Behind the Album: ‘1984,’ Van Halen’s Smash Hit Farewell to the David Lee Roth Era

Van Halen was a band about to splinter, the differences between its lead singer and its guitarist simply too vast to bridge. Those differences actually helped to make 1984, the album the band released the same year as its title, the biggest hit of their career.

Nothing about the album’s creation went smoothly, and the process only widened the chasm between the principals. But at least VH left the first period of their career behind on a high note. Here’s the story of how the album was (barely) made, as well as a look back at the music itself.

Severed by Synths

Even in the best of times, Eddie Van Halen and David Lee Roth, the lead guitarist and original lead singer, respectively, for hard-rock heroes Van Halen, naturally clashed. Roth’s flash and gravitation to the spotlight contrasted with Eddie’s business-first approach and dogged pursuit of wherever the music took him. And when it came to 1984, it took him to the synthesizer.

Relations among the band were already strained from the sessions for Diver Down, the 1982 cover-filled album the band truly had no desire to make. Eddie Van Halen’s new compositions for the follow-up’s sessions only exacerbated the issues, as they were synthesizer-heavy and de-emphasized his electric guitar. Roth saw this as a betrayal of the rocking principles on which the band had built their reputation.

A power struggle soon ensued, with Roth and manager/producer Ted Templeman on one side, pushing for the guitar-based stuff, and Eddie and engineer Donn Landee on the other, leaning toward the synths that were all the rage at the time. A compromise was eventually reached to try to split the album somewhere down the middle.

But a whole lot of drama still took place during the sessions. That included Templeman and Landee battling for control of the master tapes to get the mixing done, and Michael McDonald co-writing “I’ll Wait,” but not receiving credit for it. (McDonald later sued to get that situation rectified.)

The ironic aspect about the struggle to make 1984 is Eddie Van Halen’s move toward synths resulted in a sweeter, pop-flavored sound, the kind for which Roth long craved. Roth used the fame gained from the hit singles the album produced as a springboard to his solo career, which began the following year when he acrimoniously left the band.

Revisiting the Music of 1984

There’s definitely a split personality at play when it comes to 1984, but it’s not the one you think between the guitar songs and synth tracks. It’s between the hit singles and remaining tracks. The band sounds all in on the former, while the latter batch just doesn’t have the same kind of juice and spark.

That’s partly because a few of those album tracks were left over from a much earlier time in the band’s career, rehashed here because there just wasn’t enough new songwriting done. Only “Top Jimmy,” with some subtle atmospheric guitar effects from Eddie and Roth’s solid character-sketch lyrics, holds its own with the hits.

But, wow, those hits still soar. Eddie’s inventive melding of synth chords and his usual guitar fret dancing on “Jump” is embellished by Roth’s ebullient lyrics. “I’ll Wait” somehow evokes both lust and menace, while “Panama” proved they could still bring the thunder. “Hot for Teacher” gives Alex Van Halen a thrilling drum showcase as well, as the lyrics hearken back to the sophomoric, irreverent earlier days.

That makes 1984 only about half a triumph, not quite as top-to-bottom great as their debut album (or even Fair Warning, for that matter). But as accessible, pop-leaning hard rock goes, those singles can’t be denied, as the band’s warring twin poles ended up complementing each other in spite of themselves.

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