Van Halen's Dreams

I don't exactly remember how it went down, but when I heard about Eddie Van Halen's passing, I had to stop and take a beat. This wasn't one of those moments where you feel the end of an era, as what many probably felt with the recent passing of Justice Ginsburg. But for myself, and I imagine many people my age or a decade older with some interest in heavy epic guitar music, this was a personal loss.

Which was funny, because I wasn't particluarly a big fan of Eddie Van Halen – or the band Van Halen, for that matter – what with the band being formed way before I was born. And throughout my formative musical years, I wasn't exposed to their music very much. When I was younger, it was The Beatles, The Shadows, or The Ventures, or The Brothers Four courtesy of my dad, and everything else we had on tape. 

This continued on to my teenage years, where I swapped out Disney albums for the Eraserheads and heavier stuff. And when I started playing in an amateur band with a bunch of friends, more technical influences started making their way towards my playlist. This was back when Napster / Limewire was a thing, and you actually had to store your songs on your computer – you can just imagine how long my list was, and how much space it occupied in my old computer's drive.

At around this time, I was already familiar with what is perhaps the most popular of Van Halen's songs. This would be Jump, which sounded like a cheesy anthem of sorts, and sounded like the epitome of what the 80s sounded like (I would discover this much later). I appreciated the melody of both the guitars and the keys, but being a teenager, I was a much bigger fan of what I considered then to be guitar acrobatics. But the song itself had no edge to it, and so I didn't explore the band much further. 

And then I went on to become a bass player, so the musicality of Eddie's guitar faded into the background of my subconscious. Hey, I wasn't going to become a jack of all trades. 

In 2007, I lived on my own for the first time, and also had my own ISP at the same time. That gave me some freedom to expand my musical horizons, and for some reason or another, I started looking into Van Halen. And that was where I discovered Panama, which to this day remains the Van Halen song for me. It had everything! The guitars were perfect. There was plenty of crunch, and Eddie had such a bright, musical tone that made for the perfect pinch harmonics. This mattered more to me than his tapping and brilliant use of the tremolo. 

And that bridge! Every time I listen to that bridge, I can picture myself in the middle of an especially hot portion of Interstate 49, nothing but road and emptiness around me, the horizon shimmering in the heat. 

That was where I realized what I mentioned earlier – that while they certainly didn't originate it, Van Halen was arguably the definitive sound of 80s rock music. There was heavy use of synthesizers, guitars with bright tones and soaring highs, and something that made you think of hair, for some reason. They share a lot of similarities with other bands during that decade, from Michael Jackson (Billie Jean) to Def Leppard (Pour Some Sugar on Me). And this was even evident in the many cartoons that came out at the time. Just check out the Transformers movie that came out in 1986. The Touch sounds just like a Van Halen song (it isn't).

Just the other day, I came across Fuseboxx's Abby Clutario performing a muted, almost prayerlike version of Van Halen's Dreams on the Chapman Stick. She chose to play the chorus portion, which reads thus:

So baby dry your eyes, save all

The tears you've cried

Oh that's what dreams are made of

Oh baby we belong in a world that must be strong

Oh that's what dreams are made of

And in the end on dreams we will depend

'Cause that's what love is made of

which, I think is absolutely beautiful. Especially with everything that's going on in the world today. We're currently stuck in this infinite covid-19 loop and we don't know if we're ever going to go back to the way things were, or if that's even going to be what normal looks like in the next three to five years. But the human capacity to dream is pretty neat, and it's what has sustained humanity through the many hurdles it's had to overcome throughout the centuries. And as Sammy Hagar's lyrics says, in the end, it's on these same dreams that we'll be depending on. 

It's cheesy, I know. And trite, especially considering how things are now. But I think that's exactly the point of the song, and the reason why Abby chose to cover that very specific bit in tribute to Eddie. Sometimes, the one thing that will help us to get past the issues we're facing is the cheesiest, least original of things. A cat on the internet. A cute picture of a dog. Or an uplifting song about the power of dreams. Give Eddie a listen below.