Agreed!

🐐

Same here (52 yrs old).

​@@insidethemusicalmind7207 same here 55 YR old. Lol

49 and I agree

I was born in 1970 also. My 24 year old son's middle name is Edward. This reminds me of discovering VH when I was 12. All over again

8-tracks too!!

Yep, and unfortunately he abandoned that tone after about 1984. It was *THEE* perfect tone. I guess he got bored with perfection. Who knows. I was never much of a Van Hagar fan. All I know is this tone right here was just unbelievably tasty.

His tone was monstrously grand. It made him into a guitar giant!

Goosebumps

​@@Excalibur2112in his fingers ultimately. Any guitar thru any amp, or acoustic, you can hear his feel. Any electric guitar amplification he played thru, his feel shined.

LOL...that is so freaking true Paul. Loves it!!!

Great comment!

Good comment and also you can Ikigai is the way...logotherapy too...Viktor Frankl and Makima Asimiya

Unfortunately some people's "talent" is destruction.

I think about this exact thing every friggin day trying to discover it!

it is this is great tone

Right on. The opening riff tone just pure Ed.

And Alex's drums have always had an unmistakable sound as well

All in the hands

The ultimate tone! Exactly how a guitar should sound 👌

Indeed ,don't we love it, still doesn't get the recognition of just how damn good he is

Or in 5150

Yes but so true as I am on this 2023 Thanksgiving!!!!!

Idk, I think he'd say it was about damn time.

He did

Yes indeed

Itz badass alrite

This is what Edward’s sound was like until Dave left. Then he started using too much chorus and took the edge off of his tone. You can’t imagine how much I wish he had kept the same tone. This tone has attitude. It was one of the things I loved about Van Halen.

I love this too. And how how about 'Last Night'? In a Simple Rhyme of the demo version blows away the album version, - way more ballz-soul-bitchinness.

agreed. fair warning

Voodoo Queen, Act like it hurts, Down in Flames, We Die bold, etc

No doubt about it! This is like holy grail , lost ark material. These unfinished gems & demos are far better than even many bands & artists final songs and albums released !

well, this song proves they didnt need Roth at all.

@@carlklejna5774 This here represents Van Halen in their top form,…. DLR not needed in this.

The seventies and eighties were the greatest time to be a teenager.

I saw them for the first time right around that exact same time, in ‘79. I was 11 years old, almost 12, and it was one of my earliest concerts. They knocked me into the dirt. Just stunned me. I had just seen Cheap Trick about a month earlier, and had my mind blown there as well. I thought I would never see anything that would top that, but VH was at the very least just as good. Maybe a little better actually. Those were great times. I was just beginning to turn on to all this stuff that would eventually define who I am.

Isn't it incredible. I was born in October 1979, and my first concert was VH at the Los Angeles Forum in 1995. They've been in my top 3 all time favorite bands since I heard the 5150 album when I was in 7th grade. Guess around 1991 or so. I love both Roth and Hagar and all VH music.

Hey, that's frickin cool ! Those were great times ! Cali changed too much fur me, I moved to South Carolina last October & I absolutely love it here but So. Cal. was the place to be in the 70's & 80's ✌️🤘

A- men to that! I was lucky enough to see them 7- times!

That was also the first time I saw them. I was 15. I went on to see the original lineup 7 times, the Sammy era lineup 8 times and the WVH era 5 times. It will always bum me out that we didn't get to see the reunion with the original 4 because we lost King Edward in 2020. R.I.P. to the G.O.A.T. 🎸🎸🎸

I really dig this track too

That's crazy talk! Sam Hager said they never recycled ideas when he wrote all the songs for VH !

@@DarknessIsSpreading_01 not really crazy talk when theres a video of Eddie playing Amsterdam in 1986

All of this older stuff turned into two, three, four songs over the years. The brilliance of Ed, recording a idea that never goes to waste. There's stuff on this track alone that goes through a few songs on 1984 and definitely the AFU Naturally Wired beat. I've pulled parts of Drop Dead Legs, Hang em High, AFU, and another riff that I'm still trying to remember the song it's on. 😂 Ed was and always will be the GOAT.... 🐐

​@DylanAdamson I think the poster was being sarcastic about Sam's penchant for, uhh, gross exaggeration.

Yep. There’s no shortage of high quality unreleased material floating around out there and making it’s way on to youtube. Some of it is stuff I’ve already heard a long time ago on various bootlegs, but quite a bit of it is brand new to me, and I’m 56 years old and have been a hardcore VH fan since the first album. I already knew Ed had been sitting on a vault of unreleased recordings, but I had no idea just how vast it was. It would seem that we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg. I just hope that Wolfie gets all this stuff compiled and released (officially) at some point in the near future. It’s like rediscovering Van Halen all over again.

I hear you, Don. The deeper you go, the greater they are. Amazing all this old stuff.

I put EVH & Jimi Hendrix as the GOATs ! Both innovators & game changers in their eras ! They were not of this world !

It's probably Ed playing bass

@@24theMoney i would hope think not...mike kills it the bass...seen him live 7 times...solid as two rocks and locked in tight as all get out

It's Mike

He always did, whenever you actually get to hear him. He really got screwed on all those albums. Just buried. Every time I saw them live, Mikey was just tearing it up.

@@24theMoneyWhy do you say that? Are you implying that Michael had no talent or chops? I know for a fact that Mikey is more than capable of pulling off these basslines (and then some).

Live yes he's good but on record with the Dave yrs. Don't hear it.

There’s already *TONS* of stuff (from the vaults) floating around here on the youtoobs, and it’s only just the tip of the iceberg. The boys practically lived in the studio (when they weren’t on the road tearing it up on the stages). They recorded *SO MUCH* material that never got an official release. You could probably fill an entire record store with all the recorded material that never saw the light of day. I’m 56 years old, been a massive VH fan since I first heard Eruption/You Really Got Me way back in the summer of ‘78, and I’m still stumbling on to old unreleased songs that are brand new to me, all these decades later.

I hope Alex & Wolfgang go into the vaults & go through all of these gems . Then make peace with DLR & Mikey & finish these songs & release them. Life is way too short

I agree with that

I think MA's bass also sounds better than on the albums.

Yea man that's so crazy and True! If I was Alex I'd be pissed off to no end knowing there's demos better from many years prior yet Warner Bros or whoever just muffled Alex and Mike. Crazy mixing gone bad

With VH, the demos always sound better than the official album recordings. To me they do anyway. The drums always have more punch, and you can actually hear Mikey’s bass, which is always rock solid. Wolfie really needs to compile all these early demos and release them in a box set. Give ‘em a good remaster but leave the mixes as they are. I’d pay good $$$ for that.

Especially those Simmons drum pads which totally removed the balls from 5150.

Right! I thought I was the only one that knew that!

Even autotune can't make Dave sound good.

This doesn't need any vocals IMHO. Alex, Edward and Michael are on their A+ game and just totally going for it. I get blissed out every time I hear this cut. Cheers!

It's up there with one of his best quiet breakdown bits for sure. I absolutely love it, in fact I got a bit teary when I first heard it

10000 hours or iterations, they did both.

Seriously though, they had enough original material to make an album as early as 1976, but it was all waiting on a record label deal. "In A Simple Rhyme" was written in 1974 but wasn't put on an album until 1980.

House of Pain was from the 70s, too.

@@vincevegas8529 Ed never learned to read music. He had such a good ear and just memorized the notes in his head. This is why he was so avant-grade.

@@vincevegas8529 Great story, different category lumberjack landlord looking up on KZfaq drops out of school at 9 grade, owns a 140 properties doors. As we say, it in real estate, Ann manages them all and manages a sale software company. And has his fourth child with his wife. Lumberjack landlord school is so much b******* for so many.

Yep. It's also got parts of what would become Seventh Seal.

There's the cowbell part that Alex used at the end of House of pain also.

I dunno. Though I agree that this works beautifully as an instrumental, I definitely wouldn’t go so far as to say that it “captures the entire feeling and vibe of VH in one song”. Love him or hate him, Dave added an undeniable and crucial dimension to their early sound, and though his absence doesn’t hurt this particular song, I just can’t imagine early Van Halen without Diamond Dave.

Right on

Maybe with words and singing

​@@chrischoir3594Not everything needs words and singing. Instrumentals are awesome, and VH always had good ones on every album from the Dave era.

@@kevinwilkins3248 well then it needs more solos, but no VH song is complete unless MA sings backup voclas

@chrischoir3594 Agree to completely disagree. Instrumentals are awesome, and so is this one. All the greatest bands have terrific ones: VH, Zeppelin, the Who, Rush, the Police. I guess Atomic Punk is not a complete VH song either? There are other great classic VH tunes without backing vocals too.

A awesome instrumental Ed & Al are so locked in together and enhance each other with Mike laying down a solid foundation. More gems like this need to be heard. 🎸 👑❤️🤍🖤

I figured this had to be from the WACF era. It just has that whole vibe to it. Someone else here was saying it reminded him/her of Fair Warning, but I don’t hear that at all. Each one of those first 6 albums has a distinct, unique feel to it… and this has WACF written all over it, even if a lot of parts of the song were later put to use on the Van Hagar albums.

@@Shikta-poobah67 After learning more about these songs being released recently you are right. These songs are all from different recording sessions. Big Squeeze is most likely from Dec 1979. And having experience with Van Halen bootlegs and early recordings I should've known better before making the previous comment.

Yep. Mikey’s probably the most overlooked bass player in all of rock, in no small part because his tracks were always buried so low on the albums that you’d be hard pressed to even make out root notes. Then I’d go see them live, and Michael’s just ripping it up. Same thing as on all these demos, where you can actually *HEAR* the bass tracks. He’s a major talent. Why do they bury him on the albums? I’ve never understood. Also, the drums always sound better on all these demos. A lot punchier. The kick drum stands out more. It doesn’t take anything away from Ed’s playing. The guitar still sounds just as great and full as it does on the albums, but being able to hear the rhythm section really enhances the songs that much more.

You said it. Best rhythm section in rock (well, maybe after Moon/Entwhistle or Paice/Glover)… that always seems to get overlooked and overshadowed by the guitar. The thing about VH is that they were a sum of their parts, though you’d never guess by the way those albums are mixed. It was when you saw them live that it hit you. They were all on the same tier of talent, yes even Diamond Dave (in the early days). Just because DLR didn’t have some huge vocal range like Freddie Mercury didn’t diminish his unique style. Who else had a signature “OWW! AAH!” like that? It worked perfectly for what they were doing. Anyway, yeah. Every member of VH deserves equal credit for their performance and talent.

for sure!

pretty cool even without vox~

Lots more here that you probably haven't heard

@@TrueFreddyK Awesome. You made my decade 🤘🤘

Your delusional to think they will do anything for the fans. They have always hated the fans.

​@@jamesragsdale8202Uh...as stated here, we suspect the millions of dollars generated by such a release will provide sufficient motivation. Money has a funny way of getting people to do the damnedest things.

Not until Alex is gone, sadly. He never could be bothered, and even less now that Ed's gone. Someone really crossed him getting this stuff out there, and I have a feeling Mikey had much to do with opening the vaults.

Great stuff

Edward was one of the greats!