Van Halen---The debate to end it all.

Little harsh there, Steak. What did Ronnie Montrose do career-wise after Hagar left? Pretty much zippo. Hagar had songwriting credit all over that great Montrose album. Seems to me, in retrospect, he was the driving force behind what that band was.

 

That's probably true, though I think Hagar was actually fired from Montrose. It is odd, however, that he wasn't the nominal front man of either band he was in, despite being the lead singer and principal lyricist.

 

That was a complete non-factor.

First of all, you had Edward doing things with a guitar that you'd never heard before--starting with the initial notes of 'Eruption' on the first album and continuing from there.

They had a number of catchy singles that guaranteed heavy rotation on the radio in the pre-MTV days---'Dance the Night Away', 'And The Cradle Will Rock', 'Pretty Woman', 'Little Guitars'.

And then became video darlings with the 1984 album.

They were going to be mega-big, regardless of who Eddie was hooked up with.

 

Diamond Dave and Van Halen were awesome. Sammy and Van Halen were a different band that I liked for different reasons. But if I had to give the nod, I always liked Diamond Dave a little more.

Cherone? He didn't even count. One album that was the biggest smoking turd ever. Ugh.

 

I have to go back and re-visit BYH's assertion that Nuno Betancourt could play Eddie Van Halen under the table. Maybe now, maybe even in 1991.

But Betancourt never even exists as an artist without Eddie Van Halen (along with Randy Rhoads of the Ozzy Osbourne band) paving the way for neoclassical guitarists to have mainstream rock success. And no way would Van Halen release "More than Words" as the second single off its debut album.

VH never even recorded a ballad til Hagar came along. Closest thing was probably "Big Bad Bill is Sweet William Now" off Diver Down, but that was more of a novelty song.

Extreme would have been much bigger if they'd have come along five years earlier, I'll grant you that. But they were no Van Halen.

 

And now to address the actual query of the thread.

Let me first state for the record that I grew up a huge Sammy Hagar fan. Raised in St. Louis, a town where the local radio played his solo material probably 20X times more than most other metropolitan areas, I, like many of my fellow St. Louisans, became devotees of the Red Rocker. Probably the only person on the board who owns copies of his albums, 'Nine on a Ten Scale' and 'Musical Chairs' (probably the only one who owns either actually).

Sammy had some solid moments with Van Halen. I personally think 'Right Now' is a very good song, and there are lots of good moments on 5150, OU812 and Carnal Knowledge.

With that said, there's nothing that can match up to the initial incarnation with Diamond Dave. Maybe I'm a bit biased or influenced having grown up right in the heart of that era, but those first four albums from the self titled debut through 1984 were rock and roll gold, and really set the bar too high for anything that followed to match.

 

Musical Chairs right here. And what part of town? North County here.

 

If there was one person on the board I would have thought might have been able to answer that affirmatively, it would have definitely been you.

Illinois side.

 

I wasn't a huge fan of OU812 or Carnal Knowledge, but 5150 is a tremendous album.

 

What happens on the East Side stays on the East Side.

 

This. A thousand times, this.

Van Roth = Lakers
Van Hagar = Clippers

 

That's a bit extreme. They sold more records with Hagar than Roth.

I will agree that Van Halen in 1978 was better than Van Halen in 1988, but if we're talking about who the band would be better off with today? It's Hagar.