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.

http://www.chartstats.com/images/artwork/24067.jpg

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