Best Van Halen Song

Running with the Devil

 

The correct answer to this is Dance the Night Away.

 

I always liked “When It’s Love.”

 

I will never for the life of me understand this take. Roth is inferior to Hagar in nearly every way. Hagar sings better, writes better songs, performs better live, is a solid musician as opposed to just an off-key screecher, and is just a better dude. Roth, who was awful live at his peak and has devolved into a clown, once had fake judo moves on his side, but that’s about it really.

All that said, @typefitter is correct. “Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love” is their best song and it’s not close. Of course, that’s 97% Eddie.

 

In this case it has nothing to do with who sings better and writes better and performs live better.

It's about that thing -- "It" -- that you can't really define but you know it when you see it.

Hagar's Van Halen was never, if I may, appointment TV ... never It. DLR's Van Halen was.

That said, Right Now is as good as It gets.

 

It's Van Halen, not Van Hagar.

One of the great mistakes, IMHO, is not having Van Halen side 1 start with Eruption and then move into You Really Got Me.

So this should be the greatest Van Halen song.

Unsleave the album. Place side one face up. Diamond hits wax and this is what you hear.

Man, did they fuck that up.

How any decent rock station plays them.

 

They were just compiling with Hagar.

 

If the "It" means being a no-talent clown with a creaky voice, who wrote cornball lyrics that mostly didn't make a ton of sense, and sucked out loud in concert, then yes, he had "it."

I think the fact that Roth went on in his solo career to become an even bigger cartoon character than he was while in Van Halen is pretty good evidence that he seriously lacked "it."

 

"It" was David Lee Roth's Van Halen, the whole enchilada.

I don't begrudge your love for Van Halens 2.0 and 3.0.

 

That might make a spec of sense had the band been called "Van Roth" prior to the split.

Yeah, let's start our debut with our guitar player noodling and follow it up by a 10-year-old cover that's the 11th-best song on the album. They got it exactly right. The train whistle fade-in on "Runnin' With The Devil," followed by Anthony's pounding base quarter notes, followed by Alex's high-hat, followed by Eddie's riff, was perfection. Following that with "Eruption/You Really Got Me" was ok, but that should have been the last thing on Side 2. That albums is full of gems that show off the whole band's chops. In hindsight, I'm surprised Roth's massive ego allowed Eddie to be showcased so early on.

(Anthony, it's worth noting, gets far too little credit for the band's early sound. His bass playing was meh, but his vocal harmonies, which made Roth's gargling sound palpable, were outstanding. He carried that on well through the Hagar years.)

 

I am very upset at the lack of respect being shown for the Gary Cherone era.

 

I love all the versions. Well, not the third one, which was awful. But to dismiss one as some fake compared to another because of a membership change is ridiculous. Van Halen was huge for a decade or so after Roth bolted. Roth was a sideshow act. To me, the band was every bit as enjoyable with Hagar as with Roth. In some ways, more so. People who think bands should stay the same and do the exact same thing song after song, album after album, yeah, I see why they wouldn't like it with Hagar.