I’ve written about Van Halen a few times before, but I wanted to take a few minutes today to talk about how Van Halen went from a relatively acceptable vehicle for the talents of bassist/golden-throated background singer Michael Anthony to a truly terrible waste of sensational musician and all around fun-lover Michael Anthony’s prodigious gifts.

As those of you who read my post about jump closely paying special attention to the subtext (such as referring to them as “these two assholes”) already know, I blame the guitarist and the drummer for this. They might seem fun, since they changed their last name to the band’s name like The Ramones or The Donnas, but actually (ACTUALLY) they named the band after themselves like a couple of real assholes.

How did they ruin the band, and by extension waste Quetzalcoatl’s gift to the world/golden boy/golden-throated angel Michael Anthony’s talents? Besides by being assholes, I mean.

Well, let’s start at the beginning with Running With the Devil:

This video is for a song that pre-dates MTV, so it is relatively primitive in its live without an audience sparseness, but I think it makes it clear what the band in its full fun-loving mode was capable of.

One of the key reasons this video is good is that most of it consists of shots of our rockin’ heroes, the fun-loving part of the band:

In the early days, there was balance.

You might still have an excessively flashy guitar solo, but you’d still see the other members of the band during it.

Notice how your eyes are still drawn to Michael Anthony here?

And immediately after the solo spotlight, the guitar player joins the rest of the band to showcase the rocking out as a group.

Toward the middle of the ‘80’s, the band’s balance started to be disrupted. The fun-loving and the “serious” parts of the band started to be in conflict.

For example, here’s the video for Panama:

It starts with the singer bungee-ing in holding a boombox.

The talented Mr. Anthony and the guitar player do a fun jump off a riser on the stage.

Michael Anthony gets his chance to bungee as well, in his case holding a bass that looks like a bottle of Jack Daniels.

The man virtually oozes fun.

On the other hand, though, you have the Van Halen brothers in white jacket tuxedos playing classical music.

Where did the fun go? It’s like they know they should be frolicking, but they’re so worried about seeming cool that it’s just sad.

Also, in this video when the obligatory overly-complicated guitar solo comes along, the rest of the band melts away and we just get close ups of the guitar player’s fingers moving fast.

I am not impressed.

As the band moves into its “late” period, balance is completely destroyed as the singer switches sides from the fun-loving, pro-golden-throated background vocalist Michael Anthony camp to the boring, self-important Van Halen brother camp. To emphasize his camp-switching, he changed his name and voice, as well as received extensive plastic surgery to alter his appearance.

Just take a look at this mess, When It’s Love:

Christ.

Just look at how serious the singer looks.

It’s such a harsh contrast with the very same singer at the beginning of the Panama video.

The “guitar” player is actually playing keyboards here, also with a thoughtful and serious face.

The singer pretends to be having fun by kicking, but nothing can hide the fact that he is wearing what appears to be a leisure suit.

Hero to gods and men Michael Anthony, on the other hand, is smiling while wearing a sleeveless Mickey Mouse t-shirt.

It’s like the rest of the band had a meeting about what to wear and “forgot” to invite him.

The only real levity in the video comes from when Michael Anthony forces his way into the shot to lend his golden throat to this shit show.

This shot, however, is more representative of the video:

Michael Anthony, cut out of the picture. A tragedy for the ages.

So, to answer my question from early (go ahead and re-read it, I’ll wait), what happened? How did the Van Halens ruin Van Halen? By not naming the band The Michael Anthony’s, that’s how.

-PTD

I told my boss that I used to be in a band. He asked as a joke, “Was it creative differences?” Let me tell you, creative differences are no joke. If everyone in a band does not agree on their goals as a band, creatively or not, then there is a serious problem. If half the group wants to play local bars while the other half wants to be famous there will be conflicts. Creatively, if half the band wants to make fun party music and the other half wants to be compared to Mozart there will be serious conflicts.

How, you ask, your left eyebrow rising inquisitively while your right buttock instantly falls asleep, could a band stay together for more than two weeks with those types of creative differences? Who knows? Van Halen did it for ten years, though.

See creative differences in action. Jump by Van Halen:

There are two distinct groups in the band. The first consists of the singer and bassist/golden-throated background singer Michael Anthony.

They represent the values of a traditional rock band, mainly having fun and making fun music.

The second contingent consists of these two assholes.

They represent the values of showing off, unnecessary complexity, and general boring-ness.

Just take a look at the drummer’s kit. He has such a bewildering array of drums and cymbals that there is no way he uses them all. He is trying to make it seem like he is such a technical genius that he carefully selects from one of 12 differently tuned tom-toms. The truth is that he just hits which ever one is closest at hand when he needs it.

Wait, is that a gong behind him? God, that’s terrible.

The singer and Michael Anthony, though, don’t need a huge amount of fancy equipment. The most advanced thing they have is the singer’s hair.

During the first half of the video the forces of good hold sway. Everyone is having fun and everything looks traditional.

The singer does the splits.

Also, even though the whole song is basically all keyboard no one is playing the keyboard. Why? Because rock bands don’t have keyboards. That’s why! This video is all live-without-an-audience and it is probably one of the least appropriate Van Halen songs for this treatment because it is very much not live.

See how much fun they are having! I’m having fun too.

The fun is infectious. Even the guitar player is roped in temporarily.

Jump!

There’s a great set of lines at the beginning of the second verse that are kind of funny where the singer converses with himself. It starts with his face upside down.

Then he looks around, confused.

Awesome.

There is also a huge amount of jumping. The singer is extremely flexible.

More jumping.

Even more jumping.

At this point I am having a lot of fun, but the fun is about to end. The four bass drums in the drummer’s kit portend doom. Why would he have four bass drums? It is the stupidest thing I or anyone else has ever heard of. Or will ever hear of.

The fun truly dies when the guitar solo starts.

The guitar player in Van Halen is terrible at guitar. Oh, he is proficient, but he has no musical sense whatsoever. The guitar solo has no melody and consists entirely of fast playing for no reason. It isn’t interesting to listen to at all. I think the audience is supposed to be impressed with how fast he can play, but I don’t find it particularly impressive.

We finally get to see who is playing the keyboard and it turns out to be the guitar player.

He looks so smug.

Rather than playing the catchy riff of the song he plays repetitive arpeggios at high speeds.

So you can appreciate just how fast he is playing we get an extreme close up of his right hand.

This part of the song is painfully boring. The singer and Michael Anthony understand this. They try desperately to be interesting for us.

They are interesting but it can’t save us from this man:

His drum kit is stultifying. Why would you ruin a fun song with your stupidly enormous drum kit? Why?

Luckily the video ends with another jump.

According to Wookieepedia, “Rodian culture was obsessed with violence and death, due to behaviors and practices that were ingrained since their earliest ancestry.” This doesn’t explain Van Halen. According to Wikipedia, the album containing Jump, 1984, was Van Halen’s last album as a regular rock band. After that they switched to being a Sammy Hagar-based band. (Fun fact: Sammy Hagar literally cannot drive 55 miles an hour. His car goes straight from 54 to 56.) This video shows why. Creative differences.

-PTD

Yesterday [I promised synchronized dancing](/posts/hear-no-evil-real-live- flesh-by-tune/). Today, I deliver.

And here is the synchronized dancing:

This video has some of the worst synchronized dancing possible. The moves are really simple and poorly executed. I’m amazed that any of the band members can play their instruments because it seems they are incapable of moving parts of their bodies in time.

This video isn’t all synchronized dancing though. “Music videos do not live by dancing alone,” as Sun Tzu said.

The video starts in black and white, possibly representing the past. We see a boy named Waldo whose lot in life is humiliation and anxiety.

He does not fit in with the kids at school. They like to have fun and throw shit on the bus. That’s fun, right?

And David Lee Roth is the bus driver! Awesome celebrity cameo! I understand that he is also a part-time musician like Bruce Willis or the Bacon Brothers.

This all happens before the song starts. I don’t like having an introductory video section. The pacing is all weird and the acting is terrible. Just play the song! If I wanted to watch a movie featuring musicians I’d just watch Purple Rain because it is impossible to make a better music movie than that.

Once Waldo arrives at school you get a closer look at his classmates. You have the baby punk with enormous glasses:

And the baby “a little bit poodle, a little bit rock and roll”:

In addition, each of the band members has his kid-pleganger. You have the singer what’s-his-face:

The drummer who’s-its:

The bass player, rock legend, and golden-throated background vocalist Michael Anthony:

And the guitar player, Ted or something, who is trying desperately to be cool:

Then, much like the Kool-Aid man, the teacher busts through the wall and everything becomes awesome.

She seems to be a combination stripper and beauty pageant contestant. She comes through the curtain, reveals that fact that she is barely wearing any clothes, and everyone goes apeshit. The video also goes from black and white to color. The kid-plegangers go wild, acting in a manner that seems wildly inappropriate for children their age. When I was that age I would not have been willing to stand up in those circumstances.

Then, inexplicably, the video goes back to black and white. Once the Kool-Aid man comes through the wall, the hole in that wall does not heal. My understanding is that those kids drink Kool-Aid and have fun until they collapse from sugar-induced central nervous system problems or get diabetes. At no point do things get boring again. Yet that is what happens here.

You get the wrong person singing, which is both confusing and obnoxious.

As well as the correct person singing after leering at a woman’s butt. Everyone loves a well-executed leer. Ok, now it’s time for synchronized dancing.

And then the teacher starts stripping in the lunch room. Note that her sign (ribbon? scarf? placard?) says “Phys Ed” because she is educating the children about her physical body! Get it?

This second verse is really strange. The singer looks really depressed and sings with no expression.

The teacher’s dancing and frivolity only reminds him of his own mortality. Some day he will die and then the fun will all be over. He becomes desperate and grabs the teacher, hoping to feel something, anything.

For obvious reasons, this leads to additional synchronized dancing.

Do you see how uncoordinated their movements are? It is amazing. Maybe all the dance sequences were shot in a single take? Maybe it’s all performance art about the futility of ever syncing with another human being. No form of communication is perfect, so what we are trying to convey and what other humans understand is always different. This is the message I understand from these terrible dancers, but who knows what message they are truly trying to convey.

Then, the guitar player walks down a table while playing tunelessly as fast as he possibly can.

This leads to the band and its kid-plegangers being imprisoned by a sexy guard.

For reasons that are entirely unclear, exposure to members of Van Halen causes Waldo physical harm. Here is what he looks like at this point in the video.

Van Halen is considered a metal band, but their music is not heavy and the band members are not threatening. I feel like they spend half their time getting perms and the other half playing pop music. If you listen to a song that is actually heavy, such as [“Outshined” by Soundgarden](//youtu.be/sNh- iw7gsuI) I think you will clearly hear the difference. “Outshined” has pounding drums, passionate vocals, and thick, meaty, Texas-chili-style guitar work. “Hot for Teacher” has synchronized dancing:

These guys are supposed to be threatening?

The video ends, after an epic 5 minutes, with an update on where all the characters are.

The drummer apparently went to medical school. And he is a gynecologist. HAHAHAHAHA. HA. Do people think that being a gynecologist is sexy? I imagine that treating women’s genitals medically is pretty different from having sex.

Bass great Michael Anthony went into the world of sports. This is a huge loss for music. We can only hope that he brings as much light and joy to Japanese wrestling as he did to music.

The guitar player is euphemistically mentally ill. Is that funny? Apparently.

I don’t get it.

The singer is a game show host. Good for him. It’s great to see a hometown kid make good.

Well, that’s about it. Except: Synchronized dancing.

Join me tomorrow when I show you what a real 1980’s video should be.

-PTD