Cut The Crap #1: The Rebound

CUT THE CRAP: The Rebound
Artist: Van Halen
Album: Van Halen III
Aftermath: Over 10 years later, we’re still waiting on a new Van Halen album. Frontman of the album Gary Cherone disappears off the face the earth. David Lee Roth returns for a nostalgia tour that ignores 15 years of the band’s catalog.

In 1986, Van Halen pulled a magic trick with 5150, their first album after switching original frontman David Lee Roth for Sammy Hagar. Now, I’m no “Van Hagar” apologist, but 5150 pointed to a more synth oriented future that continued in the same direction as Roth’s last album with the group, 1984. It’s not an all-time classic, but it’s a respectable bundle of music with nearly all of the best Van Hagar singles. Van Halen maintained a level of success throughout the ’80s.

What happened after that? Dwindling returns on their investment, as guitarist Eddie Van Halen struggled to maintain creative energy and sought respectability past being one of best guitarists ever by being increasingly pretentious and elaborate about his music and its arrangements. Also: troubles with substance abuse and in-fighting in the band. Cut to 1996, and the band dumps Hagar. They reunite with Roth for a quick fling then dump him.

By this point, you have to understand, Van Halen thinks it’s done with those blonde-haired party boys. They’re always handsome and funny at first, but then they just become obnoxious and annoying. Van Halen needs someone different. Someone stable, who can provide lead vocals for longer than six years. And so the band is at a party, and across the room Extreme is there. They get to talking; they get to flirting. Extreme’s lead singer reminds Van Halen a little of Hagar, but maybe more willing to commit. He was in Extreme for 10 years! Van Halen takes Gary Cherone by the hand, and they head into Van Halen’s studio.

The result of that coupling is Van Halen III. This album is a rebound, mis-matched parties masturbating each other messily. Gary Cherone gets a band, Van Halen gets a guy who can probably sing Hagar’s songs (and presumably the guy who so sings like Hagar can sing like Hagar singing like Roth, right?). But Van Halen had some shit to work out within themselves before they could get back into the swing of things. No songs here are memorable.

Most of the blame has to fall into Eddie Van Halen’s lap. His bid to be known as more than a guy who played great guitar on “Everybody Wants Some” and other songs about doin’ it translates here into cluttered tracks filled with multiple layers of guitar, multi-part structures, and no identifiable riffs or hooks. The best comparison is a lead guitarist who strikes out to go solo, feels like he was underrated in the context of a group, and spills every idea he has into every song. So, you get “Dirty Water Dog,” a song built around some skillful finger picking that almost sounds like a Cherone wailing over some nondescript guitar solo. The songs of Van Halen III are barely discernible from one another, aside from the acoustic guitar showcase that opens it and the Eddie-sung closer.

I suspect Hagar couldn’t make much of these songs, but Cherone doesn’t help. He really, really sounds like Hagar. Except he sounds like Hagar on the chorus of “Dreams,” that soaring, epic “Hiiiigher and hiiiiiiigher!” part, but hoarser. His ad-libbed “Yeah yeah!”s and “Come on!”s sound like desperate cries for more energy from this clinical set. The gonzo fun of Roth and Hagar’s powerful vocals are greatly missing, leaving mostly the latter’s worst features and an off-putting brand of seriousness. It’s a difficult balance to take things seriously and write lyrics like “If I cannot kiss you from afar/Press against your lips, taste the sweetness/Of your breath.”

In essence, the entire band feels out of its element. It was the ’90s, so maybe Eddie felt self-conscious that no one was doing the guitar heroics thing in the post-grunge landscape. It’s a match that sounds like it could work, and indeed it’s easy to imagine this band playing the old songs. In reality, though, everyone involved seems like they’re forcing themselves to make the changes work. It was probably an inevitable growing pain that this album was Cherone’s only contribution to the band’s catalog.

After a mess like this, the only place to go was to clean up and either become something new or reunite with David Lee Roth, whose first love bond with the group was so pure everyone knew it was right.

Other rebounds:
Red Hot Chili Peppers – One Hot Minute

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Jere is not from Chicago. Nor is he from Parts Unknown. But he sure loves to hear things. Follow him on Twitter!

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