Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

Huge Springsteen fan and while I love Born In The USA it is probably my third least favorite album behind Lucky Town and Human Touch.

I think Dancing In The Dark is perfect where it is placed on the album. I remember alternating between Born In The USA and Prince's Purple Rain as a kid. I would put them in my walkman and listen to them while swinging on the swing set in the park.

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

Max Weinberg said about 80 tracks were recorded for the BITUSA sessions. I read somewhere that only 30-some have been released, and the documentary Blood Brothers showed him looking over notebooks full of unreleased songs & fragments (and that was in '95, so you can imagine how much has been written since then). Like some of his b-sides, lots of these are undoubtedly half-baked (and/or were reworked into finished songs), but there's bound to be some unmined gems that could be re-visited.

Like most artists who have a long career (Dylan, R. Thompson, McCartney, Jagger/Richards, etc.), it often seems that the muse leaves or much of their later stuff becomes mediocre with stand-out tracks being few & far between. Or writer's block strikes (Gillian Welch hit a long snag that took years to shake off, so you can imagine people who have written hundreds of songs finding it difficult to come up with fresh ideas). But the better a musician's back catalog, the higher the expectations due to the higher bar being set. Have to ask yourself how many artists have a repertoire of literally dozens upon dozens of songs that people request at every concert...and can sing along with note for note.

Add that to the reluctance of fans to embrace new styles or approaches taken by the artists, and you can see why they'd be facing a Catch-22 situation: Don't change enough, and you get pigeonholed; change too much, and longtime fans desert you. Look at the bands/artists who drop out of sight for a decade or more & look at their "comebacks"...usually they're attempts to recreate the old magic & stick close to the formula that made them successful. Or they pull a Rod Stewart & start doing the Great American Songbook. (I'm just as guilty as most of the fans; while I like some of Yusuf's recent releases, I still want him to sound like classic Cat Stevens...as in this recent release sung with Chris Isaak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilWPkgvDyNc).

Fans of long-time movie directors eagerly look forward to seeing new work; an awful lot of music fans just want to hear the hits.

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

Yeah from my personal tastes, Beck and David Bowie seem to be pretty much the top two guys who can do a complete 180 from album to album and maintain their fans, and level of quality. Although I haven't listened to a lot of Bowie's 90's stuff yet.

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

I think some longtime Springsteen fans were more disgruntled by Ghost of Tom Joad & never completely forgave him (fans who didn't know his first two albums or considered Nebraska an aberration). Devils & Dust probably didn't win him a lot of new fans, either.

btw...I liked both. Used "Galveston Bay" in exploring poetry with 8th-graders. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1-cjoVcBRw

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

Similar question, but was Hagar joining Van Halen, how was that climate, with 5150 coming out the next year? Tons of synth there as well.

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

That sounds like me too. I remember the really big deal they made when the video for Dancing in the Dark premiered on Friday Night Videos. I thought it was okay, but nothing special. I do really like Cover Me from the same album.

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

I remember this one well. I remember friends, music magazines, etc. bitching about it when it came to life that as Hagar was joining and Roth was leaving. But once "Why Can't This Be Love" hit the airwaves nobody gave a shit anymore because the song kicked so much ass (at least in my area). I still love that song and it is one of my favorite Van Halen songs. (except it does contain one of the worst song lyrics of all time..."An' only time will tell if we stand the test of time")

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

From everything I heard, Van Hagar was pretty heavily ridiculed when the switch in singers first took place, but they quickly got over it. I think much worse than Hagar was Eddie's continual attempts to be taken seriously as an artist, which often led to middling soft rock. I have no problem with Van Halen wanting to be taken seriously, but you can be a serious artist who still has fun. OU812 is the only Van Hagar album I bother returning to, whereas I often find myself revisiting the Dave era.

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

I was a little kid and didn't become a Bruce S. fan until much later, but BitU is one of my fav albums of his (notwithstanding a couple of boring songs in "Cover Me" and "Downbound Train"; "Darlington County", "Bobby Jean", and "Glory Days" aren't great either.). But then, I'm very partial to the slick '80s sound anyway. I can appreciate that those who grew up in a different musical epoch don't like that period. It is curious to me that what I consider one of his top-3 songs, "Brothers Under the Bridges ('83)", is an outtake from BitU, but perhaps he found it too similar in its triumphal tone to "No Surrender", which is, I think, right up there with "Brothers...", and the best song on the album, followed by "I'm on Fire". As to "Dancing in the Dark", I do like it quite a bit, though it's probably the poppiest song he has ever done.
Though I love the folk genre, I'm not very fond of Bruce's folkier, more pensive side, as it seems forced and affected, so I don't have a whole lot of use for Nebraska, Lucky Town, Ghost of Tom Joad, Devils & Dust, and parts of Darkness on the Edge... (the genesis of this less-playful, less balls-out aspect of his career, if you ignore a couple of cuts from BtR).
Just the http://in-gender.com/cs/emoticons/TwoCents.gif of a Springsteen admirer.

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

I think there was a lot of "WTF" fear by Van Halen fans that was either confirmd by those that would never accept Hagar or totally squashed when 5150 came out and it was actually better than the last few Roth albums. The awesome tour that followed helped validate "Van Hagar" as well.

But for what it's worth, I actually like Eat Em And Smile more than 5150. Same goes for the tour that supported the album. Basically, IMO that break up was the best thing to happen for both the Halen family and Roth for the many years when their success lasted.

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

I'll never forgive Eddie for breaking my heart when he married Valerie. :(

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

5150 was better than the last few Roth albums? You mean 1984, an album filled with tight rockers that is the high point of the band? Diver Down, which is full of covers but somehow is more fun than any Van Hagar album? Fair Warning, a masterpiece of dark rock? Huh?

I was only a few years old when Van Halen switched singers, so this isn't some kind of nostalgic thing for the Roth days. This is me coming to the band many years after they were huge and just listening to the music.

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

Van Halen is not really my type of band in the first place, but for what it's worth, when some of those old singles like "Unchained", "Ain't Talkin' Bout Love" or "Dance the Night Away" come on the radio, I crank it up. When a Hagar Van Halen song comes on, I change the station.

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

"Come on, Dave, gimme a break..."

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

"I don't feel tardy"

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

I was 11 when BITUSA came out. At the time I had no idea who Springsteen was. I was really into Duran Duran, Run DMC, Simple Minds and the Beastie Boys back then. I guess I liked the album. I remember my parents liking it.

It was obviously a huge hit in a day when best selling albums had enormous cultural impact. Kids these days may not appreciate that a best selling album these days is nothing compared to the cultural impact a behemoth like BITUSA or Thriller had in the early/mid 80s. Whatever the hard core Bruce fans may have thought at the time was likely irrelevant when MTV started spinning those videos 50 times a day.

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

What do the Jehovah's Witnesses think the song is about?

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

I'm gonna guess "night after night of drunken, self-destructive, sometimes anonymous sexual encounters in the desperate hope that one will lead to an actual connection with another human being and he can stop hating himself."

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

I wonder if Reagan understood what Dancing In The Dark was about?

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

They thought it was about a male gigolo - "This guns for hire" and "Dancing in the Dark" was code for fucking.

I remember trying to explain it to my wife and her family and they didn't believe me what the song was actually about.

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

Maybe they confused it with Billy Idol's "Dancing With Myself", which was said by some to be about recreational self-introspection. :shrug:

He did but then he immediately forgot.

Too soon?

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

I thought that Jehovah's Witnesses were against music and dancing? My grandmother had some relatives that were Jehovah's Witnesses and they were against anything that was fun or brought pleasure. I am sure smiling was against their beliefs.

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

5150 better than Fair Warning, Diver Down, or 1984? BITE THY TONGUE!

I was a huge VH fan starting from age 10 (1981). I basically remember getting Fair Warning, Diver Down, and 1984 as they came out. I even caught them on the 1984 tour at the long, lamented Hollywood Sportatorium... FRONT ROW! I caught a bandanna that Dave tossed off the stage. Then my brother took it to London that summer and lost it. Motherfucker.

I was also a Sammy Hagar fan (just the hits though, like 'Three Lock Box', 'I'll Fall In Love Again', 'There's Only One Way To Rock', etc.). When Dave announced he was leaving VH in 1985, it was a pretty massive bummer, but he had also scored a few solo hits with California Girls and Just A Gigolo, which were novelty but the general feeling was that Diamond Dave could carry on just fine on his own.

Now Hagar joining Van Halen? This was viewed as puzzling but also pretty monumental as well. I remember a LOT of excitement at the time at the possibilities of Sammy's pop/rock sensibilities and better vocal range meshing with the Eddie's musical virtuosity.

I thought Dave's "Eat Em At Smile" album was a powerhouse of 80s hard rock. Just a tight, classic rock/metal album with an absolutely killer line-up (Vai/Sheehan/the other guy) in tow. Their tour with Cinderella in 1986/87 was unbelievably amazing. I saw it two nights in a row.

I also got 5150 the day it dropped. It depressed me. I found it wooden, stilted, too sanded down, even a little depressing. "Why Can't This Be Love", I'll admit, was a really good single and still hands up. But the synth-drippy-ballad-Top 40 ambitions of garbage like "Dreams" and "Love Walks In" was a real drag.

By 1986, 5150 was the Van Halen album you handed your little sister just after you discovered Master of Puppets.

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

The best banner I saw hanging from the nosebleeds at that 1984 tour simply read EDDIE: WE WANT YOUR WIFE!

Re: What was the general mood like when the single Dancing in the Dark came out?
 

Gotta love how things change over the years. I remember vividly all the die hard Halen fans older than me (I was 16 in '84) calling 1984 the end of VH as they knew it, and refusing to call the top song anything other than "Junk" (there was even a parody of the song called that). The same people didn't much of the rest of the album either, short of Panama and maybe Hot For Teacher.

I would go on but doesn't seem right to take this thread any further off track. And frankly, as somebody that only owns the Essential 3 disc package, I really don't care that much for Bruce anyway.