40 Years Ago Today, Van Halen's 5150 Went Double Platinum

There’s always a bit of overlap at the beginning and end of a decade. When people think of disco they think of 1970s (and vice versa), but some of disco’s biggest hits like Diana Ross’s “I’m Coming Out”, Kool & the Gang’s “Get Down On It” and Lipps Inc’s “Funkytown” were all released in the early 1980s. “It’s Raining Men” by the Weather Girls was released in 1982.

Prior to the release of 1984, most of Van Halen’s hits — “Dance the Night Away”, “Runnin’ with the Devil”, “You Really Got Me”, and “Ain’t Talkin’ ’bout Love” were all released in the 1970s. Even on 1984 we have straight-forward rockers like “Panama” and “Hot For Teacher”, but that summer the song that was blasting from every radio was “Jump” a song that confusingly put Eddit Van Halen — every guitar-playing kid’s idol — on keyboards. Fortunately, David Lee Roth loved this new sound the band had stumbled upon. Just kidding, he quit the band and sent the Van Halen brothers in search of a new lead singer which they ultimately found in the Red Rocker, Sammy Hagar.

Van Halen’s 7th album, 5150, was the first with Hagar on vocals and despite a few rockers like the album’s opener (“Good Enough”), songs like “Why Can’t This Be Love”, “Love Walks In”, and the seemingly inescapable “Dreams” took over rado stations and, perhaps more importantly in the mid-80s, MTV. Radio stations sold albums to kids in rock markets; MTV not only sold them to kids like me in the Midwest, but told radio stations what to play. Like it or not, the “Van Hagar” era had arrived.

I, for one, did not like it. Eddie Van Halen’s solo, Eruption, was the gold standard for garage guitarists when I was a kid. As the solo ends, the album transitions into the stripped down yet fat chords from “You Really Got Me”. That was my Van Halen.

There’s an old saying that goes like this: "money talks”. Van Halen’s 5150 was released in March of 1986. The album shot to the top of the Billboard 200 in less than a month, and on this date 40 years ago the album went double platinum approximately two months after its release.

It’s a good thing for Van Halen that their new songs were so popular because Sammy Hagar was either unwilling or unable to perform songs from the David Lee Roth era. This essentually meant the band was limited to playing songs from 5150 along with a few Hagar solo hits thrown in.

Sammy Hagar would go on to record four albums with the band before the bromance between Eddie and Sammy ended acrimoniously. Van Halen failed to find success with their third lead singer, Gary Cherone (Extreme) and never really recovered. The divide between the Van Halen brothers and their former bandmates was intense. Bassist Michael Anthony paired up with Sammy Hagar and the two perform together today. Eddie Van Halen passed away from cancer in 2020 and just as it seemed like everyone was willing to walk away gracefully, Alex Van Halen’s memoir Brothers (2024) re-stirred the pot by both taking jabs at Roth and, almost comically spitefully, ending before Sammy joins the band.

I’m not a die hard Van Halen fan, no more than any other kid who had a guitar and lived through the 1980s. For kids like me, you can draw a line in the sand between Van Halen’s 1984 and 5150. Classic rock was out, and keyboards were in.