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The Van Halen iconic 1984 album was released over three decades ago. It is still the band’s most popular album with 12 million copies sold in the United States. On the Billboard chart, it spent five weeks at number 2. Some of the best songs from the album at “Jump,” “Panama,” “Hot for Teacher,” and “I’ll Wait.”
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Van Halen Trivia
1. Back in 1983, Van Halen was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the highest paid band of all time.
2. With each of their albums, Van Halen’s success grew. Each album performed better than the last, so by 1983, Van Halen was the most popular rock band. The peak of their success was in 1984 with their album 1984.
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3. To record one of their albums, Eddie Van Halen built his own recording studio in his backyard. The album was titled 5150, which is the police code for an escaped mental patient.
4. Eddie claims he wrote “Girl Gone Bad” while he was in a hotel room with Valerie Bertinelli. Valerie was sleeping, so, not wanting to wake her, he went into the closet and recorded himself playing the guitar.
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5. Eddie Van Halen was on the Rolling Stone cover in 1995. During that interview, he claimed David Lee Roth rejected the very famous synth riff for “Jump” for two years before finally agreeing to write lyrics to it.
6. The cover of the 1984 album features a smoking cherub. It was censored when released in the UK. A sticker was placed to cover the cigarette in the cherub’s hand and the packs of cigarettes visible on the album cover.
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7. In the original release of the album, all song creditahaha samoka s were given to Edward Van Halen, Alex Van Halen, David Lee Roth, and Michael Anthony. In the UK single for “I’ll Wait” Michael McDonald was credited as a cowriter, but he was not given the same recognition in the US version.
8. The band promoted the album by doing a content on the channel MTV. The contest was called Lost Weekend with Van Halen. Their fans mailed over 1 million postcards to the TV station for a chance to win the contest. David Lee Roth said during the promo, “You won’t know where you are, you won’t know what’s going to happen, and when you come back, you’re not gonna have any memory of it.”
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9. The song “Jump” has the Eddie Van Halen guitar solo, which he clauims is his favorite solo not written by him. That classic solo was made when the song producer spliced two different versions to create the finished product heard in the song.
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10. David Lee Roth can be heard yelling in the video for “Jump.” He did that so he could get his real voice onto the music video.
