hokahey wrote:When I read Pandemonium's vast concert going history over the decades I can understand the Van Halen interest. He has a lot of information and interest on almost any important rock band from the past 30 years. I find it interesting to read what Van Halen is doing from a trainwreck perspective. I've never owned an album of theirs though and probably never will. But if I had been of age when they first came out I can see how they would have caught my attention. It was the Van Hagar days that they became a pretty lame rock band, even if they had a few decent songs. I can remember as a teenager thinking the "Right Now" video was pretty cool.
Yeah, when Sammy Hagar joined the band, I lost most of my interest in them. I had seen them at least once every tour from '78 - '84 and did continue to see them with Hagar (except the OU812 Monsters of Rock festival in '88) through his tenure, it was more like how I now see Janes, just kind of keep going because of some sort of loyalty to their past and I know the show will be entertaining on some level. But even by Van Halen's peak in '84, I had started to really branch out to other much more interesting bands encompassing different genres, especially punk, goth, etc.
But regarding KV's comments about the Hollywood Music scene becoming a cookie cutter hair metal factory - that really didn't start happening until about 1982 - 83 well after Van Halen was at their peak with Roth. I know a *lot* of bands (of all different genres) were inspired by Van Halen's DIY philosophy of street level self promotion but they accomplished that back in the late 70's when there was really nothing of worth going on in the local Hollywood music scene. Van Halen's only other direct competition was Quiet Riot and beyond that it was mostly a lot of other new wave and punk bands that really dominated the scene through the early 80's. A good peek at what the Sunset Strip music scene was like during the late '70's is actually the first Cheech and Chong comedy "Up In Smoke." There's no metal bands at the club battle of the bands thing.
It was really bands like Motley Crue, Dokken, Steeler, etc that were more directly influenced by British metal bands like Judas Priest Scorpions, Iron Maiden, etc that got the ball rolling on metal taking over the Strip. Then you had Guns n' Roses (who were more influenced by Hanoi Rocks and The Rolling Stones then real "metal" bands) hitting it big in '87 and the floodgates just opened big time. '87 - '90 in Hollywood *was* a pretty big stereotype of cookie cutter hair metal bands.