Diver Down

Van Halen's winning track record with cover songs can be traced back to its 1978 diamond-platinum debut. The ambitious approach, which shows off the band’s diversity, creativity, flair, and fun, takes precedence like never before on Diver Down. Featuring five covers, three of which became radio staples, the album sprung from the band’s desire to remain relevant while taking a breather after four massively successful records and their respective tours. More than four million copies later, suffice it to say Diver Down achieved its goal.

Sourced from the original analog tapes, pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing, and strictly limited to 7,500 numbered copies, Mobile Fidelity’s UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP box set presents the 1982 album in definitive sound. All the traits you associate with hallmark Van Halen — dynamic energy, distinctive tonalities, vivid detail, sensory-invigorating immediacy, rhythmic attack, tongue-in-cheek playfulness, midrange punch, throttling intensity — emerge with involving presence and uncanny realism.

Recorded with producer Ted Templeman in just 12 days in California, Diver Down can here be experienced with unparalleled transparency, balance, definition, and, if you so choose with your volume settings, concert-like solidity, scope, and decibel levels. Provided your system is up to the challenge, you can crank this version as high as you want without risking noise-floor interference or shrillness. Even if you listen at lower levels, the advanced degrees of separation, imaging, soundstaging, and fullness will grant you a fresh perspective on a record that began under the auspices of a one-off single.

The premium packaging of this UD1S pressing befits its collectible status. Housed in a deluxe slipcase, it features special foil-stamped jackets and faithful-to-the-original graphics that illuminate the splendor of the recording. Aurally and visually, this UD1S reissue is made for discerning listeners who desire to immerse themselves in everything involved with the album, from the naval-inspired cover art to the interior photos, which range from a spirited collage to a panoramic shot of Van Halen thrilling a crowd of tens of thousands in Florida.

Indeed, the group’s punishing live schedule — coupled with making four LPs in four years — prompted Van Halen to seek some refuge from the road and studio. The break didn’t last long. Vocalist David Lee Roth thought the band could placate the record label’s desire for new music by interpreting Martha and the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Street” and issuing it as a seven-inch single. Guitarist Eddie Van Halen, intent on not simply replicating another artist’s song but transforming it, suggested Roy Orbison’s “(Oh) Pretty Woman” when he couldn’t get an immediate handle on a riff for the Motown tune. Case closed? Not so fast.

When the joyous romp through the Orbison classic crashed the Billboard charts and climbed into the Top 15, Warner Bros. brass told Van Halen it needed a full-length effort to take advantage of demand. And so the loose, diverse feel of Diver Down took shape, with the band exploring a wide palette of influences and entertaining widescreen desires on what stands as its most carefree set of its career.

Diver Down may be best known for the three electrifying covers that still ring out on FM airwaves today, yet what makes the record much more than a quickly thrown-together collection of odds ‘n’ ends is the vast assortment of styles represented — and the group’s all-in performances. Not to mention some of the subtle messaging. To wit: The band’s hot-wired take on the Kinks’ “Where Have All the Good Times Gone!” doubles as a jab to the pretenders crowding the music scenes, and a call for the kind of authenticity and skill Van Halen brought to every note it played. Equally pointed, the barbershop-quartet send-up of“Happy Trails” functions as a quasi-parody and the quartet’s winking way of having a laugh with those who can’t take a good joke.

Bookended in between those tracks exists a hodgepodge of fun, exuberant material. Consider the three standout interludes. Written by Roth on a synthesizer and anchored by Eddie Van Halen twirling the tremolo bar on his guitar and rubbing a can of Schlitz against its strings amid substantial feedback, the menacing “Intruder” conjures the vibe of Van Halen’s preceding Fair Warning. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the visionary “Little Guitars (Intro)” sees Eddie Van Halen wielding a nylon-string guitar and replicating a classically informed flamenco technique by quickly tremolo-picking the high strings with his right hand and taking his left hand to orchestrate hammer-ons and pull-offs on the guitar neck.

Always a step ahead, the pioneering instrumentalist devised “Cathedral” long in advance of the Diver Down sessions. He tailored it for the record by fingering notes on the fretboard with his left hand and using his right hand to simultaneously roll the volume knob on and off. Doing the latter eventually caused the knob to freeze at the end of the second take, yet the intended effect — a piece that resembled the sound of a church organ — was successfully captured.

Having peaked at No. 3 and spent more than a year on the charts, Diver Down also includes atomic-punk fury (“Hang ‘Em High”), gentle tranquility (“Secrets”), and a stripped-down jaunt through the old jazz ditty “Big Bad Bill (Is Sweet William Now)” complete with a guest contribution from the Van Halens’ father, Jan, on clarinet. With the album title and artwork aptly hinted that something was happening underneath the plain visibility of the surface — while simultaneously serving as a sexual double entendre — Diver Down remains the band’s most overlooked and surprise-filled platter. One that the original marketing campaign saliently noted finds the band’s “temperature up.” Happy trails, indeed.

2LP - The Definitive Version of the 1982 Album: Strictly Limited to 7,500 Numbered Copies, Mobile Fidelity’s UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP Box Set Plays with Extraordinary Openness1/4" / 15 IPS analogue master to DSD 256 to analogue console to lathe.

CD - Experience the 1982 Album in Definitive Sound: Mobile Fidelity’s Numbered-Edition Hybrid SACD Plays with Extraordinary Clarity, Immediacy, and Punch.