Fair Warning (Remastered)
Van Halen’s fourth studio release, ‘Fair Warning,’ was released in 1981, and went on to sell more than two million copies, however was still the band’s slowest-selling album of the David Lee Roth era. Despite the album’s commercially disappointing sales, ‘Fair Warning’ was met with mostly positive reviews from critics.
The cover artwork features a detail from The Maze, a painting by Canadian artist William Kurelek which depicts his tortured youth. The album was listed by Esquire in 2012 as one of the 75 Albums Every Man Should Own.
‘Fair Warning’ was also one of the first albums to reflect the emerging rift in the Van Halen power structure. Whilst David Lee Roth wished to emphasize the pop influence that emerged on the previous two albums (and which brought the band increased attention and a wider appeal), Eddie Van Halen preferred to explore darker, longer and generally more complex song-structures that emphasized his innovative guitar work. Eddie apparently prevailed, as the album in fact featured longer, darker, more aggressive guitar-oriented material.
Mastering engineer Chris Bellman, who remastered the original albums for Bernie Grundman Studios, Hollywood, CA, was enlisted for this new version. In order to produce the original sound the band intended, Bellman cut straight from the quarter-inch tapes.
Formed in Los Angeles in 1974, Van Halen changed the rock and roll landscape forever with the release of their influential and wildly successful eponymous debut album in 1978; an album that would go on to define a generation and sell more than 10 million copies in the US. The band then subsequently produced a repertoire of hits that remain some of the strongest and most influential rock songs ever written that fans will admire for decades to come. With more than 75 million albums sold worldwide, and more No. 1 hits on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart than any other artist, the band’s record of achievement is hard to top.
