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Everybody Wants Some

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By CURTIS ROSS | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 14, 2008

Where's the party? One hint: If you hear the music of Evanescence, Hinder, Seether or Three Days Grace playing, you're getting colder.

"I can't escape this hell" is the cheery opening line of Three Days Grace's "Animal I Have Become." "How long 'til this goes away?" pouts Hinder, the poor man's Nickelback, on "How Long." "You gave up your dreams along the way … you're such a … hypocrite," Seether moans in "Fake It." Amy Lee repels a would-be suitor with "Couldn't take the blame/Sick with shame" on Evanescence's "Call Me When You're Sober."

Call me when you're sober? Can you imagine David Lee Roth's response to that?

Yeah, rock's been under a cloud of late and the reunion of Roth with most of his old Van Halen mates only highlights how different things were in the band's heyday.

It may be a coincidence that Van Halen's eponymous debut album and the movie "Animal House" both were released in 1978. But they were cut from the same cloth — pre-AIDS, pre-crack, pre-"Just Say No" celebrations of sex, booze and irresponsible behavior.

Politics was for punks, broken hearts were for ballad singers. Van Halen was for partying with plenty of cold beer and "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" rattling the speakers of your buddy's Camaro.

OK, we all know indiscriminate sex can be deadly, and binge drinking isn't healthy. Love can hurt very badly. And in the great scheme of things, life is sure to dish out plenty of woe to one and all.

But, yeesh — does every rock song on the radio have to keep reminding us of this?

We're at war and there's no end in sight. The economy is in the toilet. Every new day brings a new round of atrocities. We don't need to hear songs about it. Not all the time, anyway.

And we sure don't need a bunch of navel-gazing pity-partiers moaning about their unhappy childhoods and ex-girlfriends, and if you think that's just the emo bands, well, no, that disease has infected all of rock.

Granted, rockers from Bob Dylan to The Clash to Joy Division to Neil Young have addressed social issues and life's darker side in compelling fashion.

But most of what you hear now is straight-up bellyaching.

Ever hear Van Halen whine? Complain? Protest anything besides parental restraint and girls wearing clothes?

Here is the closest Van Halen ever came to social commentary: "Have you seen Junior's grades?!?"

Van Halen is what you listen to when you need to forget about politics, heartache, death, disease and destruction.

The original Roth-fronted lineup had a swagger, looseness and a sworn-to-fun aura that came across loud and clear on its albums. They'd record "Happy Trails" as a goof, let Eddie Van Halen make weird guitar noises for two minutes and call it a song, or take a hit off a joint just as the camera snapped — check bassist Michael Anthony on the back cover of 1980's "Women and Children First."

"Everybody Wants Some!!," from that album, features one-and-a-half chords, a minute or so of Eddie doing everything to his guitar except playing it and Roth mumble-mouthing a first verse he probably never bothered to write. It peaks when he tells the girl to leave on her stockings. It is sheer brilliance.

Too bad it couldn't last. Roth left and was replaced by Sammy Hagar, a man who knows a thing or two about partying, but who's less adept at conveying that on disc. Song structure and straightforward emotion replaced strange noises and bawdy asides.

The hair metal bands of the mid-'80s aped Van Halen shamelessly, only without Roth's humor, Eddie's inventiveness or the whole band's devil-may-care attitude, because only a band as good as Van Halen could get away with being Van Halen.

Grunge took over because the hair metal bands gave fun a bad name. Only you'd think by now some band would have figured out how to rock hard while conveying something other than doom and gloom.

It was fun. I don't hear a lot of fun in rock music anymore.

As another flamboyant lead singer once asked, "Does anyone remember laughter?"

ON TOUR

Van Halen

WITH: Ky-Mani Marley

WHEN: Monday at 7:30 p.m.

WHERE: The Forum, 401 Channelside Drive, Tampa

TICKETS: $49.50, $79.50, $125; box office, (813) 301-2500; Ticketmaster, (813) 287-8844

Curtis Ross can be reached at (813) 259-7568 or cross@tampatrib.com

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