Eddie Van Halen’s wife recently took to Twitter and posted throwback pictures of him. “The caption read: I miss – you ❤️”
Check it out below:
I miss – you ❤️ pic.twitter.com/NoXraOxMdE
— Janie Van Halen (@JanieVanHalen) October 6, 2023
Engineer Donn Landee recently recalled working with Van Halen on the iconic band’s 1978 self-titled debut album, noting how the band’s members were initially disappointed in its sound.
Even though it would go on to redefine rock music for a whole generation, 1978’s “Van Halen” got off to somewhat of a rocky start. Right after the release, the album was greeted with some less than complimentary early reviews — for one example, Rolling Stone wrote:
“In three years, Van Halen is going to be fat and self-indulgent and disgusting … follow[ing] Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin right into the toilet. In the meantime, they are likely to be a big deal.”
And while Eddie or his band members never got “fat” or went sewage-diving, they definitely became a “big deal” pretty quick.
Few members of the band have clung to their misgivings with the original album’s sound for a bit longer, with Alex Van Halen reportedly saying that it didn’t sound as imagined. Asked in a recent interview with “Tape Op” whether members of Van Halen voiced their concerns during the recording process, engineer Donn Landee said:
“They were extremely quiet. We didn’t hear anything about [the sound of the album] until well after Van Halen was out. They were disappointed; it’s not what they had in their mind when they came in to do the record. But Al told me we got it [right] later on. What we got on tape for ‘1984’ was much more to his liking.”
Asked to comment on bassist Michael Anthony’s remarks how Van Halen wanted to sound like Montrose and how they were happy for the opportunity to work with Landee and Ted Templeman because of it, he said:
“The Montrose and Van Halen debuts sound really very different. With Montrose, we did overdubs. We would do two or three [tracks] of Ronnie’s guitars. With Van Halen, they played it and we were done. That’s the way most of that first album [was recorded]. There are some songs that have some [guitar] overdubs, but not many. We did the Van Halen albums on 24-track, but we could have done them on 16-track. I don’t think we ever filled up the tracks. That’s the reason why when we built 5150 for [recording] 1984, I did not buy a 24-track. We went with a 16-track machine.”