Brothers

This is the term that Alex and Eddie used to describe the darker tonal quality that they always wanted to achieve with their music. Alex Van Halen explains that it was “just our shorthand for a kind of earthy heaviness that we were into—a rich, toney sound”—“think wood, not metal” (156). He also states that the brown sound was present in Led Zeppelin’s music.

A cover, or remake, is a version of a song previously recorded by another artist. Cover songs were a source of friction for Van Halen—while David Lee Roth loved doing them, the Van Halen brothers did not. Overall, the band covered many songs on their first five albums, all with Roth as the singer, including “You Really Got Me,” “Dancing in the Street,” “Oh, Pretty Woman,” “Ice Cream Man,” and “Big Bad Bill (Is Sweet William Now).”

Gazzarri’s was a nightclub on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. While there were many more famous clubs on the Strip, such a Whisky a Go Go and the Troubadour, Gazzarri’s is where Van Halen was the house band and gained notoriety and acclaim in the mid-1970s.

Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that originated in England in the late 1960s with bands such as Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple. Although many distinctions exist within this label, the genre is largely defined by its loud volume and extended guitar solos. Although Alex Van Halen stresses that Van Halen was not a heavy metal band, this is the category that they usually are put in.

Sunset Sound is a recording studio on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Having turned out albums by a large array of renowned artists, it is one of the most famous recording studios in rock ‘n’ roll history. After Van Halen signed with Warner Bros., Ted Templeman took the band to the studio to work with engineer Donn Landee to record their first album. It was also the studio where each of the band’s next four albums would be made.

The Sunset Strip is a nearly two-mile stretch of Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, California, known for its restaurants, boutiques, and nightclubs. Nightclubs such as the Whisky a Go Go, the Roxy, and the Troubadour began specializing in live rock music in the 1960s and 70s. When Van Halen wanted to branch out from Pasadena, they set their sights on the Strip: “starting in the spring of 1974, that became our hunting ground” (77). After becoming the house band at Gazzarri’s, Van Halen was seen by Warner Bros. executive Ted Templeman and signed in 1977.