Why I hate Van Halen (a dissection of "Jump")

I just put this on my last.fm blog. Check me out sometime.
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Van Halen gets too much respect these days and I want to know why. I have my guesses, mainly that the people who enjoy this band grew up in the 80s and have an unhealthy attachment to anything heard on the radio during their formative years; additionally, we are starting to deal with the rise of young music listeners who faced a similar predicament, if only because their parents are those same listeners from the 80s. Surely, Van Halen had a few virtues far beyond those of the average cheese metal band (although its influence on the most horrid examples of the genre, such as Poison, Mötley Crüe, and Ratt, cannot be denied), but such modest virtues consisted solely of Eddie Van Halen's novel approach to guitar playing, which I will grant that, at the time of their debut album in 1978, may have seemed like a logical extension of the sort of things Led Zeppelin was doing, even as Led Zeppelin's better years were behind them, with Jimmy Page devoting himself full time to heroin and Aleister Crowley. Some believed that Eddie's chops were enough to offset David Lee Roth's horrible lyrics and even worse vocals in those days, but by the time something like "Jump" came around, I don't think anyone was attempting anything resembling good songwriting.

People seem to have a special spot in their heart for "Jump" among all Van Halen songs. I really can't figure out why. It's anchored by a keyboard riff that is as shockingly pedestrian as any that has been replayed over and over on classic rock radio, and you better believe that is saying a lot. It is a textbook case of beating a bad riff into the ground. "Jump" was part of Eddie Van Halen's opus 1984, which was a poor attempt on his part to master the keyboards in the same way that he had proven himself to be a master of guitar. Obviously, something went horribly wrong.

I begin with, as I must, with the lyrics. You might ask, why bother? Even the biggest David Lee Roth fan in the world has to admit that he is one of the two or three worst lyricists of all time (this is assuming that Roth is writing these lyrics, which I'm not sure--if it's Eddie, there's another reason for him to quit his day job). Roth of course was an amateurish singer, a preening prima donna of a showman, an incomparable chauvinist asshole, and, from all records, an impressive martial artist. Roth brings all these experiences and more to this beautiful opening aphorism:

I get up
and nothing gets me down

Whether or not it is true that it is difficult to get Roth down once he gets up, you have to wonder what he means by "getting up." Knowing Roth, it possibly has something to do with drugs but more likely is just Roth trumpeting his own irrepressible (read: annoying) personality, refusing to let all the haters hold him back. This opening line would make a lot of sense in a Viagra commercial, but beyond that, come on. Let's see if Roth can follow up this claim.

You got it tough
I've seen the toughest around
And I know, baby, just how you feel
You've got to roll with the punches to get to what's real

This is Roth's statement of purpose, foregrounded by Eddie's already gratingly repetitive keyboard riff. As far as I can tell (and by doing this I am putting more thought into David Lee Roth's lyrics than anyone else in the history of the world, certainly more than Roth himself), Roth is trying to cheer up a woman who's not doing too well, telling her to "roll with the punches to get to what's real." This means, as far as I can tell, that if she just keeps taking it, eventually something good will come out of it. Thanks a lot, Roth.

Let's continue with what I guess is the bridge part, a blessed respite from that fucking tinny keyboard, kind of:

Oh can't you see me standing here, I've got my back against the record machine
I ain't the worst that you've seen
Oh can't you see what I mean?

Record machine? Surely he isn't referring too, I don't know, a record player of some sort? Perhaps a jukebox, which would suggest that Roth's players are in some communal place like a bar, or perhaps a local soda fountain. Then he says, "I ain't the worst that you've seen," which perhaps could be construed as an attempt by Roth at self-deprecation, until he says, "Can't you see what I mean?" So, he isn't the worst that you've seen, wink wink nudge nudge? Does that mean that he is, actually, the worst thing that you've seen? I doubt it. More likely, Roth believes that any sentence followed by ,"if you know what I mean" qualifies as a pickup line. He is entitled to think that as the singer of a successful rock band (albeit, apparently, an ungrateful one).

So after this is the chant. "You might as well JUMP!" which is followed by someone else yelling, "JUMP!" Every time Roth says the title of the song, someone else (Eddie?) responds in turn. I find this to be one of the most annoying aspects of the song, particularly because Roth has to continue shouting nonsense like, "Yeah, jump! Go ahead, jump! Might as well jump!" etc. I'm willing to postulate that, to people who grew up with this song, this may be the most affecting part. That is, if one can put aside what some could construe to be a casual message of encouragement to those who consider suicide. Others could possibly take it to mean, I don't know, doing something crazy because you're young and invincible. Or something like that. It seems a lot of terrible songs from the 80s cover the same topic.

The rest of the song's lyrics basically repeat the bridge and the chorus over and over again, although there is one more verse that is, as you'll see, complete nonsense:

Aaa-ooh, hey you! Who said that?
Baby, how you been?
You say you don't know, you won't know
until we begin.

Christ, I don't even feel like going into this any more. Obviously it's just stupid, and it's not even the most egregious example of Rothian nonsense. I have a theory for why he wrote lyrics like this (seriously, did he just make them up on the spot?). David Lee Roth once said something to the effect of, "Rock critics love Elvis Costello more than me because they all look like Elvis Costello." It seems that me that this brilliant realization of Roth's inspired him to be everything that Elvis Costello is not, and so, to counter Costello's proclivity to write intelligent lyrics, Roth chose the meathead route. He must have figured that the quality of an individual's lyrics is inversely proportional to how much said individual gets laid; for all I know, he could be correct (although Costello was no slouch).

By now you will be arguing, "well of course the music is more important than the lyrics." I agree with you, so let's take the music on its own terms. The entire production sounds, at this point, phenomenally dated, in the same way in which similar "classics" like Born In The USA and Thriller sound dated. As products of the 80s, all the levels are reduced to car stereo quality, making everything sound tinny and inexpressive; additionally, keyboards are front and center and all the non-electronic instruments sound as if they are electronically augmented, even if they are not. As a result, the music sounds as inauthentic and "non-live" as traditional rock music can get, in a way that Led Zeppelin or even previous Van Halen never did.

Let's talk about the overall arc of the songwriting. For someone considered an incredible virtuoso, one of the crowning princes of his instrument, Eddie Van Halen surely doesn't extend his experimental edge to his songwriting. I think this has to be intentional, and a good reason why he is far more popular and revered than more esoteric players like Yngwie Malmsteen and Steve Vai (or progenitors like Zappa). Not that there's anything wrong with that: in fact, I think it's probably a good thing that Eddie tried to temper his virtuosity by channeling it into typical pop structures. Still, even as a pop song, "Jump" is really nothing special. If you listen to both the verses and the chorus (this is one of many, many mainstream 80s songs where the verse and the chorus are the exact same thing), you'll notice that what you have is a I-IV-V progression--which, as songs from "Louie, Louie" to "Get Off Of My Cloud" to at least every other Ramones song will attest, is as typical a chord progression as is possible. In "Jump"'s case, you got C, then F, then G. It's really as simple as that. Over this progression is the keyboard riff, which overpowers every other instrument to an absurd degree. It's the same thing over and over again. Obviously, that's the point, it's a riff, but let me explain my distaste. I feel as if I have different responses to keyboard riffs than I do with guitar riffs: with a good guitar riff, you can at least feel the joy of expressing that sort of thing through repetition, whereas with this keyboard there's no real way to tell if Eddie didn't just play it once, put it on repeat, and make a song out of it. The fact that he tries changing it to some degree once in a while doesn't really do much for me, as even when he does that, the rhythm doesn't change at all, as if the whole tune has been preset.

The less said about the ineffectual rhythm section running behind Van Halen and Roth, the better. It's really a shame how inferior Alex Van Halen is compared to his brother, and yet it's moving to see him try to become some sort of drum legend when all the chips are stacked against him. That number one chip being, of course, bassist Michael Anthony, who as far as I can tell has a hard time playing more than one note for an indefinite period of time. Well, so did Dee Dee Ramone, you claim, but Dee Dee didn't have a drummer who played copious and poorly considered fills all the time. Alex's drumming is famously flashy, yet counter-intuitive given the nature of the song. On "Jump," neither of them can play worth shit, which is good because Eddie is clearly running the show here, and you can tell by what instruments are prominent.

Oh, but Eddie...there are several things wrong with this song's structure. Apart from actually giving us some audible guitar during the bridge (the "record machine" part), the most prominent guitar playing is during the solo, which, I must say, is pretty piss-poor. It sounds like Eddie recorded it in bits and pieces and edited it together at the last second after realizing he forgot to put in a solo, like a pimply teenager who tries to desperately rub one out before his prom date arrives. I was disturbed to read on Wikipedia that Eddie considers this to be his finest solo, although I couldn't find any evidence of him pointing out why. It comes out of nowhere, has nothing to do with the rest of the song, is completely unmemorable, and (his greatest sin) sounds like it's just trying to waste time. It's this kind of onanistic chaff that deservedly gives virtuoso guitar playing its bad rap.

Eddie's keyboard solo, which immediately follows the guitar solo, is embarrassingly bad for an entirely opposite reason. Here, it seems he can barely get a hang on the instrument, and his "solo" is nothing more than a quick succession of triplets, rather than the full chord at once. I don't know if Eddie got a bit better at the instrument later in his career (I hear he did), but at that point, it seems he is stuck with the most rudimentary of chords--triads--and he is not adventurous enough to try anything else.

So it seems we have Eddie Van Halen exemplifying the two opposite poles of bad instrumental soloing: total incompetence, of course, as well as super-competence, and the resulting high self-regard for what is essentially aimless noodling.

By the way, I personally prefer this video of Van Halen playing. It includes a noble attempt at "Iron Man":



Children of the 1980s, guitar enthusiasts, lovers of shitty lyrics, hear my plea. The next time you hear "Jump" on the radio, ask yourself these questions: why is this a good song? Why is it even on the radio? Has this aged well? Maybe you should consider that it was that stupid video on MTV, coupled with its aggressive airing on commercial radio, that foisted this upon you, and as such you are not required to like it at all. Just think about it. There's nothing worthwhile in this song. It's just a piss-poor excuse for a synthesizer riff that must have taken Eddie Van Halen five seconds to come up with. It is aural boredom. If you want a great keyboard lick from the 80s, might I suggest "Enola Gay" by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark? And, of course, "Take On Me" by a-ha.