During the band’s existence, Van Halen recorded 12 studio albums and Eddie Van Halen was undoubtedly the driving force behind the band. He changed the course of guitar playing in the late 1970s and early 1980s, inspiring a whole new generation of musicians to emulate his technique.
Many Van Halen songs remain fan favorites and continue to receive significant airplay on Rock radio stations and streaming services. However, there are also many underrated tracks that are less familiar to the general public and Eddie once mentioned two of them.
The 2 underrated songs Eddie Van Halen said he liked
The two underrated Van Halen songs that Eddie revealed that were some of his favorites were “Cathedral” and “Secrets”. They both are from the 1982 album “Diver Down”. “I like everything on it (‘Diver Down’). I like certain parts, let’s say, I like each song in a different way. (…) The reason I said I like ‘Secrets’ as my favorite, and ‘Cathedral’, because I mean, ‘Cathedral’, I’ve been doing for over a year and I wanted to put it on the record. Ok, what I’m about to tell you, don’t print, please, it’s just that Dave (Lee Roth) said ‘no more f*cking guitar solos’, you know.”
“He’s on an ego trip, he’s always been, whatever and if you print this I’m gonna come up to your house and blow your ass away. You know, he just said ‘man, no more guitar solos’ (but) Ted (Templeman) didn’t know the way Dave felt. So one day when Dave wasn’t there I said: ‘Ted, what you think of that?’ I played him ‘Little Guitars’, the intro, the Flamenco sounding thing and ‘Cathedral’ (Instrumental). He’s going ‘Oh my God, you should have showed me that earlier’. I explained to him, that Dave just said ‘f*ck the guitar hero shit’, you know, over a band. So Ted just said, you know ‘f*ck Dave’. So we put it on anyway”.
He continued:
“(On Cathedral) I’m using like a 61 Stratocaster with just a volume knob, (going) on, off, on, off, on, off. I’m using an echo and a chorus. (The violin sound) is the same type of echo setting that I used in the minimoog for ‘Dancing in the Streets’. I set the echo in a way where it sound like a sequencer. (It sounds like a Catholic church organ), that’s why I call it ‘Cathedral’.”
“(I like the albums to have) things between songs, little segways, whatever. To keep you interested as opposed to one song, next song, next song, you know. Like say ‘Cathedral’, ‘Intruder, ‘Little Guitars’ intro, stuff like that. Making the album flow from beginning to end where you can listen to from beginning to end without being bored,” Eddie Van Halen said in an interview with Jas Obrecht, for Guitar Player Magazine in 1982 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
Van Halen’s fifth studio album, “Diver Down”, bothered Eddie a bit because it included too many cover songs. It was something the label pushed the band to do since their previous covers had been successful, such as “You Really Got Me.” That led the band to cover another Kinks song on that record, “Where Have All the Good Times Gone,” as well as “(Oh) Pretty Woman” by Roy Orbison, “Dancing in the Street” by Martha and the Vandellas, and “Happy Trails” by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.
Eddie said “Cathedral” was “semi-improvised”
In a 1982 magazine interview made available by Greg Renoff, Eddie said that the track was semi-improvised. He also agreed with the interviewer, who said it sound like something he picked up when he studied music at the Pasadena City College with Dr. Fisher. “It’s possible”, the guitarist said, then explaining how he got the sound for the track.
“It does sound kind of weird. I’m just using the volume knob on the guitar with an echo set at slow repeat. It was all just hammers with the left hand and using the volume knob. For that kind of stuff I need the cheap volume pots where it all happens between 8 and 10. (The song) was semi-improvised. I don’t always do exactly the same thing but it always goes through the same changes,” Eddie Van Halen said.
As for “Secrets”, Eddie said, as pointed out by VHND, that he used a “Gibson doubleneck 12-string. It’s the model Jimmy Page uses and played with a flatpick. The solo in ‘Secrets’ was a first take. I kind of laid back and it fit the song,” he said.
“Diver Down” was successful especially in the United States, peaking at number 3 on the Billboard 200 charts. Curiously, Eddie and Alex’s father Jan Van Halen did a cameo in the song “Big Bad Bill”. He played the clarinet, one of the instruments he played before in his career as a musician.