Oh the angels and how they can sing. Or can they? Today’s Fallen Friday is a once great entertainer that fronted one of the biggest hard rock bands ever, Van Halen. I never saw Van Halen when Dave was fronting them. I was too young. However, I do remember their songs. I remember a couple of their videos. Then something went cross between Dave and Ed. I don’t know the real story, so I can’t recap it. In the end, Dave went out on his own and got a then hot guitar player by the name of Steve Vai.
If you remember a month or so back I actually met Steve Vai face to face while sitting at a rehearsal for Zappa plays Zappa. Nice guy.
Now, from what I understand Dave was an amazing front man. Years after the Van Halen split, Dave was out on tour and I was able to get a ticket for my young self to go see his show. I actually went to really see Steve Vai, as he was an early guitar icon for me. I dropped my icons after I could play the things they could play. Oh well. Thus the reason why I didn’t go nutty when I met him at the rehearsal.
Getting back to Dave. I was saying that I’ve heard he was a great frontman. That’s gotta be the primary reason he made it work. I never really felt he was great singer. Too showboaty to me. Though showboatness is great for a rock band. You gotta have it to entertain. If you can’t entertain, then you’ll have a hard time making fans. It’s even better when you’ve got voice to go with the entertainment.
Dave becomes my choice for Fallen Friday for several reasons. One, left a band when at the top of the game (smart). Went solo with campy material (dumb). Got a kick ass guitar player to play with him (smart). Started overacting on life (dumb). Put out a decent CD and followed it up with another ok CD, then stopped creating decent music period. Started changing careers, trying out just about everything under the sun it seems. I can’t imagine having made the kind of money he likely made and blowing it all. Maybe he hasn’t, but he job choices sure don’t indicate otherwise.
To sum it up, I think he was a good entertainer – key word – was. Dave’s worst enemy was himself. Lots of silly choices led to a slow painful death to his former great situation. That doesn’t mean you should buy this song. It’s a good fun song. In fact it describes Southern California right now. The sun has been out, the temperature has been amazing in the 70’s. Perfect and quite possibly the Paradise Dave is singing about in the song. Well, not likely. He usually sang about sex.
Want to know additional weirdness? I know Dave’s current guitarist Brian Young. What’s that connection? Jeff Scott Soto. What a small world. Buy the song, help pay Brian’s bills.
(** Disclaimer: If Dave’s label decides to take me out of paradise, then I’ll click my heels three times to magically erase the audio. The post will remain to show the six degrees of Dave separation. **)