It begins like this: Eddie Van Halen and his brother Alex get a drum and guitar set, respectively. While Eddie goes off on his paper route (ain't that adorable?), Alex begins messing around on his drums, which infuriates Eddie, whose revenge is playing Alex's guitar. They would remain this way for a good three and a half decades, with Eddie Van Halen reaching canonical guitar deity status and Alex becoming a renowned drummer in his own right. When they were still called "Mammoth" (which, admittedly, is a pretty kick-ass metal band name), they rented a PA from David Lee Roth, but, deciding it would be cheaper to just let him sing, actually, well, they let him sing. Voila: Van Halen.
(This is discounting bassist Michael Anthony, but, well, without being insulting, he's a pretty distant fourth here. I'm not sure his mother would recognize him on a milk carton.)
Like so many metal bands, the Halen was oft-maligned in their early days. Gene Simmons liked them enough to bring them to his management---but not before suggesting they change their name to "Daddy Shortlegs," which is, really, one of the crappiest band names ever---who decided that they had "no chance of making it" (presumably as either Van Halen, Mammoth, Daddy Shortlegs, or Colonel Ketchup's Ragtime Mega Special Fancy Boyfriend Jam Jamboree).
Van Halen had been playing around Southern California to decent crowds, largely thanks to their habit of fliering at high schools, and, eventually were picked up by a pair of A&R reps from Warner Brothers, who funded their first album and, currently, are living in a mansion made entirely of ambergris and Faberge eggs.
This first Van Halen album was wildly successful; indeed, it would earn them a spot opening for Black Sabbath at the end of Sabbath's heyday (or well past it, depending on who you listen to), reach number nineteen on the Billboard charts, and would contain the first instance of heavy metal finger-tapping, a guitar style of which Eddie Van Halen is apocryphally considered the forefather. (He was preceded---among others---by the nineteenth century violinist Niccolo Paganini, who, in delightful congruousness, was once thought possessed by the devil because of his sheer virtuosity and lithe, vaguely sinister appearance. Indeed, he should be considered the first heavy metal string player, having wowed Europe with his bravado, his chops, and his unreal range---he had the ability to bridge three octaves in a single hand span, a talent borne possibly from a genetic disease that resulted in elongated digits or hyper-mobile joints. Further, Paganini was said to have "lashed" the violin violently, as if possessed, and that he could make the instrument cry. He was also rumored to be a sexual deviant and made no attempt to dissuade people of the notion. Point being: dude was metal.)
This first Van Halen album was---and, most often, is still---considered "hard rock," a classification rife with overtones of all-consuming lameness (sorry Puddle of Mudd). But, arguably, it is the progenitor of Hair Metal. First off, it's fun: even the song "Running With the Devil"---a major reason this album sold ten million copies, by the way---is boisterous despite the Sabbathesque title. The record employs the tongue-in-cheek ethos of Hair Metal, the virtuosity of all metal, and boasted a front man up until now unseen in metal world: a mincing lunatic capable of singing two notes simultaneously (Tuvan throat style, son), a man who played a slide-whistle on a metal song, a man who's been known to show up at parties wheeling his own bar, complete with chips AND dip, a man, needless to say, who is many clicks removed from the pee-drinking slobs and diabolical mutton-chopped manchildren who had fronted famous metal bands up till this point.
A good question here is: why, then, shouldn't you consider Van Halen Hair Metal? Quite simply, it feels limiting. Hair Metal was most assuredly not innovative, whereas Van Halen was. Which is to say, where Black Sabbath and Zeppelin pushed blues into a cesspool of distortion and sheer, impervious volume and while the New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands dragged it into a place that was punkier, faster, and ultimately more contemporary, Hair Metal just sort of sat on the sidelines, looking at itself in the mirror, assuring itself it looked fabulous.
It was content to do so.
Van Halen also didn't succumb to the Glam Metal cliches of power-ballads (at least till “Right Now”) or, quite simply, the ridiculous manes and come-hither posturing employed by the leaders of the genre. Furthermore, while Hair Metal is largely considered an eye-averting joke of a shenanigan, Van Halen receives---and indeed, deserves---respect. Call it Pop Metal, if you must. But they, unlike the near entirety of Hair Metal bands, toured and recorded consistently until the turn of the millennium, albeit with two additional lead singers, tequila aficionado Sammy Hagar and ex-Extreme frontman Gary Cherone. They pioneered---or at least re-introduced---new guitar techniques.
But, in the end, whether you decide to consider Van Halen a Hair Metal band or a hard rock band or, even, a pop band ("Jump" being a fantastic argument for this), they were legit. Hair Metal, to be kind, was anything but. Beyond that, Van Halen predates Hair Metal, and, though parts of their general aura and overall aesthetic were co-opted by Glam Metal, they somehow remained above the fray: they used keyboards, they innovated, they weren't, as Motley Crue and so many bands of the same era were, sideshows. If that style over substance ethos defines Hair Metal, Van Halen cannot be lumped in with them. Perhaps their style informed the movement, perhaps it even birthed it, but Van Halen remains above it simply by virtue of their actual skill, the quality of their songs, their status as a music-first-fornication-second metal cohort. They took metal out of the dungeons of sludge-like Sabbath grooving and past the NWOBHM blues-free metal into an era of major chords, shredding, and straight up fun. They were, by way of conclusion, totally, totally rad.
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