An Album You Should Re-Discover
Van Halen — Diver Down (1982)
Rock and Roll
Van Halen — Diver Down (1982)
Recently, I went to an '80s themed murder mystery party dressed as David Lee Roth (or Davey Lee Broth). And yes, it's tough to pull the Roth look off with a dark beard that's got a gray tint to it.
But I'm like the Daniel Day-Lewis of costumes, so naturally, I did it (Page Six should have all the details and pics.)
Borrowing from the DDL playbook, I was listening to some vintage Van Halen and re-discovered 1982's Diver Down to get into character.
During their peak period, the David Lee Roth-era of Van Halen only released six albums. Diver Down is the fifth of those.
Three records (Van Halen I, Van Halen II, and Diver Down) contain covers.*
Of those three records, only the 12-track Diver Down merits the honor of 42% of the album being cover songs. If you exclude the three instrumental tracks, that's nine songs, and excluding those instrumentals, the cover song percentage inches up to 55%.
The net result of Diver Down is that there are only four new original songs on the record. And those four songs are some of Van Halen's best.
[Fun Fact: Even at 12 songs, Diver Down still clocks in at 31 minutes.]
After the disappointing (commercially) Fair Warning from 1981, David Lee Roth had the idea of going into the studio to record a cover song to release as a single. The goal was to keep the band in the mix and on everyone's radar. While unusual for a band that was primarily considered an "album band" and not a "singles band," Roth, for all of his idiotic antics, was pretty on point and savvy when it came to the career trajectory for the band.
It helped to have, arguably, the greatest guitar player of the generation in your band.
As a single, Van Halen settled on recording and releasing Roy Orbison's classic "(Oh) Pretty Woman." The song would end up being their biggest hit to that point, and much to Eddie's chagrin, a hit without a guitar solo.
In 1982, MTV was then inches away from being the most dominant force in music and the powers that be blacklisted the video for "(Oh) Pretty Woman." Why you may be asking, well, this was the concept:
David Lee Roth is Napoleon, throw in a samurai Michael Anthony, Eddie Van Halen as a cowboy, and Alex as Tarzan. Now, let's have a hunchback call them to help a guy in drag being held captive by a couple of little people.
The word was that back then, MTV found the whole thing just too odd, and they didn't like the man in drag twist at the end, so they refused to air it.
The cover still made its way to #12 on the Billboard singles chart. As the single was on its way up the charts, the label realized the band had a hit. After some cattle prodding, Van Halen went into the studio and banged out Diver Down in 12 days.
Released in the spring of 1982, it would paradoxically go on to be one of the Roth-era Van Halen bestsellers (at four million copies) and one of Eddie and Alex Van Halen's least favorite albums.
In any event, no matter where you land on either Roth-era Van Halen or any other incarnation of the band, I am hella confident that Diver Down is not gonna top your list.
THE HARD PART
Three of the cover songs on this album are some of the worst things (released to the public) that Van Halen ever put on tape — and yes, it was tape in 1982.
Their cover of The Kinks "Where Have All the Good Times Gone!" (take note of the exclamation mark and not question mark) is dreadful. I'm not that much of a Kinks fan, so all I can say about this song is that good times are not found in this cover.
The aforementioned "(Oh) Pretty Woman" is accompanied by an instrumental titled "Intruder." I can't help but be reminded of an old Dennis Miller joke about two-for-one sales: "Hey pal, two of shit is shit" — that applies here.
As far as to cover songs on Diver Down, the band's rendition of Martha Reeves and the Vandella's "Dancin' in the Street" isn't awful. Don't get me wrong, it sucks, BUT it's still not as bad as that heaping pile of shit that Mick Jagger and David Bowie dumped on the world a couple of years later.
Diver Down has its share of contenders in the pantheon of abortive musical covers. Still, the pièce de résistance is the Jagger/Bowie cover of "Dancin' in the Street" (and yes, I include the Pat Boone album of heavy metal covers, In a Metal Mood — and yes, that exists for some unknown fucking reason.)
Now, don't you Bowie heads, go-getting in a snit about this and fire off all kinds of nasty notes about how I'm blaspheming your musical hero. The same goes for you Rolling Stones fans. Their cover of the classic Motown hit is pure unadulterated shit. It isn't just a blight on two of the most influential and legendary musicians in modern music; it's a God damn fuck stain on the entire history of music.
The compulsion, and arrogance, that accompanies an artist's desire to mutilate a perfectly fine pop song like this is jaw-dropping. I do not doubt in the case of the Jagger/Bowie collab it wasn't just impulse and ego that made them do it but copious amounts of cocaine — to be fair, that was probably just as prevalent during the Van Halen session too. It was the 80's after all.
And even in a decade known for its hubris and selfishness, the Mick Jagger and David Bowie cover of “Dancin’ in the Street” STILL stands out.
The Van Halen version of "Dancin' in the Street" is awful… but not Jagger/Bowie awful.
In case you missed it, I really hate the Jagger/Bowie cover, and I don’t like the Van Halen one… it’s just not as shitty as that one.
Now, where was I?
Right, on to the other cover songs:
Despite its marginal racist undertones, "Big Bad Bill (Is Sweet William Now)" is a fun, campy little song. The camp plays to everything David Lee Roth was turning into… and the Van Halen brothers got to record with their clarinet playing father Jan. So, while campy and fun, it works well enough.
As the album's last track, the a capella "Happy Trails" works in all the right ways.
THE EASIER PART
Let's move past the covers now.
Diver Down contains some of the band's purest and most accessible rock songs. And, in hindsight, serves as the perfect precursor to the blockbuster album that followed, 1984.
"Hang 'em High" is the second song on the album (after the shitty Kinks cover), and musically it has one of Eddie's most ferocious opening licks — which is saying something. The cool thing about the song is that it gives brother Alex a few moments to shine on the drums. Lyrically? This is Van Halen, not Bob Dylan — so lyrics don't traditionally factor into the song. Consistent with all Roth-era songs, the lyrics here are primarily coherent, or at least as cogent as the band's scribe, David Lee Roth is capable of.
The instrumental "Cathedral" precedes "Secrets," and it's a nice little one-two punch. If you listen to "Cathedral," remind yourself that the melody is being created with a guitar, a fucking guitar. "Cathedral" would become part of Eddie's live solo set for the remainder of the band's career.
"Secrets," as a song, is quite intriguing.
Van Halen was a good-time band — partying and pussy… period. There was no room for something like love; although, "Secrets" is one of two on Diver Down that inches its way into love song territory. It almost sounds like Diamond Dave is reflecting on some heartache:
She comes like the secret wind
She's as strong as the mountains, walks tall as a tree
She been there before, she'll never give in
She'll be gone tomorrow like the silent breeze
Closing out the first side of Diver Down is the instrumental "Intruder" and then "(Oh) Pretty Woman" — both of which can fuck right off.
Side two opens with "Dancin' in the Street" — I don't think we need to discuss that song any further.
"Little Guitars" is a two-parter. The acoustic instrumental prelude highlights Eddie Van Halen's interest and dalliances into flamenco, motivated by artists like Carlos Montoya. The song itself is the second "love" song on the album.
Where "Secrets" may dip its toe in the love song pool, "Little Guitars" jumps right in:
Senorita I'm in trouble again and I can't get free
(Senorita) You're exactly what the doctor ordered, come on talk to me
(Ah) Can't crow before I'm out of the woods
But there's exceptions to the rule
(Ah-ah) Senorita, do you need a friend? I'm in love with you
"The Full Bug" follows "Big Bad Bill (Is Sweet William Now)" and does the thing that Van Halen does best — kick ass. In an interview at the time with Sounds Magazine, and in typical Roth fashion, he nonsensically blathers on about cockroaches, and Puerto Rican shoes (I don't know either), and using the shoes pointy toes to crush the bugs wedged into the corner — you know, crush the full bug. Get it?
He somehow ties it all together by the end, saying the song is about "… giving everything you've got. Making the maximum effort, doing everything possible, to get the full bug."
Look, again, I don't know wtf he's on about, but given that description, the song is appropriately titled. And it's pretty awesome.
For all the infighting we've heard and read about over the years, that creative tension of Van Halen yielded an astonishing amount of extraordinary work. The original songs on Diver Down finds the band firing on all cylinders. And this Roth-led era version of Van Halen would reach full velocity on the next album, 1984.
In the Van Halen arsenal, I don't know where this record lands for you. If I didn't have to muscle through those shit covers (I had it on vinyl, you couldn't just hit an arrow to skip…you had to power through), this would be my favorite Van Halen album.
With that said, I think it's these dreadful covers that make Van Halen fans sometimes overlook Diver Down— and I'm looking at the Van Halen fans, not the people who like "Jump."
So, now that we have the freedom to skip over songs with reckless abandon, I would encourage you to re-discover Diver Down. Or listen for the first time.
And if it is your first time, listen to the whole 31-minute album. I can assure you it takes more than one listen to have the urge to jam an ice pick into your ear to avoid hearing those cover songs again.
Of course, there will be the contrarian's who will say: "Oh, those covers aren't that bad."
Yes. They are.
Listen to them again.
They're horrible.
But what do I know? Lots of people did like those covers.
In the event you missed it, I'm not one of them… but I do love the originals on Diver Down.
*= I am deliberately ignoring the Gary Cherone-led Van Halen. That record may or may not have a cover song — don't know, don't care. I am also ignoring the money grab of the last album full of old throwaway songs from the band's salad days with Eddie's son Wolfgang on bass. No disrespect to Woflie, but it ain't Van Halen without Michael Anthony.