The Van Halen Story: The Early Years

Van Halen

Overview

Van Halen were arguably the most popular and influential American hard rock band of the late 1970s and '80s. Created from a mixed bag of hook-heavy tunes, monstrous guitar riffs, macho swagger and goofball humor, Van Halen boasted the most copied guitar hero of his era, tap-happy shreadmaster Eddie Van Halen, and the most flamboyant frontman in the history of American rock, David Lee Roth, and the result was a band who kept metal maniacs happy while topping the pop charts at the same time. The Van Halen Story: The Early Years is an unauthorized biographical documentary which looks at the band's rise to fame in the 1970s, and includes interviews with friends, fans and associates of the group, as well as archival interview clips with Eddie Van Halen and David Lee Roth.

Product Details

Release Date:	04/23/2021
UPC:	0760137473992
Original Release:	2003
Source:	Mvd Visual
Region Code:	A
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Stereo]
Language:	English
Time:	1:00:00
Sales rank:	21,477

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

J.J. Jackson	Narrator
Van Halen	Primary Artist,Actor,Actor
David Lee Roth	Actor
Louis Prima	Actor
Gene Simmons	Actor
Elvis Presley	Actor
Bob Dylan	Actor
Valerie Bertinelli	Actor
J.J. Jackson	Narrator
Shawn Allen Klaiber	Composer

Technical Credits

Mark McLaughlin

Eduardo Eguia Dibildox	Director
Dante J. Pugliese	Executive Producer
Mark McLaughlin	Screenwriter,Producer

Editorial Reviews

The Van Halen Story: The Early Years is a video biography that time lines the lives and formation of Pasadena's finest rock band as they graduate from playing backyard parties and Sunset Strip bars to headlining stadiums around the world. Assembled much like the skateboard documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, The VH Story uses rare photographs, some grainy Super-8 clips, and relies heavily on modern interviews with folks surrounding the band throughout the mid-1970s and 80s. Narrated by J.J. Jackson, the results are mildly interesting, but because this project was unauthorized by the band or Warner Bros., it suffers from the absence of Van Halen music, and it teases viewers with soundless live footage. Also disappointing are the short interviews with a bleary-eyed Eddie Van Halen and a sidetracked David Lee Roth, and only rough audio bytes are heard from Alex Van Halen and Michael Anthony. The embarrassing reality in an age of vault-clearing box sets and restored archival concert DVD's is that just a few music videos and merely two-and-a-half hours of songs exist commercially from the mythic David Lee Roth era. The Van Halen Story is worth investigating, but it's hardly what fans of the original lineup have always been clamoring for. ~ Craig Curtice