My favorite two bands have been Van Halen and Pink Floyd. It is hard to say when I discovered each. Pink Floyd probably mostly through my Dad and VH on my own. Their classic lineups have produced such brilliant albums that I just had to rank them. What I term as classic was the Waters-Gilmour led era of Floyd (from Meddle through The Wall, discounting A Saucerful of Secrets as that album was not that great) and the Roth era of Van Halen. Anyway, here we go with #11-6
Tier 1 - The Just Barely Classics
11.) 1984
Someone has to be last. Let's start by saying this album is better than like 90% of the hard rock/hair metal/heavy metal stuff released in the 80's, but it was Van Halen starting to turn a new direction. The Sammy Era was first seen here, with a bevy of synth-heavy tracks in Jump, Top Jimmy, and I'll Wait. The album as a whole just felt a bit emptier than the others, showing the candle running empty on the Dave and Eddie era. It did have its fair share of classics with Hot For Teacher, featuring perfect symbiosis with the Brothers, and Panama, which is about as perfectly made a rock song as possible. But that doesn't make up for just a slew of good but not great tracks. Eddie is still great, but Alex was starting to experiment with drum kits, and the band was starting to experiment with minimalizing Michael Anthony's bass.
In the end, I don't really blame Van Halen for going in this direction - and it was a direction in all honesty much better suited for Sammy Hagar. Eddie Van Halen probably, in an honest moment, considers himself a musician more than just a guitarist. He was an accomplished, award-winning pianist, and this was an opportunity to let his musical creativity loose. Of course, I don't think he realized what blowback his turn to the ivories would create, but given Eddie's character, I don't think he cared too much. 1984 was a key moment for the band. Had they not had to go up against Thriller, this would have been their first #1 album. It ended up being their 2nd Diamond (10MM copies sold) album, but it was a true bridge between the Dave and Sammy eras - for better and for worse.
10.) Animals
There are people that swear by this album, but I am definitely not one of them. This was Floyd at its most self-pleasuring. This was them swollen up with largesse and an inflated sense of what made them great. They took their legacy strengths and turned the dial up a bit too far. The three keynote songs of Sheep, Pigs and Dogs are all just, simply, way too long. They all had similar structures, with a good first 3-4 minutes and an even better last 2-3 minutes when the main theme hits back again. It is that overstuffed middle that ultimately hurts the album in my eyes. As always, the melodies and the musicality of the pieces are great, but just a bit too long and, at times, prodding.
This was the first album created where there were significant splinters present within the band. Roger Waters, as was normal, wrote most of it, but David Gilmour took center stage for the truly plodding Dogs, which was 17 minutes, 13 of which mostly filler in between verses. This was a common recipe for so many of Floyd's classic songs (Echoes, Shine On, etc.), but this time they mostly struck out. Still, what helps the album still be a classic is how vibrant and pointed those beginning and ending verses were, even if the 6-10 minutes inbetween filled with vamping and strumming get a tad too laborious.
Tier 2 - The Unrankable Classic
9.) Meddle
It is so hard to rank Meddle. On the one hand, it included maybe the best epic song Floyd (and maybe any rock band) ever created, in the 23:32 long epic Echoes. It also had a really nice instrumental in One of These Days to lead it off. The rest of the album? Purely take it or leave it for me. But it is hard to deny just how good Echoes was. The song is longer than an episode of Seinfield. It is twice as long as the longest Metallica song. It was a true epic, and it was perfect. Again, One of These Days was a great opener. The rest of the songs were mostly forgettable (save for the brief appearance of 'You'll Never Walk Alone' as the coda for Fearless). But Echoes is where this album starts, ends and makes it mark.
Ironically, Echoes is a longer version of the songs in Animals, with verses at the start and end with a long, extended, instrumental in the middle. But this one was just done better. It is supposedly a tale of the creation of the world, but even if you don't see what they did, the song works so well. Starting off with sonar pings, then sounds of a cave, expanding quickly to that rhapsodic, windy melody. Echoes had a truly perfect hook - so perfect that Roger Waters will claim, to this day, that Andrew Lloyd Webber stole it for The Phantom of the Opera (admittedly, a stretch). The middle is so haunting, so beautiful. It flies by, and then slowly builds to the final 3-4 minute climax. The song itself took up the entire Side B of the album, and it was as perfect a half-album can be.
Tier 3 - The Start of the True Classics
8.) Diver Down
It's easy to mock Diver Down, as many have. It was a rushed album that was created when the creative juices were running way empty in the Van Halen brain trust after years of touring, recording and partying. Yes, they put four covers on the album among their 8 normal tracks. They added in four instrumentals as well, which were mostly just cases of the Van Halen bros fucking around. But let's not beat around the bush - part of the reason Van Halen was so great was that they were the best cover band ever. They may be the only band (save for ones that ripped off constantly without creditation like Zep) that had cover songs that in many ways become more popular and recognizable than the original. This album had one of those in Pretty Woman, plus a brilliant cover of Dancing in the Street, a song so musically packed it is hard to believe it is just four people. Finally, the best cover may have been Big Bad Bill. Firstly, it is hard to count this as a true cover since it is a fairly unknown song from the 20's. Secondly, it allowed VH to record a song with Jan Van Halen (the Dad) to play clarinet so, so beautifully. But what really makes this album be great, is the original songs.
What defined Van Halen was a perfect intersection between brilliant musicality and fun. There was no more fun band than Van Halen, and no record more fun than Diver Down, and the four original songs all oozed fun. Little Guitars is probably the most famous, an ebullient Eddie rocking a mini-guitar as Dave sings about Senoritas. But don't sleep on Hang 'Em High or The Full Bug, both quick, rampant songs. The four instrumentals may have been overkill, but they did include one classic Eddie solo in Cathedral, a perfectly played ditty with Eddie seamlessly turning his guitar into an organ by simply rotating the volume knob up and down. That was pure Eddie magic. Simple, effective, and ingenious. Diver Down will always be slammed as a rushed job, but hidden behind covers and instrumentals was a band that was as fun as ever.
7.) Van Halen II
Van Halen's second album wasn't as brilliant as their debut (deservedly way up this list), but mostly because these were all old songs and they used their best stuff the first time around. Van Halen used mostly old demo tapes for these songs and while they picked their best stuff for their premier, the prodigious talent of the band still left a lot for the second album. However, a quick shout-out to one of the few songs that was not from an old demo, Dance the Night Away. This is probably not my favorite Van Halen song, but it is the most perfect one. It is such a great, perfect rock song. It was their first true radio hit, and it launched Van Halen as a band that could appeal to the musicians and the general population. I played that song way too many times on loop when I was young. I learned how to play it on the guitar (spoiler alert: it's pretty easy, specifically because Eddie, for once, decided not to include a solo). The rest of the album only adds to its strength.
You can say Van Halen left their demo-day B sides for VHII, but those were some damn good B sides. Somebody Get Me a Doctor, Bottoms Up, Light Up the Sky and DOA are prefect, classic, VH rockers, with strong melodies, great harmonies, and brilliance from Eddie. My favorite underrated VH song may just be Women in Love with starts out with Eddie making sounds on the guitar that only Eddie could really make in those days. The album showcased each member of the band, with Alex getting to show his stuff on the intro to Outta Love Again. Of course Eddie got in a perfect solo, acoustic-ing it up for Spanish Fly, which, in a way, was a more surprising display of brilliance than was Eruption. The songs weren't as perfect as those on VH1, but for a follow-up album it was special. Dance the Night Away cemented them as a great bad. Spanish Fly cemented Eddie as a God. The album itself cemented VH as a band for the history books.
6.) The Wall
This was the album where Pink Floyd took the 'Concept Album' idea a bit too far, as a handful of truly brilliant songs were a bit muddled by a dozen or so unneccessary ones. Up until this point Floyd was defined by their haste in adding tracks to their albums. For once they went the other way and I'm not at all sure it worked. The album included my favorite Floyd song ever in Comfortably Numb, but also my least favorite of their marketable songs in the three-part overly-simplistic Another Brick in the Wall. Contrast Another Brick in the Wall to Have A Cigar, and you can see a band that went from brilliantly complex lyrics to simple metaphors. The album has so much filler, but the gems hidden within more than make up for it. The 2nd half of the album, when all the Brick in the Wall simplistic-ness is over, is truly special.
It starts off with Hey You, adding in Nobody Home, a haunting short song, Comfortably Numb, a true classic in rock, to Run Like Hell, a live favorite, to Waiting for the Worms. All of the songs on that second half had such singular brilliance in their climaxes, perfect moments etching them in my mind. If they cut out so much of the filler (The Thin Ice, Young Lust, Don't Leave Me Now, Vera, Stop, etc.) this would be well higher up the list. In a way, it was such a marked departure from Animals, with the longest song checking in at 6:23, and most being under 3:00. But it also was the beginning of the end of the band, being a creation mostly from Roger Waters mind. He was a brilliant songwriter and artist, but this was working a bit too hard. That all said, let's shout out Comfortably Numb, the best song Floyd ever released. I would still argue that Echoes is a better musical piece, but Comfortably Numb is more digestible and more well crafted. The guitar solo was just so well done. It isn't particularly tough, but so well placed and so well portrayed. Floyd was always a complex mesh of instruments and minds and they took it a step further with making keyboards a central part of their ouvre, but for once they relaxed all that stuff and just released a pure guitar rock classic, and Gilmour knocked it out of the park. Comfortably Numb and the handful of other great songs locks in The Walls place as a true classic - and ironically I may be underrating it by putting it here.
Tier 1 - The Just Barely Classics
11.) 1984
Someone has to be last. Let's start by saying this album is better than like 90% of the hard rock/hair metal/heavy metal stuff released in the 80's, but it was Van Halen starting to turn a new direction. The Sammy Era was first seen here, with a bevy of synth-heavy tracks in Jump, Top Jimmy, and I'll Wait. The album as a whole just felt a bit emptier than the others, showing the candle running empty on the Dave and Eddie era. It did have its fair share of classics with Hot For Teacher, featuring perfect symbiosis with the Brothers, and Panama, which is about as perfectly made a rock song as possible. But that doesn't make up for just a slew of good but not great tracks. Eddie is still great, but Alex was starting to experiment with drum kits, and the band was starting to experiment with minimalizing Michael Anthony's bass.
In the end, I don't really blame Van Halen for going in this direction - and it was a direction in all honesty much better suited for Sammy Hagar. Eddie Van Halen probably, in an honest moment, considers himself a musician more than just a guitarist. He was an accomplished, award-winning pianist, and this was an opportunity to let his musical creativity loose. Of course, I don't think he realized what blowback his turn to the ivories would create, but given Eddie's character, I don't think he cared too much. 1984 was a key moment for the band. Had they not had to go up against Thriller, this would have been their first #1 album. It ended up being their 2nd Diamond (10MM copies sold) album, but it was a true bridge between the Dave and Sammy eras - for better and for worse.
10.) Animals
There are people that swear by this album, but I am definitely not one of them. This was Floyd at its most self-pleasuring. This was them swollen up with largesse and an inflated sense of what made them great. They took their legacy strengths and turned the dial up a bit too far. The three keynote songs of Sheep, Pigs and Dogs are all just, simply, way too long. They all had similar structures, with a good first 3-4 minutes and an even better last 2-3 minutes when the main theme hits back again. It is that overstuffed middle that ultimately hurts the album in my eyes. As always, the melodies and the musicality of the pieces are great, but just a bit too long and, at times, prodding.
This was the first album created where there were significant splinters present within the band. Roger Waters, as was normal, wrote most of it, but David Gilmour took center stage for the truly plodding Dogs, which was 17 minutes, 13 of which mostly filler in between verses. This was a common recipe for so many of Floyd's classic songs (Echoes, Shine On, etc.), but this time they mostly struck out. Still, what helps the album still be a classic is how vibrant and pointed those beginning and ending verses were, even if the 6-10 minutes inbetween filled with vamping and strumming get a tad too laborious.
Tier 2 - The Unrankable Classic
9.) Meddle
It is so hard to rank Meddle. On the one hand, it included maybe the best epic song Floyd (and maybe any rock band) ever created, in the 23:32 long epic Echoes. It also had a really nice instrumental in One of These Days to lead it off. The rest of the album? Purely take it or leave it for me. But it is hard to deny just how good Echoes was. The song is longer than an episode of Seinfield. It is twice as long as the longest Metallica song. It was a true epic, and it was perfect. Again, One of These Days was a great opener. The rest of the songs were mostly forgettable (save for the brief appearance of 'You'll Never Walk Alone' as the coda for Fearless). But Echoes is where this album starts, ends and makes it mark.
Ironically, Echoes is a longer version of the songs in Animals, with verses at the start and end with a long, extended, instrumental in the middle. But this one was just done better. It is supposedly a tale of the creation of the world, but even if you don't see what they did, the song works so well. Starting off with sonar pings, then sounds of a cave, expanding quickly to that rhapsodic, windy melody. Echoes had a truly perfect hook - so perfect that Roger Waters will claim, to this day, that Andrew Lloyd Webber stole it for The Phantom of the Opera (admittedly, a stretch). The middle is so haunting, so beautiful. It flies by, and then slowly builds to the final 3-4 minute climax. The song itself took up the entire Side B of the album, and it was as perfect a half-album can be.
Tier 3 - The Start of the True Classics
8.) Diver Down
It's easy to mock Diver Down, as many have. It was a rushed album that was created when the creative juices were running way empty in the Van Halen brain trust after years of touring, recording and partying. Yes, they put four covers on the album among their 8 normal tracks. They added in four instrumentals as well, which were mostly just cases of the Van Halen bros fucking around. But let's not beat around the bush - part of the reason Van Halen was so great was that they were the best cover band ever. They may be the only band (save for ones that ripped off constantly without creditation like Zep) that had cover songs that in many ways become more popular and recognizable than the original. This album had one of those in Pretty Woman, plus a brilliant cover of Dancing in the Street, a song so musically packed it is hard to believe it is just four people. Finally, the best cover may have been Big Bad Bill. Firstly, it is hard to count this as a true cover since it is a fairly unknown song from the 20's. Secondly, it allowed VH to record a song with Jan Van Halen (the Dad) to play clarinet so, so beautifully. But what really makes this album be great, is the original songs.
What defined Van Halen was a perfect intersection between brilliant musicality and fun. There was no more fun band than Van Halen, and no record more fun than Diver Down, and the four original songs all oozed fun. Little Guitars is probably the most famous, an ebullient Eddie rocking a mini-guitar as Dave sings about Senoritas. But don't sleep on Hang 'Em High or The Full Bug, both quick, rampant songs. The four instrumentals may have been overkill, but they did include one classic Eddie solo in Cathedral, a perfectly played ditty with Eddie seamlessly turning his guitar into an organ by simply rotating the volume knob up and down. That was pure Eddie magic. Simple, effective, and ingenious. Diver Down will always be slammed as a rushed job, but hidden behind covers and instrumentals was a band that was as fun as ever.
7.) Van Halen II
Van Halen's second album wasn't as brilliant as their debut (deservedly way up this list), but mostly because these were all old songs and they used their best stuff the first time around. Van Halen used mostly old demo tapes for these songs and while they picked their best stuff for their premier, the prodigious talent of the band still left a lot for the second album. However, a quick shout-out to one of the few songs that was not from an old demo, Dance the Night Away. This is probably not my favorite Van Halen song, but it is the most perfect one. It is such a great, perfect rock song. It was their first true radio hit, and it launched Van Halen as a band that could appeal to the musicians and the general population. I played that song way too many times on loop when I was young. I learned how to play it on the guitar (spoiler alert: it's pretty easy, specifically because Eddie, for once, decided not to include a solo). The rest of the album only adds to its strength.
You can say Van Halen left their demo-day B sides for VHII, but those were some damn good B sides. Somebody Get Me a Doctor, Bottoms Up, Light Up the Sky and DOA are prefect, classic, VH rockers, with strong melodies, great harmonies, and brilliance from Eddie. My favorite underrated VH song may just be Women in Love with starts out with Eddie making sounds on the guitar that only Eddie could really make in those days. The album showcased each member of the band, with Alex getting to show his stuff on the intro to Outta Love Again. Of course Eddie got in a perfect solo, acoustic-ing it up for Spanish Fly, which, in a way, was a more surprising display of brilliance than was Eruption. The songs weren't as perfect as those on VH1, but for a follow-up album it was special. Dance the Night Away cemented them as a great bad. Spanish Fly cemented Eddie as a God. The album itself cemented VH as a band for the history books.
6.) The Wall
This was the album where Pink Floyd took the 'Concept Album' idea a bit too far, as a handful of truly brilliant songs were a bit muddled by a dozen or so unneccessary ones. Up until this point Floyd was defined by their haste in adding tracks to their albums. For once they went the other way and I'm not at all sure it worked. The album included my favorite Floyd song ever in Comfortably Numb, but also my least favorite of their marketable songs in the three-part overly-simplistic Another Brick in the Wall. Contrast Another Brick in the Wall to Have A Cigar, and you can see a band that went from brilliantly complex lyrics to simple metaphors. The album has so much filler, but the gems hidden within more than make up for it. The 2nd half of the album, when all the Brick in the Wall simplistic-ness is over, is truly special.
It starts off with Hey You, adding in Nobody Home, a haunting short song, Comfortably Numb, a true classic in rock, to Run Like Hell, a live favorite, to Waiting for the Worms. All of the songs on that second half had such singular brilliance in their climaxes, perfect moments etching them in my mind. If they cut out so much of the filler (The Thin Ice, Young Lust, Don't Leave Me Now, Vera, Stop, etc.) this would be well higher up the list. In a way, it was such a marked departure from Animals, with the longest song checking in at 6:23, and most being under 3:00. But it also was the beginning of the end of the band, being a creation mostly from Roger Waters mind. He was a brilliant songwriter and artist, but this was working a bit too hard. That all said, let's shout out Comfortably Numb, the best song Floyd ever released. I would still argue that Echoes is a better musical piece, but Comfortably Numb is more digestible and more well crafted. The guitar solo was just so well done. It isn't particularly tough, but so well placed and so well portrayed. Floyd was always a complex mesh of instruments and minds and they took it a step further with making keyboards a central part of their ouvre, but for once they relaxed all that stuff and just released a pure guitar rock classic, and Gilmour knocked it out of the park. Comfortably Numb and the handful of other great songs locks in The Walls place as a true classic - and ironically I may be underrating it by putting it here.
