No movie tonight. Instead, I went over to Grimsley's because he wanted me to hear "Van Halen III", which I had never heard even though it came out 19 years ago. That's the one with Gary Cherone on vocals. Grim had never heard it either until he bought it a week ago, and he bought it because I had been talking about it, which was due to all of the interesting info surrounding the making of that record that I'd recently read in the EVH biography by Kevin Dodds. As I'm sure I've mentioned, I gave up on Van Halen in 1985, when Sammy Hagar joined. I've heard many Van Hagar songs on the radio - you can't avoid them - and actually, if it weren't for the vocals and the lame lyrics (in other words, the Sammy Stuff) - there are actually some nice songs there, strong melodies and soaring guitar work. But Sammy ruined it for me and I could no longer hang, and by the time Cherone joined I was like, "whatever". But fast forward nineteen years - I talked to Grim about "VH3" - he bought it, and I finally heard it.
I expected it to be terrible, because that's it's reputation, so I was a little bit surprised.....
Not because it's great, which it's not, but because it's interesting. It doesn't sound like a Van Halen record. Ed breaks out all kinds of different guitar styles that we've never heard him play (keep in mind that I'm 19 years late), like slide, lots of acoustic, Delta Blues-type of riffing, very experimental soloing, ballads galore, and one or two piano songs including the infamous "How Many Say I" with Ed on vocals. A Van Halen song about the sorrows of the world, imagine that. It's all over the map musically, and especially guitarically. Many songs, if you'd never heard them and didn't know who it was, you would not think "this is Van Halen".
The record is about 65 minutes long, and there's probably about 35-40 minutes of good music on there, some of it really good. But there are two problems. One pretty much sinks the album.
If you thought Sammy Hagar's vocals were high-pitched and screechy sounding, Gary Cherone is Hagar on steroids. He is so raw-in-the-throat and so high pitched and singing above his range (which EVH apparently wanted his post-Roth singers to do) that his vocals are absolute nails-on-the-blackboard. I said to Grim, "I like a lot of the music but I'm taking a beatdown from the singer". It's like he's running you over with his voice.
So that's one problem, the one that is the Album Killer.
The other problem is that the songs needed an editor and an arranger. I think that's where Roth would have come in handy. Although he is not a writer of music, he always understood the ingredients that made a good song. Listen to "Dance The Night Away" as an example. According to every Van Halen book I've read, it was Roth who got Ed to strip away a lot of extraneous stuff in his songs to make them more compact and keep the emphasis on riffs and hooks. But without Roth's input, or even Sammy's to keep him in check to make a commercial record, Ed went to town on "Van Halen III". Gary Cherone was not an established star and didn't have the massive ego anyway to push EVH around and tell him what to do, and so Edward made what is essentially a solo album. That is what a lot of fans think about "VH3" and I agree. It sure doesn't sound like any Van Halen I've ever heard, or Van Hagar either!
And it might have been a very good album if it hadn't been for the singing.......
Well anyhow. :) (hey, how about that? An album review instead of a movie review. I'm getting versatile!)
Elizabeth, if you are still out there, I hope you are doing well and that everything is going okay. I saw a couple of posts last night; one about "Spirited Away" and another that might have been a Sweet Baby post, via your friend Vaia.
I think those two things go together, Sweet Babies and "Spirited Away", which is one of my very favorite movies of all time. We could see that one if we had the chance, and then follow it with "Howl's Moving Castle", or "Kiki's Delivery Service" or "Nausicaa".....
See you in the morn, or in the movie theater.........or both!
:) + :) = :):)
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