Eddie Van Halen: "Gary has none of the ego that the other singers have" Translation: "Gary doesn't object to my terrible ideas and I am allowed to do whatever the hell I want"

The fact that “gay man- looking for another man” is an actual lyric and not in fact a cumtown style bit making fun of the song is the greatest thing I’ve ever heard

"Without you" sounds like what the cast of friends thinks is heavy metal

"all he does is TV themes" OK but can we agree that the law & order theme song slaps

8:23 This song is just Gary Cherone listing off rejected Mega Man bosses.

I love how Todd sounds genuinely offended by “a word to the wisdom tooth”

"Van Halen FUCKING rules" literally the first thing in my head when I wake up every day

"Pizza man, just want a slice" What exactly does Gary think a pizza man is? Just a man who eats a lot of pizza?

As the Pizza Man I can confirm that I actually do want a slice.

The album cover looks like a twitter meme.

RIP Eddie Van Halen, 1955-2020 May he be remembered for much better music than this.

"pizza man - just want a slice" is the best line ever written. i love it.

“Stand for nothing” uh they clearly stand for good dental hygiene

"In a word to the wisdom tooth" sounds like a case of "I want this line to be exactly this many syllables and I don't care what word choice I need to use to make it fit."

Mike Post and Eddie were friends. My guess is that Warner Bros wouldn't let Eddie produce the album himself, so he brought in Post to do it and Post's method of producing was to just let Eddie do whatever he wanted.

The best review I saw of How Many Say I (Eddie’s piano ballad) was “as a vocalist, he’s an amazing guitarist.”

I have some lyrics! "Dayman (AaaahhhAAAHHHHhhh) fighter of the Nightman!"

Hey don't blame Mike Post, you can hear the bass in all his t.v. songs.

Dave - cool man Sammy - red scream man Gary - fucked up man

OK, "He sounds like something you'd play if you wanted to scare raccoons out of your yard" is the funniest thing I've heard all week.

Mike Post gets payed everytime that *Dun dun* Law & Order sound plays. He's basically the Spielberg of TV composing.

"Giant Man -- that's actually Ant-Man again" I laughed so hard

Gary Cherone, as the lead singer of Van Halen, sounds like Chris Cornell if he had hay fever and was always on the verge of a sneeze.

Gary Cherone gets a bad rap at times, but his live performances of Van Halen classics, from both the Roth and Hagar era) are top notch. The powers that be (Eddie, RIP) did him a disservice.

It's amazing how Eddie's singing sounds like a Kmart-brand Roger Waters.

"they fight, triangle man wins" Gee, spoiler alert.

Coming back here after Eddie Van Halen passed away from throat cancer. He was a talented man who made mistakes but will always be remembered for his unique guitar skills. R.I.P. Eddie Van Halen 1955 - 2020

The chorus of "Without You" could've been saved if everything else in the song was different

They tried so hard to make Gary Cherone sound like Sammy Hagar. Gary tried so hard to reach notes that he didn't bother with in Extreme. Gary Cherone is very talented when he plays to his strengths and that is either with Extreme or on his own.

The third wave of VH better known as Van Hasbeen.

Well, here we are in 2020, and as of yesterday, Eddie Van Halen is no longer with us, ending the Van Halen story on a very tragic note.

Love these Trainwreckords videos. The way we can't see Todd's face yet can make out his expressions nigh-on perfectly is something I'll never tire of.

"X's Kurt Cobain to Y''s Chad Kroeger" can apply flawlessly to any industry. Thank for this gem, Todd!

the phrase "Have you ever looked down when 'a homeless' walked by" is so cringe. I just feel like he had it as bum, vagrant or hobo when someone said "hey man they're called homeless now" so he changed that one word.

Ah, yes, Mike Post... I remember, back when I was a barely 10 year old kid in the early 90ies, I already knew this man's name, because he appeared in the credits of literally every fucking TV show that my mom and I used to watch back then...

"Word to the Wisdom Tooth", combined with the image of Danny Glover in his boxers -- chicken taunting a madman with a flamethrower, made me laugh and cringe so hard. It was like laughing at the powerful funk of a bubbly fart.

"without you" sounds like what eddie's wearing in the video

"This is Spinal Crap"

I think the reason why Gary sounded like he did on the album is because the Van Halen brothers wanted him to sound like Sammy Hagar. His normal singing voice isn't like that, so he kinda had to force himself to sing like Hagar.

'Without You' sounds like if a Loverboy cover band was trying to do an impression of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Young man! There's no need to feel down! Spoonman! Come together with your plan!

That Eddie Van Halen piano ballad sounds like someone trying to do a bad Roger Waters impression, specifically on those quieter bits of The Wall, with the lyrical equivalent of Nickelback writing.

A big issue with _Van Halen III_ is that, much like fellow Trainwreckord _Be Here Now_ by Oasis, practically every song is interminable. Aside from the two instrumentals on this album, there isn't a single track shorter than five minutes. Its 12 songs run an hour and six minutes total, but it's such a slog to get through that it feels more like three hours.

This was the album where I realized David was the one paying attention to song structure and Eddie and Alex were just spending hours upon hours jamming. Too bad they couldn't keep it together longer

Todd covering Van Halen? This is a dream come true. Thank you Todd. Thank you.

I remember being out shopping somewhere with my mom in 1998 or 99. She saw some guy wearing a Van Halen III t-shirt that had some slogan on the back, I forget what exactly, but it implied that VH3 was the best iteration of the band. My mom spotted it and she whispered to me that the guy, his t-shirt, and his taste in music were fucking lame.

It’s funny you mention Bill and Ted, Extreme had a song in the first movie.

That’s why I like Band-Maid so much. The lead guitarist clearly has some Eddie influences, but she writes most of the music and does all the arranging. But she knows exactly how to play to each members strengths. Not only that, she is able to push her bandmates’ limits. The drummer said she was asked how fast she could play the tempo to a new song. She gave an honest answer and the guitarist made the tempo of the song even faster than that, forcing the drummer to speed up beyond what she thought she was capable of and she did it. I’m not comparing Kanami Tono to Eddie Van Halen. She clearly is inspired by him and you can hear the influence, but she’s brilliant at crafting and arranging songs in a way Eddie couldn’t do. They kind of sound like what a modern Van Halen would sound like if Van Halen were girls.

The vibe I am getting is that Eddie thought with Gary that he found himself a perfect loyal little yes man who would just do what he was told.

Trainwreckords is such a great series. Every one has been a blast.

The random Particle Man crossover cracked me up so much

I love Eddie, he was a reasonably good background vocalist for the DLR and Hagar albums. But by the late 90's chainsmoking had killed his voice. Listening to Ed try to sing is like rubbing sandpaper on your ears.

Todd, as usual, I wanna thank you for inadvertently introducing me to one of my new favorite songs, "Get The Funk Out."

"Without You" is a fitting title, since it sounds like every member of the band is playing a different song. They might also be referring to the sound mixer, since Gary's monotone voice is somehow both drowning out the instruments and completely unintelligible.

13:25 Mike Post: The man that scored your childhood. Well, at least mine.

7:17 oh yeah it’s called yandere simulator EDIT: oh wait game implies “finished product” lmao

"Have you ever looked down at a homeless/Or changed the channel when you saw a hungry child on TV" Wow. Deep, man. Just deep.

I dunno Todd, that haircut and goatee makes him look like a discount Guy Fieri to me...

This was actually the last album that Michael Anthony played on. He was fired in 2006 in favor of *Eddie's own son*. I get the feeling that those tensions must have already been present eight years earlier when this was being made.

Sammy is a guitar player and songwriter, he couldn't play like Eddie but could definitely help put a song together.

... So, full disclosure, I mix sound. Live, not recording, mind. I'm essentially a live audio engineer. I had never heard of this album. The other Trainwreckords albums have been very interesting, and this was.... also interesting. .... Every time music from this album ended up running through my headphones, I physically cringed. The mix on this album is really making me angry. Like, really angry...

Well, at least Gary Cherone is a good singer. And when the Greatest American Hero theme came on, I thought the Snob would cameo.

Ed was not a songwriter. He wrote cool stuff on guitar. The lead singer’s job was to take the bits, arrange them into songs, and add lyrics. Roth and Hagar both confirm the method.

R.I.P. Eddie Van Halen Great video, still

Time for me to learn literally anything about Van Halen

It’s telling that Van Halen’s first post-Hagar album was terrible and Sammy Hagar’s first post-Van Halen album, Marching to Mars, is one of the best things he’s ever done.

After watching Todd's most recent Trainwreckords video on Mötley Crüe's Generation Swine, I noticed that one of the commenters wrote this: *The two massive ‘80’s hair metal bands who released career-ender albums around this time, both Van Halen and Mötley Crüe had similar problems, got similar results, yet the exact opposite problem in terms of the lead singer. Van Halen had a new lead singer who’d never performed with the band before (Gary Cherone), and Mötley Crüe got their original singer back after a long absence. And yet… *Both were hair metal bands trying to change their sound to fit with the modern times. Instead, they sounded like neither their original selves nor any other band of the time. And there are some times (like Without You and Find Myself) where the songs sound like two or three songs duct-taped together. *The vocal parts in the songs were clearly written for the previous singer (Sammy Hagar for Halen and John Corabi for Crüe), yet the new singer couldn’t adjust to that singing style and makes the project sound worse by comparison. *Any attempts at trend-chasing or changing certain things comes off as transparent or ridiculously corny. You have Crüe doing a Marilyn Manson knockoff song and video Tommy Lee singing a dedication song to his son that makes With Arms Wide Open sound dignified by comparison, and Halen making dentist puns and [INSERT]-Man lines in one song. *They had producers who clearly weren’t up to making this kind of album (one of the touring musicians for Crüe and a TV theme composer for Halen) *And both albums end on a cheesy piano ballad. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/f8ufg7CbyayumoU.html&lc=UgxfTC0ByW3VmmFk_rZ4AaABAg

Like Adam Tod Brown once said: "Sammy Hagar didn't make Van Halen awful, Eddie Van Halen made Van Halen awful"

The Clash's Cut the Crap would make a gr8 Trainwreckords

...is it just me or does that acoustic piano ballad sound like Eddie Van Halen trying to sound like Pink Floyd? ...and failing miserably.

In terms of "the bar was on the floor, but you cleared it," I am at least impressed that they had a lyric about a gay man that was not homophobic.

14:55 filmed on ravioli… that one stuck with me

Van Halen III is so terrible, Todd can't bring himself to play anything from that album, and opts for Ain't Talking Bout Love over the credits.

“Filmed on ravioli”... oh my face hurts

The thing that's so endlessly fascinating about VH3 is that it basically destroyed EVH's confidence. Think about it -- this was his last original music project. "A Different Kind of Truth" was largely old demos that we re-worked. (and the original stuff was no great shakes) The criticism of this album just may have crippled him for the rest of his life.

Mike Post was the producer for the band Halyx, a sci-fi rock band that played at Disneyland with a bass playing wookie and a synth playing robot. They played a season at Disneyland,but their album never was made and they broke up before they really recorded anything. Defunctland has a documentary about them i recommend if you want to learn more.

Todd. There's this thing called sleep. You've interrupted me from it. For this, I thank you.

"Triangle Man Hates Particle Man./They have a fight, Triangle Wins"- Jesus Christ Todd, I love you! This made my night.

The lyrics to "Fire in the Hole" are like a Talking Heads song written by someone who hates the Talking Heads.

The "Once" video looks like it recorded off a computer monitor with a PXL-2000.

I did a double take when you mentioned Mike Post. THAT Mike Post?? 80s TV music Mike Post?? Yes, yes it was.

Fun fact: Mike Post's first credit, around age 19, was the demo tape for the two sisters who would later go on to form The Murmaids (no, that's not a typo, and yes, they would make an excellent installment of OHW). Also, he won a Grammy at age 23 for "Classical Gas", a 1968 instrumental which is much better than that title makes it sound.

You doing Trainwrecords has made me so thankful for streaming. Because at least now if an artist releases an album I can listen to it and not be pissed off that I’m out $20 of the album turns out to be garbage and if there’s one or 2 good songs I can just add it to my playlist.

Rest in Peace Eddie.

the fact that Todd referenced Sonic Unleashed for a second made me way happier than it should've

You know how Guitar Hero World Tour introduced the music creation studio feature? And if you had no musical talent you would just aimlessly play notes and strum, with time signatures and keys changing at random in the hope that it would sound good? That’s what Without You sounds like. One of the greatest rock bands of all time dropped a lead single that sounds like it was made by me in Guitar Hero in 2008

“How Many Say I” sounds like the world’s worst Roger Waters song.

Just listened to this album for the first time this week. Remembering Eddie, I listened to the whole VH catalog in order. After the crap pile that was 'Balance' this isn't really awful, it just isn't what consider to be Van Halen. Full Disclosure: I remember my older brother coming home with the debut album by this new band called Van Halen. He said "listen to this" and put on 'Eruption'. HOLY SH!T. Then we sat and listened to the whole album. I can't believe that was 42 years ago. I was 13 or 14... VH 1 is still one of the most incredible displays of guitar virtuosity I've ever heard. RIP Eddie.

Law and Order, A-Team, Quantum Leap, and Hill Street Blues theme songs. Those might be four of the greatest TV theme songs ever.

13:00 "which raises the question, why didn't they just lower the songs?" A question asked by every Iron Maiden fan when they found out that the band refused to lower the songs for Blaze Bayley, despite his vocal range being way deeper than Bruce Dickinson, him having to near blow his voice out just to sing the old Maiden songs for every show, and the fact that the band had lowered some songs for Dickenson on live shows before.

I feel like Eddie was like Axl Rose in a way, they were both super egotistical but were kept in check by their equaly as firery bandmates, but once those bandmates were out and they got full control over the band It all went to shit

I just watched this last night so the sad news is just surreal.

"... a high school garage band trying to cover 'Give it Away'" OMFG that is some SERIOUS shade!!

Every time he posted the lyrics up so we could follow along I kept thinking 'what are they even talking about?'

You NAILED it with this video. And it REALLY sucked that Gary got the blame and became a punchline (see what I did there?), because he deserves much better. It's true justice that Extreme is back and are dominating rock with their new album and tour. R.I.P. Edward, but this video is SPOT. ON.

Cool to see a reference to Nimrod-era Green Day (and Marcy Playground!) in a music retrospective. This is your best series.

For some reason that last song sounds a little like "Nobody Home" by Pink Floyd, but without the good lyrics.

Did anybody see Van Halen on that late night show a couple of years ago when David Lee Roth smashed his nose with his mic? Was supposed to be their big comeback and they had to interrupt their set because David was bleeding everywhere.

12:08 They stood for what every rock band truly stands for: making lots of money.

"Filmed on ravioli" is my new favorite description for low-quality video.