Vintage Van Halen Soundboard Recording Unearthed

Check out Van Halen covering The Kinks "All Day and All of the Night.” This is a vintage soundboard recording. Very cool and all the way from 1976. A total blast from the past!

Listen to #VanHalen cover The Kinks! NEW SOUNDBOARD recording! http://t.co/ue1T2DPeY8 pic.twitter.com/Fyb80MWYH9

— Van Halen News Desk (@VanHalenNews) September 10, 2015

Comments

[Metalboy!]

I have a boot CD of the same show but this is a much better recording. No wonder these guys made it so big not long after this. What a band! Particularly, the revolutionary lead guitar and sterling back up vocals!

[Ace Steele]

There's some great old bootleg boardmix stuff of Van Halen from the club daze...

I was lucky enough to see them in the bars numerous times. Including the night Eddie got his ass handed to him by the guitarist in the opening band, a kid named Randy Rhoads from the band Quiet Riot. Also saw VH play 1/2 cover tunes & 1/2 originals opening for UFO w/ Micheal Schenker at Norwalk's Golden West Ballroom. One of the best boots is just as Warner Bros. picked them up , they played at hometown venue, the Pasadena Civic Center. Eddie's solo, "Eruption was off the hook that night... better than the record.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0Kgkfc96qY

*trivia bit... when Van Halen tried to graduate from playing cover tunes at Gazzarri's, to playing just originals, they couldn't get their foot in the door at the Starwood. They got turned down. Only after Hollywood legend Rodney Bingenheimer spoke to the Starwood's David Forest, were they booked as an opening act. Funny enough, they weren't a big drawing act ever, at the Starwood.

[Shawn]

Ace thanks for the insight! Really enjoy hearing your input. Its great to hear it from someone who was there and lived it. Saw your photobucket the other day. WOW!

[Bob]

OH yeah, much better sound quality than the boot that's been circulating for years. There are actually a pretty decent amount of soundboard recordings of VH from their club days. It's interesting though that, once they got famous, the number of soundboard recordings dropped way off.

[Metalboy!]

Yeah, Ace... Reiterating Shawns sentiments, we are so lucky to have you on here, taking names and taking numbers!

[Gary]

Jesus H. Christ he abuses the whammy bar during that link you posted Ace. Lol. Floyd Rose ought to donate half his profits to EVH for bringing that kind of histrionics to the masses and inspiring dive bombers everywhere. As for Randy,I always said he was THE most talented dude to come out of LA during those decades (mid to late 70's & early 80's) ,bar none. He had so much feel and precision to go with his superior technical abilities.EVH is definitely on par, but for my personal tastes,it was a Randy every time,as Ed is more "sloppy" in a live setting....

[Ace Steele]

Thanks for all the comments! Gary... EVH didn't have a Floyd yet... that was a stock Fender trem, & I'm trying to recall if he had a brass nut at the time.... But you & MB & Shawn all hit on the distinct differences between Rhoads & VanHalen.

Randy was VERY schooled & knew everything about his playing & such, where VH was much more scattershot. One of the "challenges" in lessons w/ Randy, was... you'd sit face to face, & in rapid fire, you'd point at a string & fret position, and he could very quickly tell you, "That's a D-flat, That's an F sharp, Thats a C...etc." This was his way of teaching you to know every note on every string on your fretboard. He was GREAT at it... Me? not so much... But with time, I, & everyone else he taught, became much better & more knowledgable about the instrument. Eddie knew patterns... a finger pattern, or a scale pattern, and he'd just move them around really, really fast! And once he pick up the tapping on the fretboard with the right hand, (he "borrowed" that from Lynyrd Skynyrd's Ed King) that became "his thing".

Also, EVH was more akin to an auto mechanic.. He'd get inside a guitar & tinker around, hotrodding 'em... putting a humbucker in a Fender strat, etc... sticking a screwdriver in the back springs, whammy abuse, anything to get a weird sound.... While Randy didn't mess with his guitars much... (his famed Alpine White Les Paul was stock, original pickups, etc) Only the tuning keys & brass toggle plate were changed... and that was before he got it. Later on, when Jackson was making his original "Concorde" & it's black followup, Randy would step out of the woodshop when it was being cut... He didn't want to know how it was done.. & didn't want to see how... And once they were finished, it took him a while to play them... it was like he was shy around them, he wanted the new guitars "personality" to introduce itself to him, as he warmed to them, they got played more... as he acquaited himself with them.

[Metalboy!]

Priceless, Ace... Just PRICELESS!

Can't wait for that book!

[Dj]

Everybody and their cousin has covered this song! But this is still really amazing to hear, I wish I was around LA back then to see Van Halen playing in clubs. This is a phenomenal cover, and you can tell they definitely deserved to make it big time. Really cool this came up.

On another note....Damn Ace you've seen some really amazing shows..haha.

[Him]

Another blast from the past, Ace. Thanks as always for sharing.