Wow. You really know your VH. When I think back, I really like the first 3 albums, especially the first - a real rock declaration! Looking back at the later VH albums, and the '80's in general, too many groups went MOR to the point of inanity - ZZTop took that that to its apogee when they turned their cool Tres Hombres Texas blues into arena robot rock.
thanks.
the thing with van halen and hagar is this: Sammy always did ballady songs when he was a solo artist, not so much cause he was using them to just sell records he just did them. Ed was really into keyboards when sammy joined. Dave didn't really dig the keyboard stuff and Sammy didn't have a problem with them. Warner bros really jumped on the keyboard orientated stuff and it was huge at the time. Why Can't this be love, Dreams, Jump, I'll Wait, Love Walks in, When it's love and the rest were all huge songs and sold tons of records for the band. If you notice as time went on Ed kinda moved away from the keyboards-FUCK only had one song (even though 2 more were recorded for the record-The Wish and....I think the name of the other one was You never know but i could be wrong)...anyway I think if Dave would have let Ed play keys earlier it would have been more spread out and not so concentrated in the Sammy years.
the story goes that ed started on piano, he was so good he won like 3 state titles in cali and he couldn't read a note of music, he just watched his instructors hands and did what he did.
threre are tons of good rockin songs from the hagar years but that era isn't really associated with those by the general public, listen to a song like judgement day or 5150...those are just great songs.