And indeed, the song’s bright, bouncy and downright pop sound, which features Eddie playing an Oberheim OB-8 synth, made it clear that, yeah, they were serious about that keyboard thing. Released in March 1986 as the first single from 5150, Why Can’t This Be Love was for most people the first music heard from the Sammy Hagar-led Van Halen. Even better, more than half of that time is taken up by a furious EVH solo. Built on an ominous, burbling synth line carried over from the album’s previous track, the instrumental Sunday Afternoon In The Park, the song is a bare-bones rocker that fl ies by in a mere 1:58. Since Eddie had already lifted the original solo section and used it in Mean Street, he wrote a new one that, in addition to the intro’s cool chromatic bass figure, really allowed his son, bassist Wolfgang, to strut his stuff.įair Warning’s closing track was reportedly recorded on the quick, when the band literally had one foot out the door of the studio. Ted heard it and said, ‘Hey, let’s use it for Dancing In The Street.’ Maybe if I played it on guitar on the record it would have been better.”Īfter recording three demo versions – an early self-produced take, one with Gene Simmons in 1976 and another with Ted Templeman in 1977 – Van Halen finally released an official studio version of She’s The Woman on their 2012 album A Different Kind of Truth.
“The riff was taken from a song of my own that I was in the midst of writing.
Combined with the cascades of guitar harmonics that ring throughout, a white-hot solo spot and an intro played with the assistance of a Makita power drill, Poundcake announced that EVH was still a major guitar force to be reckoned with.Įddie played this song’s riff on a Minimoog synthesizer processed with the same echo effect he used on Cathedral (also from Diver Down) – “two songs I couldn’t have done without an echo,” he admitted. The massive guitar sound on this track is the result of Eddie overdubbing three rhythm guitar parts: his main six-string, and two tracks of electric 12-string, for which he played a custom model built by English guitar-maker Roger Giffin. Producer Andy Johns convinced him otherwise, but not before Eddie could pull out another blast from the past – he recorded the song using the ’58 Gibson Flying V he played on another 1984 hit, Hot For Teacher. Legend has it that Eddie didn’t want Top Of The World included on For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, preferring to focus on fresher material. Does that opening riff sound a little familiar? That’s because it’s more or less the same one Ed played almost a decade earlier on the fadeout to 1984’s Jump.
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