Their star had been rising steadily since they emerged from Pasadena, CA, in the mid-70s with a guitarist who was actively rewriting the rules for his instrument and a frontman with a Sunset Strip look and a Vegas showman attitude.
1984 was the year Van Halen put it all together with a blockbuster album and the biggest hit song of their career.
That album, titled 1984, was the band’s sixth studio effort, and it featured the quartet at the top of their collective game with a little something for everyone over the course of its nine tracks. And the set’s four hit singles insured they’d spend the entire year blanketing MTV with Eddie Van Halen’s smile and David Lee Roth’s particular brand of charismatic debauchery.
The first of those would prove to be the most successful chart hit of their Hall of Fame career, and it was anchored not by Eddie’s guitar wizardry, but rather by his synth skills with a keyboard line he had written years earlier but couldn’t turn into a song until he cracked the code during the 1984 recording sessions.
It all came together when he gave a tape of the instrumental to Roth, who popped it into the cassette deck of a classic car and had a roadie drive him around while he listened to it nonstop. Diamond Dave eventually came through with a lyric about going for all the gusto you can grab and taking that first step towards making your dreams come true.
The song would become the band’s only #1 hit on the Hot 100 and in fact their only top 10 for that matter during their years fronted by Roth, who would leave the band over “creative differences” the following year for a solo career.
At #17, Van Halen cajoles you to get off your ass and “Jump.”