APOLITICAL BLUES PART OF THE VAN HALEN OU812 MIX

 After i finished writing the rather scathing article about the Van Halen album FOR UNLAWFUL CARNAL KNOWLEDGE a week or so ago, i felt at some stage i should balance my anti-Hagar era Van Halen rhetoric by featuring an absolute gem of a song off the band's 1988 album OU812, a cover of a blues song called APOLITICAL BLUES.


The song was written by early 70`s Los Angeles band LITTLE FEAT, it was the only cover that VAN HALEN recorded during the years when Hagar was in the band, in contrast to the keyboard dominated and hard rock songs on OU812, this quirky little addition tacked on the end of the album is a surprisingly convincing blues performance from the biggest US metal band of the 80`s, not sure if Eddie is the one playing the guitar or the piano here, or maybe he played both, which would explain why Van Halen never performed APOLITICAL BLUES in concert, because Eddie has only got two hands and not four.


Hagar you got to say is fantastic here, makes you wonder why he didn't try his hand at singing other blues covers or even recording 'bluesey' new material for VAN HALEN. I was due to write something about the blues on Lost Treasures, but i was also due to have some compassion on Van Halen after the grilling i gave the FOR UNLAWFUL CARNAL KNOWLEDGE album.


So this was a good way to kill two birds with one stone. Besides APOLITICAL BLUES, there are some other great tracks on OU812 which i rate as being far and away the best Van Halen songs in the Sammy Hagar era. The spacey and euphoric FEELS SO GOOD, featuring Eddie at his best on keyboards, is arguably the ultimate Hagar-era VH performance, the raunchy and decadent BLACK AND BLUE, although hamstrung by conspicuouly bad production, still possesses a potent, kickarse AC/DC styled riff from Eddie with a gutso vocal assault from Hagar.



SUCKER IN A 3 PIECE suffered even worse than BLACK AND BLUE in the production stakes, a big shame, because with a lot more studio polish it would have ended up one of the great Van Halen rockers in the post David Lee Roth era. OU812 is a monumentally muddled album, sounds like it was recorded in too much of a rush, but it is better than all the other Hagar-era albums, which are 5150, For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge and Balance.