• AllMyVinyl #4
• Band: Van Halen
• Album Title: 1984
• Release Date: 9 Jan 1984
• Date purchased: 6 Oct 2020
• Location purchased: Tower Records
• Color of vinyl: black
• Number of discs: 1
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Full album on Youtube ]

Here we are.  Peak Van Halen.  Yeah, I know the other Roth era albums get a lot of attention (Van Halen I, Fair Warning), but for me 1984 is the peak of Van Halen’s recorded outfit.  I loved Van Hagar (even Cherone) too, but the 1984 was the top of the hill for them IMO.

It started off differently for sure, we have keyboards in the mix.  I was following them when this was brand new, and man, if the Internet was around then, they’d be destroyed for trying something different.  There was a lot of noise even then about how Van Halen sucked now that they added keyboards.  They didn’t shy from it.  The opening track was an instrumental (1984), which is mostly keyboards.  That leads right into Jump, which is a traditional VH songs, but with keys put in the mix big time.  Now the entire album doesn’t have keys on it, only some parts, but people were ready to bury the band, but that’s of course the usual unfounded fan rage.

The keys work perfectly here, and enhance the overall sound.  This was proven as “Jump” proved to be one of their biggest hits of all time.  Other big hits like Hot for Teacher or Panama had no keys, so the notion that keys ruined Van Halen is goofy at best.

I remember buying this new back in the day, I was into cassette tapes at this point mostly as this was the era of the Walkman, so I do remember buying 1984 on tape.  I never owned it until vinyl in late 2020, which I picked up a reissue from Tower Records (who these days are an online only store).  On the outside of this reissue (2015? hard to tell from what’s on packaging) was a sticker that I’ve included a picture of below.  That sticker contains the text “pressed with more care than ever”.  That makes me think what..  prior releases didn’t have much care given to them?  Was an odd choice of verbiage to say you tried to replicate the original packaging.  :)

Now granted, the music is amazing and still is in 2024, but I think a lot of the white hot feel this album had at the time it was new was MTV and the music videos.  Now Jump, the first out of the gate was nothing special.  It was just the band hamming it up in front of a camera with a totally black background and nothing else.  That was it.  But Panama and Hot for Teacher were over the top in attitude.  Panama looks like it was shot on the stage for tour rehearsals – it’s less of a story than the next one, but the individual bits are all memorable to me – like backwards video of Dave falling over, and someone using a hair dryer when a guitar sound effect kinda sounds like that.  But the video peak is “Hot for Teacher” – which – might be one f the best and funniest music videos of all time for me.  I mean, I was 18 when it came out so a video with well a bunch of bikini clad women was right up my alley, as I like a good looking woman as much as the next guy.   The sense of humor on display with the Hot for Teacher video extended into the first few videos that Roth did solo (California Girls, Just a Gigolo, Yankee Rose).  It was gone in the Hagar era, so that had to be driven by Roth, I’d imagine.

But there’s so much awesome stuff here – there’s really only one track that I can say I don’t care for a ton – “I’ll Wait”.  That was also released as a single as I recall, but there’s no video for that one.  The rest of the album is 4/5 or 5/5 big time.  The last song on the album (House of Pain) doesn’t get the credit it should – always loved that one.  Strong song which starts off with a damn sweet riff.

Listening to the album now that Eddie is no longer with us brings up a different feel than it did when it was new or in the years prior to his death.  His recorded output shows the outstanding talent he was, and it’s a shame he’s no longer with us, but we have these gifts he left behind, so play ’em if you got ’em.  If you don’t got ’em, – get ’em.

An Admin note: This is the fourth in my series, but I thought it was going to be the fifth.  What I thought was to be the fourth was “The Power Station – 33 1/3”.  I had that album in my spreadsheet under the title “33 1/3”.  I didn’t find out until I had gotten the record out to listen to it that the proper name of that album is really “The Power Station”.  The “33 1/3” moniker was basically just “artwork” for the vinyl release.  If you bought that album on CD, it said “The Power Station CD”.  Still learning things in 2024.  :)