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: