1983 US Fest, '1984' Album Recording, and More
On May 29, 1983, Van Halen headlined their biggest show to date, the US Festival . The kit he put together for the US Festival show had two new features. One was his first time use of Power Toms, and the second was his experimentation with radial horns built into the bass drums. These horns (Altec Lansing 511B) were fixed inside of the bass drums and projected out of the front of them through a rectangular cut out of the front heads, They were hooked up electronically, to be mixed with the miked up acoustic sound of the drum. Both bass drums, 28″x26″, were connected to a 14″x24″ via an ‘accordion’ style white tube. The toms are 12″, 13″, 14″ power toms and the floor toms are 18″ and 20″. Once again the Pearl Vari-Pitch roto toms and Simmons drums are at the right of the kit. The snare was his Tama 6.5″x14″ rosewood. The ‘mouth’ decals were plastered all over the main shells. The stands are a mixture of Ludwig Hercules and Tama Titan once again.
The cymbals are all Paiste with a mixture of 2002’s and the recently released at the time ‘Rude’ range. The set up is a 24″ 2002 ride, 20″ 2002 china, 20″ 2002 heavy, 2 x 20″ medium rides (used as crashes), 20″ Rude, 18″ Rude, 15″ hi-hats are a mixture of a 2002 top and a Rude bottom.
What’s interesting about this kit is that the main power toms were barely even used, as Alex was favoring the 3 Simmons electronic toms to his right side.
Recording Of The '1984' Album
In early 1983, the band moved into the studio to start making the 1984 album. The photo above is famously believed to be Alex’s setup for that album, but people with more keen ears know that Alex definitely used Roto-Toms for the recording of 1984.
The problem is that in the 2010’s, Eddie mistakenly remembered that they used all Simmons electronic toms for the recording of 1984, because “the studio was too small to incorporate normal drums”. This is obviously not true, as anyone with a decent ear can differentiate a Simmons drum synth from an acoustic Roto-Tom. That being said, there are a few points in the recordings that feature Simmons toms. The “Hot For Teacher” intro famously features them, mocking the sound of an old Harley Davidson or mid-century dragster. This intro is NOT the sound of a Lamborghini as Ted Templeman misremembered, as every other statement about the recording has stated that it was all Alex on drums. Wolfgang VH, Chris Gill (VH author and interviewer), Eddie VH, and finally Ted Templeman himself (earlier statement) have all said or confirmed that it was Alex on drums, start to finish, no Lamborghini.
A clue into Alex’s use of Roto-Toms is his setup for the “Jump” music video below. This seemed to be an early version of what was likely the kit he would bring on tour, though it was totally reworked when they embarked on the tour. Alex would only use two Roto-toms as rack toms for the album recording, and likely one or two floor toms.
Continuing the Simmons rabbit-hole, it’s clear that the bass drum sounds on the album were achieved with the Simmons SDSV. They have a very distinct sound, although in this stage they were still trying to make them sound “natural” over accepting the unnatural electronic sound on the 5150 album recording. Other songs that feature the rare Simmons toms are “Girl Gone Bad” in the outro, “Top Jimmy” with the occasional hit while hitting the snare in the intro, and maybe some others that aren’t as obvious.
The Roto-Toms and likely floor toms were close mic’d as usual, as well as the snare. Alex stated in 1983 that they were experimenting with a side-snare mic– apparently touching the side of the shell, but it’s not clear whether they did that in the studio or not. The overhead mic’s on this album sound very processed unlike the previous; lots of low-frequency cutting to possibly remove the bleed of the drums and likely the other instruments playing live in the room.