Everything Old Is New Again: Van Halen’s “Tattoo” Video Is No “Jump”

Everything Old Is New Again: Van Halen’s “Tattoo” Video Is No “Jump”

Very recently, the music world has been getting excited about a new album and tour from the reformed Van Halen. Their original lead singer, that self-proclaimed Toastmaster General of the Immoral Majority known as David Lee Roth, rejoined in the band in 2007, resulting in a major tour that featured greatest hits and fan favorites. That tour also introduced the newest Van Halen member, Eddie’s bassist son Wolfgang, replacing Michael Anthony, whose apparent associations with Team Sammy may have hastened his walking papers, but that’s neither here nor there. This “three parts original, one part inevitable” entity is a strangely reconstituted Van Halen, whose new album A Different Kind of Truth will be released on February 7th.

Aside from fan footage of their performance of a small gig at Cafe Wha? in New York, VH fans have been lapping up the tidbit video crumbs the band has been dropping on the path to their release. Online clips include couple of faceless yet memorable rap sessions about Eddie’s car and wet t-shirt contests, as well as a tour announcement that played hits over black and white footage that looked like rehearsals. What we would soon learn was that this footage was actually for “Tattoo”, the new single and video, now online and marking the first time David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen have appeared in a music video since the legendary trilogy that solidified the band’s GOLDEN AGE OF MUSIC VIDEO legacy: “Jump”, “Panama”, and “Hot For Teacher”.

So let’s take a look at two Van Halen videos, both with the same onstage setting, but different styles and consequences: The 1984-era “Jump” and the most recent “Tattoo”.

In 1983, the band assembled to shoot “Jump” on a simple soundstage. This cheap but well-directed video was our first really good look at these four guys. Previous attempts at music videos were either live arena footage or the little-seen “(Oh) Pretty Woman”. This was their do-or-die moment, and the Van Halen that showed up for “Jump” was a road-tested, dues-paid, four-on-the-floor Formula One racecar of rock and roll. We met the genius and the ringmaster, and we were sold. The thousand nights these guys had spent perfecting a stage show had paid off, and it translated onscreen. It was if they said, “This video is just us on stage, and that, my friend, is all it will take to get you on board. Watch this.”

So what did we get? Diamond Dave’s sexuality covered in spandex and L.A. costume tatters, doing the high kicks and the come-hither stare-downs. Eddie’s incomparable guitar with signature tapping flair, complemented by the new addition of upfront synth licks. Headbanded “Animal” Alex pounding out the unmistakable Van Halen double-drumbeat on his massive kit, and Michael Anthony, the bulldog bassist laying down the heavy bottom and the top-tier vocal high notes. Not only did the camera love them, we immediately understood that these were really good musicians having fun; let’s face it, hard rock videos didn’t have a lot of smiling before Van Halen. Their love of performing was apparently infectious, because not only did it launch Van Halen into the stratosphere, it set the tone for hair metal for nearly a decade (ever seen a Bon Jovi video where he didn’t smile?). Although “Panama” served as a more faithful declaration of the band’s intention to conquer the world, and “Hot For Teacher” was a perfect fever dream of the horny and the bizarre, “Jump” was that first kiss in our love affair with Van Halen’s 1984-era music videos.

Van Halen has seen its share of drama and reshaping of sound and vision in the nearly 30 years since “Jump”. Around 20 music videos have come and gone, with smatterings of brilliance here and there. Videos for Hagar-era hits “Poundcake” and “Finish What You Started” still stand up well. The award-winning “Right Now” video has always felt a little like one of those Patch Adams/Bicentennial Man-era Robin Williams movies where he’s saving us all. Between that and a Crystal Pepsi commercial, would we ever seen Van Halen having fun again?

Cut to 2012, with the recently released video for “Tattoo”. The similarities to “Jump” may be intentional (band on stage goofing around), but this video was produced so poorly, one wonders if Eddie is following his hire-my-family instincts and had some direlict cousin-in-law direct and edit this. Shot entirely in black and white, we see Dave, Eddie, Wolfie and Alex performing for no one amongst confetti streamers and balloons. Dave can’t get through a verse without forgetting the words, and doesn’t engage the viewer in grand “Dave TV” style. Eddie looks like he’s put on weight since 2007 – no sin, but when you go shirtless much of the tour, someone’s going to notice a change. Alex’s hair is blown back and stiff like a girl from the Trojan Vibrations commercial. Wolfie doesn’t really break out in this like maybe he should — in fact, he barely feels present. Sure, the band looks pleasant enough, but there’s none of the earnestness that endeared audiences long ago. If we’ve learned anything from THE GOLDEN AGE OF MUSIC VIDEO, it’s that liabilities can become assets, that problematic challenges can become the conduit to legendary creative moments. This video just doesn’t cut the mustard. Frankly, the director and editor should be taken out back and shot.

A band of this magnitude should have, at the very least, employed a director who keeps the subjects in focus, shoots the solo with the reverence Eddie deserves, and knows how to use David Lee Roth as an asset and not a liability. Trying to save the video by running footage backwards is freshman-year film school nonsense. It works in “Jump” for a side-angle shot of Dave’s full flip because it’s intentional. Here, it just looks like an afterthought to make it less boring. For pete’s sake, can they at least not use the shots that show the other camera operators? I mean, is this really the band that spotlighted Eddie’s “Hot For Teacher” solo with that great shot of him walking down a long table in a school library with papers flying? is it the band that gave us home movies of David Lee Roth in a towel being hauled away by cops in “Panama”? In the pantheon of Van Halen’s video library, this clip stands as the laziest, disappointing, and outright most unprofessional video they’ve ever handed over. It’s as if Eddie said, “I’m not really into making videos anymore. Just shoot something, but I don’t care what it looks like.” Sorry, but at the end of the day, fans don’t care what the restrictions were. This is a Van Halen video, the first with Roth since the 1980s, and there’s a standard to maintain.

Some fans agree that this video is pretty pathetic, to the point that some are remixing the videos with other footage to create something new. That should have been the band’s plan from the start, rather than putting out this sub-par video. Next time, Van Halen should have a contest where fans edit together the next video from footage the band provides, a la Ozzy’s “I Don’t Wanna Stop”, if they can’t find it in themselves to give fans a real Van Halen-level video.

Personally, I think they should hire Pete Angelus again. Having directed “Jump,” “Panama,” and “Hot for Teacher”, as well as partnering with Diamond Dave for “California Girls”, “Just a Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody” and the Picasso Brothers’ clips, he’s obviously a valuable creative force who gets it (Pete followed David Lee Roth out of Van Halen, and then parted ways with Roth when Pete began managing the Black Crowes full time).

Regardless, “Jump” wins where “Tattoo” loses — in the execution of bringing a band’s onstage personality to life. Let’s hope the Café Wha? footage and the recently-released “You Really Got Me” acoustic clip are the Different Kind of Truth visuals that stand the test of time. A legendary band with a music video legacy such as theirs can do so much better than “Tattoo”.