Diver Down
Encyclopedia
Diver Down is the fifth studio album
Studio album
A studio album is an album made up of tracks recorded in the controlled environment of a recording studio. A studio album contains newly written and recorded or previously unreleased or remixed material, distinguishing itself from a compilation or reissue album of previously recorded material, or...

 by American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 hard rock
Hard rock
Hard rock is a loosely defined genre of rock music which has its earliest roots in mid-1960s garage rock, blues rock and psychedelic rock...

 band Van Halen
Van Halen
Van Halen is an American hard rock band formed in Pasadena, California, in 1972. The band has enjoyed success since the release of its debut album, Van Halen, . As of 2007 Van Halen has sold 80 million albums worldwide and has had the most #1 hits on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart...

, released in 1982. It spent 65 weeks on the US album charts and had, by 1998, sold four million copies in the US.

Background

The album
Album
An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...

 cover displays the "diver down" flag
Diver down flag
A diver down flag, or scuba flag, is a flag used on the water to indicate that there is a diver below. It is red with a white stripe from the upper left corner to the lower right corner, and was designed and introduced in 1956 by Ted Nixon of U.S. Divers, from an idea of Navy veteran Denzel James...

 used in many US jurisdictions to indicate a diver is currently submerged in the area, and caution is advised to nearby boats. Asked about the cover in a 1982 interview with Sylvie Simmons (Sounds, June 23, 1982), David Lee Roth
David Lee Roth
David Lee Roth is an American rock vocalist, songwriter, actor, author, and former radio personality. Roth was ranked nineteenth by Hit Parader on their list of the 100 Greatest Heavy Metal Singers of All Time....

 said it was meant to imply that "there was something going on that's not apparent to your eyes. You put up the red flag with the white slash. Well, a lot of people approach Van Halen as sort of the abyss. It means, it's not immediately apparent to your eyes what is going on underneath the surface."

The music video for "(Oh) Pretty Woman" was one of the first banned by MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....

, although VH1 Classic
VH1 Classic
VH1 Classic is a television network, launched on May 8, 2000. It is operated as part of MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom and primarily features music videos and concert footage from the 1970s through the mid-1990s, though it formerly included a wider range of genres and time periods...

 has consistently aired it in recent years. In 1982, Dave explained the ban as the result of complaints that it made fun of "an almost theological figure" the Samurai
Samurai
is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...

 warrior (Mike Anthony in the video) and also because two midgets appeared to molest a woman (actually a Los Angeles area drag queen
Drag queen
A drag queen is a man who dresses, and usually acts, like a caricature woman often for the purpose of entertaining. There are many kinds of drag artists and they vary greatly, from professionals who have starred in films to people who just try it once. Drag queens also vary by class and culture and...

 performer). The video, directed by Roth, was, he said: "rather like a surrealistic art project ... where they paint the picture and come back three days later and try to figure out what they meant." The track "Intruder" on the album, which precedes "(Oh) Pretty Woman", was written specifically in order that there would be enough music to cover the length of the film that was edited down for the "(Oh) Pretty Woman" video. In his 1982 interview with Sylvie Simmons, Dave takes credit for "Intruder," stating: "I wrote that... When we finished the movie (i.e., the video) it was about three minutes too long. So, I said, we won't cut any of it; we'll write soundtrack music for the beginning. So we went into the studio and I played the synthesizer and I wrote it. It took about an hour to put that together." (Sounds, June 23, 1982)

Eddie and Alex Van Halen's father, Jan Van Halen, plays clarinet
Clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...

 on "Big Bad Bill".

Music

Five of the twelve songs on the album are covers, the most popular being the cover of "Oh, Pretty Woman", a Roy Orbison
Roy Orbison
Roy Kelton Orbison was an American singer-songwriter, well known for his distinctive, powerful voice, complex compositions, and dark emotional ballads. Orbison grew up in Texas and began singing in a rockabilly/country & western band in high school until he was signed by Sun Records in Memphis...

 song. At the time, the record company thought it had a greater chance of a hit record if the album comprised songs that were already successful. In retrospect, it turned out to be one of the Van Halen's brothers' least-favorite albums, with Eddie stating "I'd rather have a bomb with one of my own songs than a hit with someone else's." However, at the time whilst he admitted to the pressure the band was put under to record it, he was able to tell Guitar Player (Dec. 1982) that it "was fun": "When we came off the Fair Warning tour
Fair Warning Tour
The Fair Warning Tour was a 1981 North American concert tour by hard rock band Van Halen in support of their Fair Warning album. Ultimately, despite the success of the tour the album's harsh tone meant it only received an RIAA certification of 2x Platinum...

 last year [1981], we were going to take a break and spend a lot of time writing this and that. Dave came up with the idea of, 'Hey, why don't we start off the new year with just putting out a single?' He wanted to do 'Dancing in the Streets.' He gave me the original Martha Reeves & the Vandellas tape, and I listened to it and said, 'I can't get a handle on anything out of this song.' I couldn't figure out a riff, and you know the way I like to play: I always like to do a riff, as opposed to just hitting barre chords and strumming. So I said, 'Look, if you want to do a cover tune, why don't we do 'Pretty Woman'? It took one day. We went to Sunset Sound in L.A., recorded it, and it came out right after the first of the year. It started climbing the charts, so all of a sudden Warner Bros. is going, 'You got a hit single on your hands. We gotta have that record.' We said, 'Wait a minute, we just did that to keep us out there, so that people know we're still alive.' But they just kept pressuring, so we jumped right back in without any rest or time to recuperate from the tour, and started recording. We spent 12 days making the album... it was a lot of fun." In addition to this, two of the original songs were around long before the album was made. "Hang 'Em High" can trace its roots back to the band's 1977 demos as "Last Night," which had the same music but different lyrics. "Cathedral" was also nothing new, being played in its current form throughout 1981 with earlier versions going back to 1980. Additionally, "Happy Trails" had been recorded for their 1977 demos as a joke.

Songs

Two interviews from the period give the best account of how the band - certainly Dave and Eddie - saw the album at the time. The comments here are taken from Dave's interview with Sylvie Simmons (Sounds, June 23, 1982) and Eddie's interview with Jas Obrecht (Guitar Player, Dec. 1982).

Where Have all the Good Times Gone
Dave: "We're capable of playing six different Kinks' songs. Because at one time, back in our bar days, I bought a double album from K-Tel or something that had 30 Kinks tunes on it. We learned all of one side and played them into the dirt during the club gigs, twice a night each one, because they sounded so good and they were great to dance to, etc., etc." He added that the band had never met Ray Davies
Ray Davies
Ray Davies, CBE is an English rock musician. He is best known as lead singer and songwriter for the Kinks, which he led with his younger brother, Dave...

 but that "we had a seance once and tried to dredge up his spirit. And Chrissie Hynde
Chrissie Hynde
Christine Ellen "Chrissie" Hynde is an US musician best known as the leader of the rock/new wave band the Pretenders. She is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist, and has been the only constant member of the band throughout its history.-Early life and career:Hynde is the daughter of a part-time...

 materialized for a brief moment."

Eddie: "The solo was more sounds than lines. I ran the edge of my pick up and down the strings for some of those effects. I think I used my Echoplex in that song."

Hang 'Em High
Dave: "It's like all those Westerns where there's some kind of dissonant sound in the background. Like they'll have one harmonica that hits only one note — eeeeeeeeee — and that's when you know the hero is coming to town or something terrible is going to happen. And what happens is Edward will come up with a song or a riff and then immediately I'll hear it and I'll know right away what the scenario is."

Eddie: "The solo was just loose, fun, craziness. I play it better every night than I did on the record, but who cares? It has feeling. Actually that was a really old song."

Cathedral
Eddie: "I've been doing 'Cathedral' for more than a year and I wanted to put it on record... it sounds like a Catholic church organ, which is how it got its name. On that cut I use the volume knob a lot. If you turn it up and down too fast, it heats up and freezes. I did two takes of that song, and right at the end of the second take, the volume knob just froze, just stopped."

Secrets
Dave: "The nucleus of the lyrics come from greeting cards and get-well cards that I bought in Albuquerque, New Mexico on the last tour, and they were written in the style of American Indian poetry. 'May your moccasins leave happy tracks in the summer snows'."

Eddie: "I used a Gibson doubleneck 12-string, the model Jimmy Page uses, and played with a flatpick. The solo in 'Secrets' was a first take. I kind of laid back, and it fit the song."

Dancing in the Street
Dave: "It sounds like more than four people are playing, when in actuality there are almost zero overdubs — that's why it takes us such a short amount of time [to record]."

Eddie: "It takes almost as much time to make a cover song sound original as it does writing a song. I spent a lot of time arranging and playing synthesizer on 'Dancing in the Streets,' and they [critics] just wrote it off as, 'Oh, it's just like the original.' So forget the critics! These are good songs. Why shouldn't we redo them for the new generation of people?"

Little Guitars
Dave: "Edward was saying he'd just seen this TV show with a flamenco guy doing all these wonderful things with his fingers, and he says 'I've figured out how to do it with one pick, watch this.' And he faked it. And it sounded better than the original... It sounded Mexican to me, so I wrote a song for senoritas." The guitar used on the recording (and subsequent tour) was a miniature Les Paul, built by Nashville luthier David Petschulat and sold to Eddie on the earlier "Fair Warning" tour.

Eddie: "I think that the best thing I do is cheat. I came up with the intro after I bought a couple of Carlos Montoya
Carlos Montoya
Carlos Montoya was a prominent Flamenco guitarist and a founder of the modern-day popular Flamenco style of music.His unique style and successful career, despite all odds, have left a great legacy for modern day Flamenco...

 records. I was hearing his fingerpicking, going, 'My God, this guy is great. I can't do that.' So, I just listened to that style of music for a couple of days and I cheated! [Using a pick] I am doing trills on the high E and pull-offs with my left hand, and slapping my middle finger on the low E. If there's something I want to do and can't, I won't give up until I can figure out some way to make it sound similar to what I really can't do."

Big Bad Bill (Is Sweet William Now)
Dave: "I think it's a great song. And there's been this thread winding its way through all of Van Halen's music and all of our albums since beginning with 'Ice Cream Man.' I played acoustic guitar and songs like this for quite a while before I ever joined Van Halen. It's music. Why do I have to bang my head to every single song on every single album? I don't think the audience has that much lack of creativity or imagination."

Eddie: "It was Dave's idea to do 'Big Bad Bill'. He bought himself one of those Sanyo Walkman-type things with the FM-AM radio, and you can record off the radio if you like something you hear. He was up in his bedroom at his father's house and he found that if he stood in a certain spot and pointed his antenna a certain way, he picked up this weird radio station in Louisville, Kentucky. He recorded 'Big Bad Bill' and played it to us, and we started laughing ourselves silly and going, 'That is bad! Let's do it!' Dave suggested, 'Hey, we can get your old man to play the clarinet.' We said, 'sure.'

"It's so funny, because I couldn't play the song for you right now. I had to read because there were so many chords, I just couldn't remember it. So here's my father to the left of me, sitting on a chair with a music stand
Music stand
A music stand is a device that holds sheet music in a position that allows the musician to read it while performing.There are various types of music stands. The most common modern type is made of metal and can be folded for ease of transportation...

 in front of him, and I'm sitting next to him with sheet music in a stand. Mike was there, too, playing like an acoustic guitar bass - the kind they have in Mexican restaurants where they come up, play in front of your face, and aggravate you. We had a great time. It looked like an old '30s or '40s session. I used some thick Gibson hollowbody with f-holes. My father hadn't played in a long time because he had lost his left-hand middle finger about 10 years ago. He was nervous, and we told him, 'Jan, just have a good time. We make mistakes! That's what makes it real.' I love what he did, but he was thinking back 10 years ago when he was smokin', playing jazz and stuff. He played exactly what we wanted."

Dave: "I think when you hear Mr. Van Halen playing, you'll have an idea it's a shadow of where Eddie and Alex are now. There's a sense of humour in there, a lot of technique and a whole lot of beer!"

The Full Bug
Dave: "You know when you have a cockroach and they run round the house and get into a corner? We used to have these shoes called PRFCs - Puerto Rican Fence Climbers, okay? And this was aptly titled because if you were running from the police or what have you, and you were wearing your PRFCs, you could hit the fence at a dead run and your foot would stay in and you could commence climbing immediately, which was the essence of the whole sport anyway. And these were also great shoes for when the cockroach moves into the corner and you get at it with your foot or the broom anymore. You just jam your toe into the corner and hit as hard as you can. And if you did it right you got the full bug. So this slang means — bammm! — you have to give it everything you've got. Make the maximum effort, do everything possible, get the full bug."

Eddie: "Dave plays the acoustic guitar and harmonica on the intro of 'The Full Bug.' My lines in the middle of that are different. I've been doing a lot of stuff with Allan Holdsworth
Allan Holdsworth
Allan Holdsworth is an English guitarist and composer. He has released twelve studio albums as a solo artist and played many different styles of music over a period of four decades, but first drew attention for his work in jazz fusion...

, and he inspires me."

Happy Trails
Dave: "Joke 'em if they can't take a fuck, Sylvie! You wouldn't believe the number of TV commercials and radio jingles this band can sing in four-part harmony. I was nannied and weaned by TV — that's the babysitter around here when you're growing up, to sit in front of the tube. You turn into a vidiot. I remember all the commercials. We've been singing 'Happy Trails' for general airport use for years. And we wanted to do something wonderful and different for you."

Track listing

All songs by Eddie Van Halen, Michael Anthony, David Lee Roth and Alex Van Halen, except where noted.
  1. "Where Have All the Good Times Gone
    Where Have All The Good Times Gone
    "Where Have All the Good Times Gone" is a song written by Ray Davies and performed with The Kinks. It was first released as the B-side to "Till the End of the Day," and was then included on their album The Kink Kontroversy in 1965 ....

    !" (Ray Davies
    Ray Davies
    Ray Davies, CBE is an English rock musician. He is best known as lead singer and songwriter for the Kinks, which he led with his younger brother, Dave...

    ) – 3:02
  2. "Hang 'Em High" – 3:28
  3. "Cathedral" (Instrumental) – 1:20
  4. "Secrets" – 3:25
  5. "Intruder" (Instrumental) – 1:39
  6. "(Oh) Pretty Woman
    Oh, Pretty Woman
    "Oh, Pretty Woman" is a song, released in August 1964, which was a worldwide success for Roy Orbison. Recorded on the Monument Records label in Nashville, Tennessee, it was written by Roy Orbison and Bill Dees. The song spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100...

    " (William Dees, Roy Orbison
    Roy Orbison
    Roy Kelton Orbison was an American singer-songwriter, well known for his distinctive, powerful voice, complex compositions, and dark emotional ballads. Orbison grew up in Texas and began singing in a rockabilly/country & western band in high school until he was signed by Sun Records in Memphis...

    ) – 2:53
  7. "Dancing in the Street" (Marvin Gaye
    Marvin Gaye
    Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr. , better known by his stage name Marvin Gaye, was an American singer-songwriter and musician with a three-octave vocal range....

    , Ivy Hunter, William Stevenson) – 3:43
  8. "Little Guitars (Intro)" (Instrumental) – 0:42
  9. "Little Guitars" – 3:47
  10. "Big Bad Bill (Is Sweet William Now)
    Big Bad Bill (Is Sweet William Now)
    "Big Bad Bill " is a song with music by Milton Ager and lyrics by Jack Yellen, written in 1924. The song became a vocal hit for Margaret Young accompanied by Rube Bloom, and an instrumental hit for the Don Clark Orchestra...

    " (Milton Ager
    Milton Ager
    Milton Ager was an American composer.Ager was born in Chicago, Illinois, the sixth of nine children. Leaving school with only three years of formal high-school education, he taught himself to play the piano and embarked on a career as a musician. After spending time as an accompanist to silent...

    , Jack Yellen
    Jack Yellen
    Jack Selig Yellen was an American lyricist and screenwriter.-Life and career:Born in Poland, Yellen emigrated with his family to the United States when he was five years old. The oldest of seven children, he was raised in Buffalo, New York and began writing songs in high school...

    ) – 2:44
  11. "The Full Bug" – 3:18
  12. "Happy Trails
    Happy Trails (song)
    "Happy Trails," by Dale Evans Rogers, was the theme song for the 1940s and 1950s radio program and the 1950s television show starring Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Rogers, always sung over the end credits of the program. Happy Trails was released in 1952 as a 78 RPM and 45 RPM by Rogers and Evans with...

    " (Dale Evans
    Dale Evans
    Dale Evans, was an American writer, movie star, and singer-songwriter. She was the third wife of singing cowboy Roy Rogers.-Early life:...

    ) – 1:03

Personnel

Van Halen
  • David Lee Roth
    David Lee Roth
    David Lee Roth is an American rock vocalist, songwriter, actor, author, and former radio personality. Roth was ranked nineteenth by Hit Parader on their list of the 100 Greatest Heavy Metal Singers of All Time....

     - lead vocals, harmonica
    Harmonica
    The harmonica, also called harp, French harp, blues harp, and mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used primarily in blues and American folk music, jazz, country, and rock and roll. It is played by blowing air into it or drawing air out by placing lips over individual holes or multiple holes...

    , synthesizer
    Synthesizer
    A synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...

    , acoustic guitar
    Acoustic guitar
    An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...

  • Eddie Van Halen
    Eddie Van Halen
    Edward Lodewijk "Eddie" Van Halen is a Dutch-American guitarist, keyboardist, songwriter and producer, best known as the lead guitarist and co-founder of the hard rock band Van Halen, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame...

     - electric
    Electric guitar
    An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...

     and acoustic guitars, keyboards
    Keyboard instrument
    A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...

    , backing vocals
  • Michael Anthony - bass guitar
    Bass guitar
    The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....

    , backing vocals
  • Alex Van Halen
    Alex Van Halen
    Alexander Arthur "Alex" Van Halen is a Dutch-born American musician, best known as the drummer and co-founder of the hard rock band Van Halen. Originally, his brother Eddie had taken lessons for drums, while Alex practiced guitar...

     - drums
    Drum kit
    A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....


Production

  • Producer: Ted Templeman
  • Engineers: Ken Deane, Donn Landee
  • Project coordinator: Jo Motta
  • Art direction: Pete Angelus, Richard Seireeni
  • Photography: Richard Aaron, Neil Zlozower

Certifications

Album

Billboard (North America)
Year Chart Position
1982 Pop Albums 3
1984 The Billboard 200 126

Singles

Billboard (North America)
Year Single Chart Position
1982 "(Oh) Pretty Woman" Billboard Hot 100 12
1982 "(Oh) Pretty Woman" Mainstream Rock 1
1982 "Dancing in the Street
Dancing in the Street
"Dancing in the Street" is a 1964 song first recorded by Martha and the Vandellas. It is one of Motown's signature songs and is the group's premier signature song.-Martha and the Vandellas original:...

"
Billboard Hot 100 38
1982 "Dancing in the Street
Dancing in the Street
"Dancing in the Street" is a 1964 song first recorded by Martha and the Vandellas. It is one of Motown's signature songs and is the group's premier signature song.-Martha and the Vandellas original:...

"
Mainstream Rock 3
1982 "Secrets" Mainstream Rock 22
1982 "Little Guitars" Mainstream Rock 33
1982 "The Full Bug" Mainstream Rock 42
1982 "Where Have All The Good Times Gone!
Where Have All The Good Times Gone
"Where Have All the Good Times Gone" is a song written by Ray Davies and performed with The Kinks. It was first released as the B-side to "Till the End of the Day," and was then included on their album The Kink Kontroversy in 1965 ....

"
Mainstream Rock 17
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