That's a awful half naked girl. Don't like girls that can beat me up
The other rebuttals made me think, but this one made me laugh, so its my favorite, lol.
This has been my favorite thread on 78ta. I love talking with you guys and bouncing ideas about this topic. Here's more for your thoughtful consideration:
It's true DLR is one of the best frontmen in history. If you don't believe it just ask him.
Seriously, an arrogant frontman and a killer guitarist has always been the essential ingredients for the top-tier rock bands. In their day, neither Eddie or DLR really had an equal for those attributes.
ShakerBreaker, you are dead on about fan and band-mate appreciation, IMO. It seems the more insecure people are, the more they diminish the efforts of those around them, but the more outlandish they behave. You even see it in the workplace. As another band example, look how Gene Simmons has attempted to write Ace Frehley out of KISStory, but yet what a tremendous stage presence/ego Gene has. When DLR and Hagar toured together, they agreed to take turns opening/ closing. By the time the thing imploded, DLR was pretending his bus was broken to miss the gig, and then he'd show after Hagar went on. DLR is way more insecure and punitive than people give him credit for. Fans get enough of that kind of thing after a while, well, some do. And it didn't take DLR long to realize that Eddie was more than just a hot guitar player. The guy actually wrote many ALBUMS "slap-full" (as we say in the south) of killer songs. Steve Vai is a wizard, but not a lot of memorable songs. Heck, Steve Vai is a jackass, and even he can't stand DLR
Yeah Shakerz, as a musician, I tend to analyze the parts that make up the whole, and was attempting to be more "Spock-like" in my assessment since I have an emotional attachment, as Eddie is a staple of my guitar experience. I wanted to point out the differences from a technical viewpoint to offer some reasons why some folks may sway to DLR a little more, and why the music sounded a bit heavier. Good job in pointing out that most of the best Montrose songs (and heavier) were actually written by Hagar, and he was a
younger Hagar...
To expound on that point, we tend to forget that 23 year-olds write heavier and edgier music than 30 year-olds. There was a lot of attitude in the early VH writing, but they were
young. Compare "Jump" on 1984 to "Tora Tora/ Loss of Control" on Women and Children First. I prefer to think of DLR in the picture Burd posted, rather than him spinning on one foot with multi-colored scarves in slo-mo in the "Jump" video. It only took him 7 years or so to go from uber-cool to super-silly. People mellow with age, just a fact of life. It was kind of like Hetfield of Metallica said, "we realized one day that we were rich and we had nothing to be pissed about anymore"... By the time Hagar joined VH, he was already making more money than they were, so there wasn't much to be angry about anymore, well until Ed became a crackhead.
Another tidbit, is if you compare the guitar tone on the old albums to OU812, the guitar tone is way heavier later, the songs are just a little more campy due to the style change with Hagar. The guitar tone itself (OU812 for example) sounds more like Anthrax than early VH, but the hooks and melodies were still a bit "poppy", especially for long-time listeners (I didn't like but a couple songs on this album). By this time Eddie had gone exclusively to the 5150 amp line, which is more aggressive than the old Marshall (with a tired output transformer) he used for so long (which should be in the Smithsonian IMO). A good song that has both the post-DLR heavy guitar tone AND DLR is the song "Me Wise Magic" on the compilation record. I wouldn't mind hearing more of that type of stuff.
Another point I should mention, is that with all bands, the lyrical direction of a band gets lost as the world turns. The historical lyrical direction of VH would eventually be dated by the more geo-political lyrics that were introduced by metal and grunge bands. I would hypothesize that it would have happened just as quick if DLR stayed. Maybe we were spared an awkward DLR "trend" album by his departure... It's happened to all of the huge rock bands: KISS, Rush, Def Leppard, Metallica... This may not have been the case, but by the look of the scarves and DLR's truckload of insecurities, I wouldn't put anything past him to try to stay relevant. We were all probably better off with him in Vegas singing lounge tunes.
IMO, Kentuckyeti sums it up best with "Still, the best times and the rocking music came from DLR as the frontman, even though Sammy gave them a Number 1." As I said, too, the early DLR VH albums are my favorite (listened to Diver Down last night).
I think the reason I have a soft spot for 5150 is because it came out when I was a senior in high school. I actually camped out at Turtle's (remember Turtle's?) to get a copy. It was the best-mixed VH album from a sonic standpoint, and to a young guitar player it was a lot of fun to learn those new riffs, and me and my buddies would compete to see who could learn which songs the fastest. Also, out on the cruise and up to no good in my small-block '66 Chevelle for a couple of years by this time, me and my buddies had played the DLR albums to death. So, with the juvenile behavior maturing to teenage decadence (think Dazed and Confused) in 1988 for my small gang of friends and our girlfriends, 5150 became almost anthemic in a sense to the culmination of high school memories and "coming of age" in my what used to be a small-town in north Georgia.
