Van Halen - 1984 [180G/ Remastered]

2015 Remastered Edition Cut Straight from the Quarter-Inch Tapes by Chris Bellman

Van Halen reinvented the sound of hard rock in 1978 with their influential and wildly successful eponymous debut album and then achieved even greater success six years later with 1984. Both albums would define a generation while selling more than 10 million copies each in the U.S. alone to earn diamond-certification from the RIAA. The band recently went back to the original analog tapes and remastered both of these landmark albums – Van Halen and 1984 – which are are now set for release in March 2015 through Warner Bros. Records. 

Considered one of the greatest debut albums in rock history, Van Halen took the music world by storm in 1978 with an 11-song manifesto that features some of rock radio’s most played songs of all time and scorching concert staples like “Runnin’ With The Devil,” “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love,” “Jamie’s Cryin’,” the band’s signature cover of The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me,” and Eddie Van Halen’s finger-tapping tour de force, “Eruption.” Six years and five albums later, Van Halen had become one of the biggest bands in world around the release of 1984, which includes a number of the band’s most legendary songs such as the #1 hit, “Jump,” “Panama,” and “Hot For Teacher.”

Mastering engineer Chris Bellman, who remastered the original albums for Bernie Grundman Studios, Hollywood, CA, was enlisted for these new versions. In order to produce the original sound the band intended, Bellman cut straight from the quarter-inch tapes for these new 180-gram vinyl versions. Newly mastered versions of Diver Down, Women and Children First, Van Halen II and Fair Warning will also be available soon.