Diver Down is the fifth studio album by American hard rock band Van Halen and was released on April 14, 1982. It spent 65 weeks on the album chart in the United States and had, by 1998, sold four million copies in the U.S. Two interviews from the period give the best account of how the band – certainly Roth and Eddie – saw the album at the time.
About Diver Down in brief
Diver Down is the fifth studio album by American hard rock band Van Halen and was released on April 14, 1982. It spent 65 weeks on the album chart in the United States and had, by 1998, sold four million copies in the U.S. The album cover artwork displays the \”diver down\” flag used in many US jurisdictions. David Lee Roth said it was meant to imply that \”there was something going on that’s not apparent to your eyes. The back cover of the album features a photo by Richard Aaron of VanHalen on stage at the Tangerine Bowl in Orlando, Florida, that was taken on October 24, 1981, as they concluded a set opening for The Rolling Stones. Two interviews from the period give the best account of how the band – certainly Roth and Eddie – saw the album at the time. The comments here are taken from Roth’s interview with Sylvie Simmons and Eddie’s with Jas Obrecht. Dave: ‘We’re capable of playing six different Kinks’ songs at one time, back in our double days in our bar days. We learned all of one side of them into the dirt during the club gigs, because they sounded good and they were great to dance to, etc., etc.’ Eddie: ‘I’d rather have a bomb with one of my own songs than a hit with someone else’s. It took one day. We went to Sunset Sound in L.
A., recorded it, and it came out right after the first of the year. 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… it was a lot of fun. \” In addition to this, two of the original songs were around long before the album was made. ‘Hang ‘Em High’ can trace its roots back to the band’s 1977 demos as \”Last Night\”, which had the same music but different lyrics. ‘Cathedral’ was also nothing new, being played in its current form throughout 1981 with earlier versions going back to 1980. ‘Eddie Hynde materialized for a brief moment when I ran the edge of my strings down for some reason and tried to dredge up his spirit and pick up some lines for a solo,’ he said. ‘The band had never met Ray Davies but that the band had a seance and once and a while I’d pick up his guitar and play some of his lines for him. It was more brief than some of the other songs. And so I ran up and down the stairs and picked up his strings and played some lines. ‘
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This page is based on the article Diver Down published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 19, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
