Fair Warning

well i mean the ed stuff i mean we can all attest to this when you just listen to the tracks that stuff is so unconventional and sometimes so weird and and tommy and i have you know talked about this as singers and writers that like how could you how could you write a song like hot for what what kind of melody are you coming up with for hot for teacher like yeah it's just what are you writing that what are you putting there that doesn't sound contrived that doesn't sound you know i Talking

about, you know, it's considered a dark album and it really isn't as dark as people say, but Fair Warning, you

know, is a

great example, like Mean Streets,

I just wanted to share with you guys my Van Halen experience.

My first ever concert was a Van Halen at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium in 1981. i come from a very small town 45 minutes away from there and van halen was the band that everybody at my school loved so when we found out they were coming for the fair warning show we got about eight of us together and i bought those tickets um

if

my memory serves me correctly get this the tickets were a nine dollars and fifty cents each are you kidding me i would have bought 800 of those tickets for everyone

Like, I'm over here, Mr. 1984.

He's over here.

Fair warning.

But basically, they were both at the height of their power, you know.

Oh, here we go.

Van Halen won or Fair Warning? John.

Fair Warning.

Yes.

Fair Warning.

Yes.

Yes, finally.

You're outnumbered.

Eddie could play behind a groove with the same invention he brought to soloing.

Women and Children First, 1980, and Fair Warning, 1981, pushed the band's sound darker and more experimental.

But the commercial peak came with 1984, released January 1st, 1984, technically outside our timeline, through the lead single Jump arrived in late 1983, specifically with the guitar work on Panama and Hot for Teacher, both from 1984's eponymous album, which showed that Eddie's playing had continued to deepen and evolve.

For our purposes, the pivotal album is Fair Warning , which features Unchained, the song that perhaps best summarizes Eddie's approach to the guitar as a total sonic environment, using the Floyd Rose Tremolo system, another innovation, a locking tremolo that stayed in tune even after the extreme pitch bending, which had been impossible to achieve reliably before for dramatic effect.

The Floyd Rose connection matters historically.

Eddie's use of the whammy bar encouraged its manufacturers to develop the locking Floyd Rose bridge, which became standard equipment on the guitars of the 1980s shred era.

Greg.

He always brings up that he saw Van Halen on the Fair Warning tour.

And every time he brings it up, I go, you know what? I saw Van Halen 3 with Gary Cherone at the county fair.

So who's cool now?

Yes.

It sounds like it came coming off of Fair Warning.

Yeah, yeah.

I, I'll give you that.

I'm in LA, I'm in southern California, and all I have is music, and my brother sent me a guitar and an amp, so I started learning how to play guitar and, you know, I always sang and all that shit.

So, you know, I, I, um, Van Halen put out Fair Warning, and I was able to go to the show at the LA Sports Arena.

And when I got there, man, I walked in and there's a bunch of people that look like David Lee Roth, and there's a bunch of people who look like Eddie.

Nobody looked like Alex or, you know.

It'll just be, like, some AI fucking avatars doing it.

You never know.

Well, but you know what, man? At the same time, I mean, you, every once in a while you see new clips popping up from some tour, from, you know, the 1980 Invasion tour or the Fair Warning tour or whatever tour.

Like, you always see new stuff coming up, like all that, um, you know, Donington stuff that popped up a couple years ago from '84.

Most likely, yeah, when you take the, uh, catalog as a whole.

When you take the catalog as a whole, 'cause I, I mean, like, if you look at, like, Fair Warning, um, Women and Children First, Van Halen II, like there's a lot of great songs on there, but most, like the big, like, rock radio, MTV staples I feel start to happen on the Sammy Hagar albums.

Totally.

It's a different era, too.

So when he was a kid, and he first heard Women and Children First, uh, Mike Portnoy heard that ending, and he was like, "Oh, that's how the next Van Halen album's gonna start."

[laughs]

And he was, he was very disappointed when Fair Warning came out, and it had nothing to do with that [sings] kind of, that, that Growth riff.

Right.