innovation. Templeman reverted back to some of his pop sensibilities from earlier in the seventies. Eddie Van Halen achieved a thick guitar sound by overloading the circuits on his amplifier, while bassist Michael Anthony used a smaller than normal bass amp to get a sharper, less rounded sound.
Released: March 23, 1979 (Warner Bros.)
Produced by: Ted Templeman
Recorded: Sunset Sound Recorders, Hollywood, December 1978-January 1979
Side One
You’re No Good
Dance the Night Away
Somebody Get Me a Doctor
Bottoms Up!
Outta Love Again
Side Two
Light Up the Sky
Spanish Fly
D.O.A.
Women In Love
Beautiful Girls
Group Musicians
David Lee Roth – Lead Vocals
Eddie Van Halen – Guitars, Vocals
Michael Anthony – Bass, Vocals
Alex Van Halen – Drums, Percussion
“You’re No Good” is, frankly, an odd cover selection to start off Van Halen II. However, in reviewing the album as it is laid out in total, it seems to be that this bit of static electric spark starts the chain reaction that leads to the musical inferno portrayed toward the end of the album. Starting with the doomy, slow meandering of Anthony’s flanged out bass before the song slowly marches in. The song proper has all of the Van Halen elements prevalent on the first album and, while certainly not the finest on the album, “You’re No Good” builds enough to make the listener feel like it is cut too short at the end. The mood brightens with the pop rock of “Dance the Night Away”, the group’s first Top 20 hit. The melodic vocals of David Lee Roth accompanies the catchy guitar riff with the bouncy bass perfectly locked with the bright kick drum of Alex Van Halen. There is a higher pitched counter-riff during the chorus and a simple yet brilliant bridge riff variation, while the outro is also done well with Roth inverting his lead vocals with the backing chorus.
Next come a couple of classic barroom songs. A short intro leads into the heavy riff which launches “Somebody Get Me a Doctor”, which dates back to the years before the first album’s release. “Bottoms Up!” has a moderate, unplugged intro by Eddie Van Halen before it breaks into an upbeat quasi-rockabilly song with Anthony slightly outshining the Van Halen brothers musically, as Eddie’s short leads fall just short of the historic precedent he set on the first album. The first side closes with “Outta Love Again”, the oldest composition on the album, notably interesting for its wild, space-like drone intro and clever use of rudiments and vocal timings. Overall, this is probably one of the strongest tracks for drummer Alex Van Halen with his shuffle rhythm through the verses and use of a variety of roll techniques elsewhere.
The second side is where the true genius of Van Halen II lies, with every track being interesting, original, and entertaining. The multi- sectioned “Light Up the Sky” is amazing for how much is packed into this barely three-minute-long song. Pure hard rock verses with Roth’s precise and complex lead vocals moving through the various sections. During the scaled-back bridge section Roth performs a raspy falsetto before Eddie ignites into a blistering lead guitar, before Alex takes his turn with a short drum solo and then an interesting outro with backwards-masked harmonies leading into the closing hook. The acoustic instrumental “Spanish Fly” is brilliant just in how unlike anything else it is. Sounding almost intentionally non-professional, this is a close-up trek into Eddie Van Halen’s genius stripped down to a nylon-stringed guitar and one single minute. In sharp contrast, “D.O.A.” is the heaviest rocking song with an absolutely brutal grind by Eddie Van Halen and the pure rock action of everyone else. Roth’s verse vocals are rather reserved but contrasted later with screams to match the song’s intensity. The later guitar lead is brilliant with an excellent complimentary bass underneath.
“Women in Love…” starts with a bell-like intro solo by Eddie which is pure melody and harmonic technique. The body of this steady song is a quasi-ballad with lyrics apparently about groupies and is the best song vocally on the album. Every note is pure sonic bliss right down to Roth’s word “scream” tailed with a slight inflection of an actual scream. The verses mix a somber riff with the harmonized vocals above a thumping bass and drum rhythm, while the guitar assentation mixes with the harmonies during the chorus. The album ends with the entertaining pop/rock song “Beautiful Girls”, which contains chanting vocals with some slightly clever rhyming before the song builds in crescendo excitement through the entertaining outro.
Van Halen II peaked at number six on the American album charts and has sold nearly six million copies since its release. Over the next two years the band released a couple more albums, Women and Children First and Fair Warning, which closely followed the same formula as this record and continued the band’s popularity.
Classic Rock Review Website
"The '80s are coming and we're going to be the soundtrack. We're here to blow the bugles and jump on the horns and whistle it all in and usher it down the road and round the stretch and across the finish line."
Van Halen front man David Lee Roth issued that boast during an interview with Sounds following the March 23, 1979, release of the band's second LP, Van Halen II. And although he ended up being right, the circumstances of the album's recording didn't exactly seem like a recipe for success.
Like a lot of young bands, Van Halen found themselves up against a tight deadline -- and dire financial straits -- when it came time to follow up a hit debut. "We went platinum," recalled drummer Alex Van Halen years later. "We toured for a year, we came back, and Warner Bros. told us that we owed them $2 million."
"And on top of that, we owed them another record," added guitarist Eddie Van Halen. "It was the end of the year. We had three weeks to deliver another record ... then boom, we went straight out on tour again. The first record took about a week, seven days to do. The second record took about three weeks."
Although the group had a stockpile of earlier songs left over from the demo that got them signed, they'd later claim that they only pulled three ("Bottoms Up!," "Outta Love Again" and "D.O.A.") from the vaults, instead focusing their efforts on adding a new cover to their repertoire ("You're No Good," a hit for Betty Everett in 1963 and Linda Ronstadt in 1975) and coming up with new material -- a process that Roth described by saying, "I remember it being extreme labor. I remember it being a lot of hard work compressed into a short period of time."
As he put it in his Sounds interview, "This time, we decided to really take it to the edge and go in totally unprepared, and this way we'd get a totally spontaneous sound. It's like bang, stick it on the plastic, next please -- that's the Van Halen attitude and lifestyle."
"What we're doing is getting down to the roots of high energy hard, heavy rock 'n' roll," Roth told NME. "We're out to establish Van Halen as the number one, the most energized, the most dependable rock 'n' roll outfit on this planet. And we're working our f---ing butts off -- from playing biker clubs, surfer clubs. When we started, L.A. was all punk rock, but we still busted through because we're working ... what we've got here is the very essence of hard rock music, right? And to play that music you've got to have your s--- together."
They had it together for Van Halen II, which broke the Billboard Top 10 and brought the band another hit single, "Dance the Night Away," which soared to No. 15 on the pop charts. Having firmly established they were no one-album wonder, they were ready to exert the platinum-coated grip they'd hold over rock radio for the duration of the decade -- and beyond. As Roth would point out in a 1980 interview with Creem, they were a band uniquely suited to their time.
"Where we're coming from is 'Big Rock,'" he argued. "'Heavy Metal' means that you play a jam that lasts 10 minutes and you have words about outer space and 'the eternal revolving circle of your love'...If you say 'a heavy metal person,' I picture a person who looks a certain way, treats women a certain way, and looks a certain way onstage. They're looking at their feet. We call 'em 'coke stars.' That is heavy metal.
"Van Halen is not that," chuckled Roth. "Van Halen is entertainment. Van Halen is entertainment delivered at maximum impact, but it's entertainment."
Ultimate Classic Rock website
While rarely cited as one the group’s best works, Van Halen II, features some of the band’s best individual tracks and may well showcase Van Halen at its cohesive best. Where their 1978 debut album was a fantastic showcase for guitarist Eddie Van Halen, this 1979 follow-up finds the rest of the band bringing it up near his level to give the album a greater sense of parity. Produced by Ted Templeman, this album is much more than just a carbon copy of the debut. It may have been the best example of a group successfully following up on a brilliant debut album since Led Zeppelin did it with Led Zeppelin II a decade earlier.
Following the tremendous success of their debut, Van Halen embarked on a world tour through much of 1978 before returning to California in December to immediately begin work on this second album. Warner Brothers decided to give the group a smaller recording budget, in spite of the first album’s phenomenal success. Because of this, there was very little studio time allotted to get the recordings done and many of the recordings were first takes. Further, with little time to compose new material, they drew some material from the demo tracks they recorded prior to the first album.
The entire recording process was completed in three weeks, and this frenzied pace spawned some sonic innovation. Templeman reverted back to some of his pop sensibilities from earlier in the seventies. Eddie Van Halen achieved a thick guitar sound by overloading the circuits on his amplifier, while bassist Michael Anthony used a smaller than normal bass amp to get a sharper, less rounded sound.
Released: March 23, 1979 (Warner Bros.)
Produced by: Ted Templeman
Recorded: Sunset Sound Recorders, Hollywood, December 1978-January 1979
Side One
You’re No Good
Dance the Night Away
Somebody Get Me a Doctor
Bottoms Up!
Outta Love Again
Side Two
Light Up the Sky
Spanish Fly
D.O.A.
Women In Love
Beautiful Girls
Group Musicians
David Lee Roth – Lead Vocals
Eddie Van Halen – Guitars, Vocals
Michael Anthony – Bass, Vocals
Alex Van Halen – Drums, Percussion
“You’re No Good” is, frankly, an odd cover selection to start off Van Halen II. However, in reviewing the album as it is laid out in total, it seems to be that this bit of static electric spark starts the chain reaction that leads to the musical inferno portrayed toward the end of the album. Starting with the doomy, slow meandering of Anthony’s flanged out bass before the song slowly marches in. The song proper has all of the Van Halen elements prevalent on the first album and, while certainly not the finest on the album, “You’re No Good” builds enough to make the listener feel like it is cut too short at the end. The mood brightens with the pop rock of “Dance the Night Away”, the group’s first Top 20 hit. The melodic vocals of David Lee Roth accompanies the catchy guitar riff with the bouncy bass perfectly locked with the bright kick drum of Alex Van Halen. There is a higher pitched counter-riff during the chorus and a simple yet brilliant bridge riff variation, while the outro is also done well with Roth inverting his lead vocals with the backing chorus.
Next come a couple of classic barroom songs. A short intro leads into the heavy riff which launches “Somebody Get Me a Doctor”, which dates back to the years before the first album’s release. “Bottoms Up!” has a moderate, unplugged intro by Eddie Van Halen before it breaks into an upbeat quasi-rockabilly song with Anthony slightly outshining the Van Halen brothers musically, as Eddie’s short leads fall just short of the historic precedent he set on the first album. The first side closes with “Outta Love Again”, the oldest composition on the album, notably interesting for its wild, space-like drone intro and clever use of rudiments and vocal timings. Overall, this is probably one of the strongest tracks for drummer Alex Van Halen with his shuffle rhythm through the verses and use of a variety of roll techniques elsewhere.
The second side is where the true genius of Van Halen II lies, with every track being interesting, original, and entertaining. The multi- sectioned “Light Up the Sky” is amazing for how much is packed into this barely three-minute-long song. Pure hard rock verses with Roth’s precise and complex lead vocals moving through the various sections. During the scaled-back bridge section Roth performs a raspy falsetto before Eddie ignites into a blistering lead guitar, before Alex takes his turn with a short drum solo and then an interesting outro with backwards-masked harmonies leading into the closing hook. The acoustic instrumental “Spanish Fly” is brilliant just in how unlike anything else it is. Sounding almost intentionally non-professional, this is a close-up trek into Eddie Van Halen’s genius stripped down to a nylon-stringed guitar and one single minute. In sharp contrast, “D.O.A.” is the heaviest rocking song with an absolutely brutal grind by Eddie Van Halen and the pure rock action of everyone else. Roth’s verse vocals are rather reserved but contrasted later with screams to match the song’s intensity. The later guitar lead is brilliant with an excellent complimentary bass underneath.
“Women in Love…” starts with a bell-like intro solo by Eddie which is pure melody and harmonic technique. The body of this steady song is a quasi-ballad with lyrics apparently about groupies and is the best song vocally on the album. Every note is pure sonic bliss right down to Roth’s word “scream” tailed with a slight inflection of an actual scream. The verses mix a somber riff with the harmonized vocals above a thumping bass and drum rhythm, while the guitar assentation mixes with the harmonies during the chorus. The album ends with the entertaining pop/rock song “Beautiful Girls”, which contains chanting vocals with some slightly clever rhyming before the song builds in crescendo excitement through the entertaining outro.
Van Halen II peaked at number six on the American album charts and has sold nearly six million copies since its release. Over the next two years the band released a couple more albums, Women and Children First and Fair Warning, which closely followed the same formula as this record and continued the band’s popularity.
Classic Rock Review Website
"The '80s are coming and we're going to be the soundtrack. We're here to blow the bugles and jump on the horns and whistle it all in and usher it down the road and round the stretch and across the finish line."
Van Halen front man David Lee Roth issued that boast during an interview with Sounds following the March 23, 1979, release of the band's second LP, Van Halen II. And although he ended up being right, the circumstances of the album's recording didn't exactly seem like a recipe for success.
Like a lot of young bands, Van Halen found themselves up against a tight deadline -- and dire financial straits -- when it came time to follow up a hit debut. "We went platinum," recalled drummer Alex Van Halen years later. "We toured for a year, we came back, and Warner Bros. told us that we owed them $2 million."
"And on top of that, we owed them another record," added guitarist Eddie Van Halen. "It was the end of the year. We had three weeks to deliver another record ... then boom, we went straight out on tour again. The first record took about a week, seven days to do. The second record took about three weeks."
Although the group had a stockpile of earlier songs left over from the demo that got them signed, they'd later claim that they only pulled three ("Bottoms Up!," "Outta Love Again" and "D.O.A.") from the vaults, instead focusing their efforts on adding a new cover to their repertoire ("You're No Good," a hit for Betty Everett in 1963 and Linda Ronstadt in 1975) and coming up with new material -- a process that Roth described by saying, "I remember it being extreme labor. I remember it being a lot of hard work compressed into a short period of time."
As he put it in his Sounds interview, "This time, we decided to really take it to the edge and go in totally unprepared, and this way we'd get a totally spontaneous sound. It's like bang, stick it on the plastic, next please -- that's the Van Halen attitude and lifestyle."
"What we're doing is getting down to the roots of high energy hard, heavy rock 'n' roll," Roth told NME. "We're out to establish Van Halen as the number one, the most energized, the most dependable rock 'n' roll outfit on this planet. And we're working our f---ing butts off -- from playing biker clubs, surfer clubs. When we started, L.A. was all punk rock, but we still busted through because we're working ... what we've got here is the very essence of hard rock music, right? And to play that music you've got to have your s--- together."
They had it together for Van Halen II, which broke the Billboard Top 10 and brought the band another hit single, "Dance the Night Away," which soared to No. 15 on the pop charts. Having firmly established they were no one-album wonder, they were ready to exert the platinum-coated grip they'd hold over rock radio for the duration of the decade -- and beyond. As Roth would point out in a 1980 interview with Creem, they were a band uniquely suited to their time.
"Where we're coming from is 'Big Rock,'" he argued. "'Heavy Metal' means that you play a jam that lasts 10 minutes and you have words about outer space and 'the eternal revolving circle of your love'...If you say 'a heavy metal person,' I picture a person who looks a certain way, treats women a certain way, and looks a certain way onstage. They're looking at their feet. We call 'em 'coke stars.' That is heavy metal.
"Van Halen is not that," chuckled Roth. "Van Halen is entertainment. Van Halen is entertainment delivered at maximum impact, but it's entertainment."
Ultimate Classic Rock website
