Fair Warning is a great album.
Easily my most played Van Halen album.

And the first one with Hagar was pretty good.
Shame they didn't spilt up after that one.

I guess because i like Roth and his voice lent itself better to the music at least for me. I never cared for the direction they went with the pop era. Also alot more keyboards on those albums and gimmicky sounding guitar. Their popularity held up and Hagar did get along great with Eddie which was the primary reason that they sent Roth packing. Roth does have one of the biggest egos in rock history, but his voice was great with their solid blend of rock.

DLR was always going to be a hard act to follow, his voice perfectly fitted the Van Halen sound and he looked a damn sight sexier in spandex than Freddie Mercury ever could!

1984 serves as a great example of a pop metal album and was an essential 80`s metal album imo. Van Halen as a band, were vital to the pop metal genre at that time and NWOBHM bands such as Iron Maiden, Def Leppard and Judas Priest also released a lot of pop metal inspired sounding albums around that time as well, pop metal was kind of the introduction for hair metal.

They knew they couldn`t replace DLR as such, so they went for somebody different with Hagar (largely due to their friendship, I once read they became friends as they used the same mechanic for their cars and also shared a love of Mexico) With Hagar they got it right and I probably play the Hagar albums more often than the DLR ones as well.

Van Halen (debut) album is one of the most renowned albums in rock history. I personally was always a big fan of 5150 which includes some of Hagar's best vocal work to this day when compared to his solo career in my opinion. Hagar is one of the great rock vocalist of all-time. David Lee Roth is usually ranked in the top 5 as one of the greatest frontmen of rock in a lot of popular opinion polls. Eddie Van Halen, one of the great guitarist of rock and his brother Alex is no doubt one of the best drummers in rock history.

....and how about poor old Michael Anthony?

Of course a great bassist, one of the most distinguishable backup vocalist in rock as well. Anthony really had good vocal range on backup. I always wondered how he would sound on lead vocals.

I doubt if he would`ve looked good in spandex, so he wouldn`t have got the job.

:laughing: I know what you mean, I saw him on an episode of That Metal Show awhile back and realized how short he is.

He is a solid and hard driving bass player.

Do you think its better than the debut and 1984?

since I'm such a singles type of person

I went with this album and I'm happy with it.

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just give me the greatest hits and it's all good.

You tell me

Huevos: Van Halen- Fair Warning (1981)

So that's a yes then? :p:

I'm getting the impression that this is like Van Halen's "Presence." Does that sound right?

Their singles are usually very good.

And I love the debut, barring Eruption, which is just ass-wankery.

impressive ass-wankery though.

it doesn't sound impressive to me - it's just noodling

just because it's faster and has some relatively new techniques doesn't make it a great song

That's exactly what makes it a great solo.

Favorite album, Debut album (no brainer), although 1984 and F.U.C.K are great too. It got a little to poppy with Hagar, but still made some pretty cool stuff.

No it was a 'There's a blog with a link to the album, why don't you download it, listen to it and then YOU tell ME.'

Come on, Urban... really?

Good as in it didn't suck.

It would still be my last Van Halen album I would listen to by choice assuming I discount everything they ever recorded from 1986 onwards.

I discount everything after 1984, but, you know... once every couple of years I get to harass you about something.

The debut of Sammy Hagar and 5150 is one of my favorite albums. It is over played, but OU812 and everything else after doesn't have much worth listening to. Van Halen debut and 1984 (with Roth) is the only thing else I might consider listening to, besides an occasional song here and there. I'm kinda burnt out on Halen's music.

Well it's not overplayed for me.

Probably because I've not listened to it since about 1990.

Your just so.."Cool" Urban:laughing: I hear a song by them once and awhile listening to classic rock stations.

women and children first is their best and everybody wants some is the best song on it

If you like VH and metal listen to this it is amazing.

Pretty good. The only thing I didn't care for was the snare. It seemed like he was hitting off-tempo just for the sake of being off-tempo, which for me detracted from the groove.

I must pull out that new slash old Van Halen cd that they recorded last year! There are some pretty good hard rock numbers on there!

Agree. But it's still very nice. Hard to cover Van Halen so mad props.

Have you read Sammy's bio?? Paints a bad picture of the VH brothers. Still one of the best all time rock bands in my book.

I think when Sammy signed on they had this large classy sound that wasn't there before. He brought a new direction to VH sound in my opinion.

Whenever I say Van Halen I mean the brothers plus D. Lee Roth and M. Anthony. Monumental band. There's no other Van Halen at all (in my opinion): I think they should've had a name change when there was Sammy singing for the brothers.

Why? The main influence on Van Halen were Montrose and on Montrose's first few albums Sammy Hagar was the lead vocalist. So when Sammy Hagar joined VH the band had just gone full circle and Sammy Hagar was in many ways the ideal choice to replace DLR.

I would totally agree with that if Sammy sang like he did in Montrose, or Van Halen even had songs that were like Montrose, but I don't think that they did......That 5150 album had radio comsumption written all over it in my opinion and Sammy just gave their songs a more refined sound compared to David Lee Roth's style.

That's because his Montrose albums were back in the early to mid 1970s and by the time he sang on the VH albums, Hagar already as a solo artist had covered quite a bit of ground and developed as an artist, and so when he joined Van Halen they were an extremely commercial band and he was just adding to this rather than changing anything. So I'd say with or without him the 5150 would've been a completely commercial sounding album anyway.

Good data. Seriously. I didn't know that. Still, The D. Lee Roth VH is, in my opinion, hugely better than the Sammy VH.

Well DLR was an exceptional frontman and the cherry on the cake, whereas SH was just the tasty substance within the cake. Overall the DLR fronted albums are better, but the SH material does have a greater consistent feel about them.

In my opinion most bands were extremely commercial in the period of music that we are talking about.
Sammy just made the band sound more refined..........:laughing:

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That's all the VH you need right there IMO. And while I do think DLR is a better frontman than SH (whom I personally don't care for at all), that's not why the albums are better. Those albums just have 8000 percent more fecking BALLS. Eddie, Alex and Michael. /story

Sure nearly all the major metal bands at that time were both highly commercial and glossy at the same time.

That's the issue I find for most people rather than the actual albums. Personally I always really liked the pop metal sheen of the Sammy Hagar albums, but then I'm a fan of Sammy Hagar.

:laughing: