Van Halen

Best Of Volume 1

Halfbaked Greatest Hits from one of the Greatest bands

Review Score:

(4/10)
This greatest hits album is entitled "Vol. 1", and yet it does not deliver upon the title. Let's face it, there have really been 2 Van Halen lineups, the original featuring the inestimable David Lee Roth and the second featuring schlocker Sammy Hagar. Sure, there was a third lineup with ex-Extreme frontman Gary Cherone, but that album thankfully disappeared after a mighty promotional effort.

Volume 1 would logically mean a greatest hits album from the first lineup and Volume 2 would follow from the Hagar era. Why didn't they do this? Probably because (1) the boys are still pissed at Roth and (2) they'd sell almost no copies of volume 2 and (3) this would show them that their 11 year effort of going on without Roth was a failure (albeit a pretty good financial success for all the wrong reasons).

This album could have been a classic: what's with only 2 songs from the debut? Ridiculous! Running with the Devil, Jamie's Crying, Ain't Talking About Love, You Really Got Me should be there, along with Dance the Night Away, Beautiful Girls, Unchained, The Cradle Will Rock, Mean Streets, Unchained, Little Guitars, Dancing In the Street, Pretty Woman, Jump, Panama, Hot for Teacher, I'll Wait plus instead of the tired "new" recordings, they should've thrown in a couple of live songs from their Roth era capturing the buzz that made them the best band in the world, before it got destroyed with Hagar.

The conclusion? yet another listless collection of "hits" that don't capture the essence of the band in question. What can you do? Burn your own, baby!

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