Well, Happy Independence Day to all our US readers.
We decided it was appropriate to go with a 40-year-old motivational song that started off as something very different than that.
You see, Eddie Van Halen wrote the synth part first - and the rest of the hard-rockin' band rejected it. When David Lee Roth was finally convinced to give it another shot, he recalled a news story of a person who was threatening to commit suicide by jumping off a building... and, well, there's always that asshole who has to yell "C'mon, Jump!"
Well, since encouraging suicide isn't really something that record labels are going to get behind, the lyrics the band wrote ended up being a bit more motivational and less... well, death-y.
Well, since encouraging suicide isn't really something that record labels are going to get behind, the lyrics the band wrote ended up being a bit more motivational and less... well, death-y.
What the end result turned into was the biggest hit of Van Halen's career, by a lot. Deservedly so, too - it was a great, energetic song that brought rock to the masses.
Famously, David Lee Roth left Van Halen and was replaced by Sammy Hagar - which really begat a different band. This live version of the song from 1993 is a lot less synth-y, which tracks with the harder rocking feel of the band.
Funny enough, this live version was released as a single in Europe and ended up being a bit of a minor hit, too.
Perhaps not so famously, Sammy Hagar left Van Halen and was replaced by Gary Cherone from Extreme. Not surprisingly, he needed to perform David Lee Roth's songs, too.
This version was not released as a single and was not a hit because no one liked Gary Cherone as the lead vocalist of Van Halen.
Because this is a blog post, we are very much oversimplifying the history of Van Halen, but the short version is, David Lee Roth came back and the band, of course, performed this song. It is very much a fusion of the rock and synth styles - and that's Wolfgang Van Halen on bass.
There was supposed to be a "kitchen sink" reuinion with Hagar, Cherone, and Michael Anthony rejoinign the band - but, sadly, Eddie Van Halen passed away before that could happen. So, this post ends here.
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