This album is the business! I listened to it a year or two ago out of curiosity (everyone knows the name Van Halen) and was wowed by the raw energy and relative musical inventiveness - within the rock idiom. The sudden burst of doowop vocals gave me a pleasant surprise back then, and again now. Eddie Van Halen is a guitar legend, even if 'Eruption' didn't prove it (it does), he kills on every other track with his riffs and lead breaks.
Apparently the band had been scooped up by Kiss' Gene Simmons who, seeing their potential, put them to work writing demos for both themselves and for Kiss. He even tried to recruit Eddie VH for his band!
Van Halen could easily be accused of helping to start the whole 80s hair-metal thing, but as is often the case with the progenitors of various styles, they're so much better than much of the rest of it.
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