Recording
Reportedly dissatisfied by the concessions he had made to Van Halen's frontman David Lee Roth and producer Ted Templeman on the group's previous album, the #3 Billboard album hit Diver Down - both of whom had discouraged Eddie Van Halen from making keyboards a prominent instrument in Van Halen's music - Eddie Van Halen built his own studio in his backyard. Eddie Van Halen named that studio 5150 (after the Los Angeles police code for "escaped mental patient.") At 5150, Eddie Van Halen composed Van Halen's follow-up to Diver Down - without as much perceived "interference" from Roth or Templeman. The result was a compromise between the two creative factions in the band - a mixture of keyboard-heavy songs, and the intense rock for which the band had become world famous.
In Rolling Stone's retrospective review of 1984 in its 100 greatest albums of the 1980s, producer Ted Templeman said, "It's real obvious to me Eddie Van Halen discovered the synthesizer." The review continues, "The foursome had been selling out arenas for more than a decade on the basis of Eddie's virtuosic, fleet-fingered guitar playing, singer David Lee Roth's blunt, raunchy lyrics and the brute force of Michael Anthony's bass and Alex Van Halen's drums. But 1984, abetted by tunes that swirled elements of synth pop into metal — most evidently on the hit single "Jump" — and by a string of campy, low-budget videos that found favor on MTV, carried Van Halen to a new plateau of popularity. No longer viewed as threatening to those with a chronic fear of metal, the band somehow became amusing and even endearing to middle America... And all the while Van Halen continued to rock like crazy.
"At the time, Eddie was in the process of building his own studio with Don Landee, the band's longtime engineer (and now its producer). While boards and tape machines were being installed, the guitarist began fiddling around on synthesizers to pass the time. "There were no presets," says Templeman. "He would just twist off until it sounded right."
Read more about this topic: 1984 (Van Halen album)
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