In a number of Van Halen tunes there's places where the lyrics don't make exact sense or you can't quite decipher what's being said. And that comes from trying to imitate old blues records where you couldn't get anything but the end of the sentence, that's how you speak blues, you go "Bopedy bop blah, baby, all night long." You couldn't quite make it out. And also if you forget the words, you don't stop singing, you just knid of approximate syllables or a syllable that you can remember, or a consonant. So even though you may have well memorized the lyrics, when you go in to sing, when you get to a certain part of a phrase, you might forget something, so you just kind of mush-mouth it, and press on. Nowadays you would go back and fix that. Everybody would go back and fix that.
That was not to be fixed. So, you hear a lyric like, "Yuh-duh lodda people that are looking for a moonbeam." I'm not even sure what the original lyric was. It makes perfect sense to [i]me[/i]. Something about people and a moonbeam. Depending on what you had for breakfast, you're going to come up with a different interpretation of it.
Some of this is meant to be rhythmic, sometimes it was attitide. which revved up so hard that it just defies lyrics, no certain string of words can approximate those single syllables. There are certain things that shouldn't have too much meaning, like Saturday night. Don't overload it, you know. If your message is that important, use Western Union. God forbid you're singing to somebody who doesn't speak your English, the King's English.
In the song "Everybody Wants Some," I think the original lyric was, "I've seen a lot of people just lookin' for a moonbeam." That doesn't sizzle and snap, crackle and pop for you like going, "Sheepa lotta peepah dabba looka foh a moonbeam," and it means so much more, and you're adding a little editorial. You're throwing in an opinion -- so critically important in the first verse. Even more so in the second.
Dave's own words, from 'Crazy from the Heat':
In a number of Van Halen tunes there's places where the lyrics don't make exact sense or you can't quite decipher what's being said. And that comes from trying to imitate old blues records where you couldn't get anything but the end of the sentence, that's how you speak blues, you go "Bopedy bop blah, baby, all night long." You couldn't quite make it out. And also if you forget the words, you don't stop singing, you just knid of approximate syllables or a syllable that you can remember, or a consonant. So even though you may have well memorized the lyrics, when you go in to sing, when you get to a certain part of a phrase, you might forget something, so you just kind of mush-mouth it, and press on. Nowadays you would go back and fix that. Everybody would go back and fix that.
That was not to be fixed. So, you hear a lyric like, "Yuh-duh lodda people that are looking for a moonbeam." I'm not even sure what the original lyric was. It makes perfect sense to [i]me[/i]. Something about people and a moonbeam. Depending on what you had for breakfast, you're going to come up with a different interpretation of it.
Some of this is meant to be rhythmic, sometimes it was attitide. which revved up so hard that it just defies lyrics, no certain string of words can approximate those single syllables. There are certain things that shouldn't have too much meaning, like Saturday night. Don't overload it, you know. If your message is that important, use Western Union. God forbid you're singing to somebody who doesn't speak your English, the King's English.
In the song "Everybody Wants Some," I think the original lyric was, "I've seen a lot of people just lookin' for a moonbeam." That doesn't sizzle and snap, crackle and pop for you like going, "Sheepa lotta peepah dabba looka foh a moonbeam," and it means so much more, and you're adding a little editorial. You're throwing in an opinion -- so critically important in the first verse. Even more so in the second.