#ted templeman

[musicmags]

[metalsongoftheday]

Monday, December 30: BulletBoys, "When Pigs Fly"

In the annals of rock history, Ted Templeman remains underrated as a producer: so much of the sound of Van Halen’s first 6 albums was retroactively attributed to Edward Van Halen that it is forgotten how much Eddie actually learned from Templeman, who by 1978 had already manned the boards on numerous killer records that still sound vibrant nearly 50 years later.  He was Warner Bros.’ main in-house record guy for so many years because he understood not only how to make a band sound alive, but also how to conceal their flaws.  That was certainly the magic Templeman brought to Za-Za, since “When Pigs Fly” crackled and surged with enough bite to cover up a lot of the BulletBoys’ unctuousness.  To be fair, it did sound like the band was trying to level up- it certainly felt like Marq Torien realized that Diamond Dave was on the other side of cool in the ‘90s, or at the very least he caught on that Dave decisively lost the battle with his then-former band.  Either way, the track charged with nice crunching riffage and a strong groove that sounded more serious without coming across as either angsty or jumping on a bandwagon.  The attitude still felt fake and Torien sounded slimy, but this was a much stronger mosher than anyone would’ve expected from them, though it probably would’ve landed harder if BulletBoys hadn’t spent most of their career preening and posing.

[fuckyeahvanhalen86-95]

The album Eddie Van Halen made sure "never happened again"

It was a mighty rise tht Van Halen experienced in the early 1980s, but exhaustion threatened to sink them on 1982's 'Diver Down'.

The original lineup of Van Halen was on the verge of becoming one of the biggest acts in America in the early 1980s. After establishing themselves as hard rock gods at the tail end of the 1970s, the band was gaining more mainstream recognition and continued to incorporate more modern production into their sound. They were also working at a dangerous pace, having released one album every year while touring virtually non-stop.

1982’s Diver Down is a clear sign of burnout. Five covers, three instrumentals, and no true classic tracks among the bunch. Originally, Eddie Van Halen wanted to put out a cover song to satiate the public’s desire for more Van Halen music, but when that went over well with the record company, the idea for a full album was just around the corner.

“I said, ‘Look, if you want to do a cover tune, why don’t we do ‘Pretty Woman’? It took one day,” Van Halen recalled to Guitar Player magazine in 1982. “We went to Sunset Sound in L.A., recorded it, and it came out right after the first of the year. It started climbing the charts, so all of a sudden Warner Bros is going, ‘You got a hit single on your hands. We gotta have that record.’ We said, ‘Wait a minute, we just did that to keep us out there, so that people know we’re still alive.’ But they just kept pressuring, so we jumped right back in without any rest or time to recuperate from the tour, and started recording.”

Roy Orbison’s ‘(Oh) Pretty Woman’ wound up being the choice, but David Lee Roth had a different song in mind. “Dave came up with the idea of, ‘Hey, why don’t we start off the new year with just putting out a single?’ He wanted to do ‘Dancing in the Street.’ He gave me the original Martha Reeves & the Vandellas tape, and I listened to it and said, ‘I can’t get a handle on anything out of this song.’ I couldn’t figure out a riff, and you know the way I like to play: I always like to do a riff, as opposed to just hitting barre chords and strumming.”

Van Halen came up with a suitable riff, but only by taking a work in progress and attaching it to what Roth and producer Ted Templeman wanted, which was a cover of ‘Dancing in the Street’. “I was working on a great song with this riff that I envisioned being more like a Peter Gabriel song, but when Ted [Templeman] heard it, he decided it would be great for ‘Dancing in the Street.’ Ted and Dave were happy, but I wasn’t. The riff was my original idea, and I didn’t get any writing credits for it.”

That conflict would later become emblematic of the compromises Van Halen felt he had to make on the album. “In some ways, I think Diver Down happened that way because Ted wanted more control,” Van Halen later recalled. “There was always an inner struggle between Ted and me. But with Diver Down, it was like I was being asked to turn back. After we made that album, I wanted to make sure that never happened again.”

[randgugotur-6]

THAT was an UNCOMFORTABLE Question

[nofatclips]

Panama by Van Halen from the album 1984 - Directed by Pete Angelus

[myvinylplaylist]

Van Halen: Diver Down (1982)

Warner Bros Records

[recordblurbs]

“Diver Down” (1982)

[metalsongoftheday]

Friday, June 14: Van Halen, "On Fire"

R.I.P. Edward Van Halen (1955-2020)

Van Halen’s first record was one of the select few in recorded history that functioned as a ready-made greatest hits album: after a solid four years of backyard gigs and ruling the Sunset Strip, Van Halen was the sound of four locked-in dudes who knew exactly what they were aiming for and were fully formed as an entity.  There was not a single wasted moment, and Ted Templeman’s production was full-on lightning in a bottle magic- these songs didn’t so much play as burst out of speakers, so much so that even a presumable throwaway like “On Fire” roared with the lifeforce of 3,000 parties.  David Lee Roth caterwauled more than sang, but his antics were in full lockstep with Eddie Van Halen’s monumental riffing, shredding and squealing- over 45 years later, there is still something shocking about all of this.  And while Alex Van Halen would get more adventurous as a drummer soon enough, he was in perfect sync with his brother and Michael Anthony’s steady bass.  There was way too much life in here to be contained, which likely explained why “On Fire” was less a song and more of an explosion.