Hell yeah man. For me it was 1984, Hysteria and Appetite for Destruction.
Ya'll are children.
My uncle gave me three albums to start my descent when he left for college. I was eight or nine at the time.
Stones 'Let it Bleed', Paul Revere and the Raiders 'Just Like Us', Beatles 'Hard Day's Night'
On my own I quickly loaded up Led Zeppelin 1 and 2, Jimi Hendrix, Sabbath and it was all over.
Rock and roll was here to stay.
Van Halen was part of it for me. A big part. If there was a soundtrack to my life, there would be a lot of Van Halen (and even the Roth solo work) on it. Back in about 1982-ish I was riding shotgun in my friend's beige Cutlass Supreme with a girl in my lap, two girls and another guy in the back seat and several boxes full of fireworks scattered around us. We were dropping bottle rockets (the fat ass ones) into capped PVC pipes and shooting them out the windows. With Van Halen Diver Down jammed in the 8-track and blaring over the Blaupunkts we'd installed in the back window and under the front seats, I took dropped a rocket, climbed out the window, sat on the frame and aimed over the roof of the car. Just as the rocket spewed flame and began to roar out of the PVC tube I saw, too late, it was a cop. Hit his window and in a burst of perfect timing exploded just as it bounced off. That ended with one of the few times I've had a gun drawn on me. Face down at the car wash with Deputy Doofus drawn down on us and screaming.
Soundtrack moment.
I really regret that I didn't get to see them in their prime. It just never worked out. Other than the Stones (too old), Beatles (broken up), Pink Floyd (never had the chance), ELO (don't know why) and Fleetwood Mac (just didn't) I've seen pretty much every other band that ever made an impact on me (including Gap Band and some other funk acts). I saw Van Halen, but it was the over-the-hill version and Roth was a rickety shell of his former self.
It hurt my soul when I found out Eddie checked out.
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