Van Halen III gets a 2024 reboot! Two fans have collaborated to reimagine Van Halen’s 1998 album for a whole new listening experience.
The project was put together by Scott Monroe, one of the hosts of the new podcast Regarding Van Halen 3, and podcaster/musician Kevin Brown. Monroe and Brown took the original 12-track album clocking in at 65:22 and edited it down to 10 tracks at just under 41 minutes.
Monroe said the idea for reimaging the album came while preparing for the podcast.
“I came to Kevin with this idea for tightening some of the VH3 songs after finalizing plans with Chaz Charles and Greg Wolfe for the third season of his ‘Regarding’ series to be called Regarding Van Halen 3, where each episode analyzes a VH3 track in sequence,” said Monroe. “We just recorded our first episode this week on ‘Neworld’. I’ve arranged for guests on future episodes, such as CJ Chilvers, author of The Van Halen Encyclopedia, and just regular fans like me. This reimagining of Van Halen III is an outgrowth of this new podcast, and as we discuss each original track we’ll also play the reimagined version as well.”
Monroe reached out to Brown, who went to work on breaking down the songs.
“I downloaded all the tracks, ran them through AI to separate out the drums, bass, guitar, vocals, and then edited them per Scott’s direction along with my additional ideas,” said Brown, who now has a different view of what is Van Halen’s least commercially successful album in the band’s catalogue. “Van Halen III was an album I dismissed for years until listening to the tracks again on the And The Podcast Will Rock show. When Scott asked me if I’d be interested in trying to edit some of the songs to tighten them up, I was intrigued. Over the course of working on the project, I’ve gained a much, much deeper appreciation for an album that is daring, eclectic, and unlike anything Eddie had tried before. I’m convinced that had this been released as a solo record AND had been the benefactor of a more rigorous producer, the reaction to it would be entirely different. Hopefully the edits give people a different way to think about what these songs could have sounded like if they’d been trimmed down.”
As for Monroe, he’s had an appreciation for Van Halen III since it was released over 25 years ago, but always wondered what the results could have been if it had been made under different circumstances.
“Van Halen III has always been special to me,” said Monroe. “The first time I saw Van Halen in concert was with Gary [Cherone] as the lead singer (in Hartford, Connecticut) and I was ready to embrace this third incarnation of the band, only later to be left wondering ‘what if’ after Gary left in ’99. I continue to this day to believe, as Kevin said, that VH3 was daring and eclectic. With the proper guidance, it could have been a much stronger creative effort, despite all of the challenges facing the band at the time. While I appreciate [Van Halen III producer] Mike Post’s recent comments that he saw his primary role as helping his friend make a sober record without any creative intrusion, I firmly believe that a producer should have also been there to proactively help steer the process and provide needed feedback, especially when it came to song arrangement, length and sequencing.
“In my professional life, I’m a newspaper editor,” continued Monroe. “And I’m drawn to the details of story structure, ledes and transitions. I see these concepts also applying to songs and albums. That’s the lens I used when working with Kevin on this reimagining: How could we edit the album to something more tightly focused on its strengths? So I identified sections of each song that I felt were either unnecessary (extended intros and outros) or counter-productive to the core strength of the track (pre-choruses or, in the case of ‘How Many Say I,’ all of the vocals). I threw these ideas at Kevin, and thanks to his incredible technical ingenuity and ear for melody, ideas became reality in the form of this new playlist. I had originally intended we’d work on just a song or two, but before we knew it we were considering edits to nearly every track.
“One thing I want to be clear about: This in no way is intended to criticize Eddie or suggest we know better,” continued Monroe. “I came at this from a place of love for the Van Halen legacy, and with admiration for the adventurous songs on Van Halen III in particular. This exercise is about reimagining how the music could have been further molded in the production process, and perhaps made more accessible to the VH fanbase. My hope, ultimately, is that this effort helps fans appreciate Van Halen III a little bit more and focus on the musical elements that really do work well on the band’s most misunderstood album.”
Before giving Van Halen III Reimagined a listen, Monroe explains some of the changes made:
THE NEW TRACKLIST: “As for the song order, I thought of it this way: The album needed to be viewed as a vinyl, with strong thematic sequencing for Side A and B. The original sequencing was all over the place for me and didn’t appear to tell any kind of musical story. This is an issue I have with so many albums of the 90s, which suffered from bloat and loose track orders because of the CD era. ‘Without You’ is the most classic-sounding song (because, as we know, it’s likely the only studio cut to feature all four members of the band) and it launches the third incarnation of Van Halen with a bang as Al’s drums come in. (I liken it to the statement that kicked off the Sammy era with ‘Hellllllo baby!’) ‘Without You’ kicks off a trilogy of what I consider classic-sounding Van Halen songs, with tasty riffs, familiar song structures and strong choruses, continuing with ‘One I Want’ and ‘Fire in the Hole.’ Next, ‘Neworld’ is a beautiful instrumental that signals a transition in tempo, transitioning to the acoustic-centric ballad of ‘Josephina’ to close out Side A.
“‘Dirty Water Dog’ kicks off Side B, starting a trilogy of songs with ‘Ballot or the Bullet’ and ‘From Afar’ that I consider more out-of-the-box in terms of tone and song structure. Finally, to close out Side B, we have ‘How Many Say I’ as a shortened piano instrumental that transitions into ‘Year to the Day,’ which I consider an epic closer that signals where the band might be going sonically.”
EXCLUDED SONGS: “I’m not a fan of ‘Once,’ though I appreciate the attempt at experimentation; and ‘Primary’ didn’t fit thematically for me (plus we already had two instrumentals in the 10-track lineup). So, both of those were left out of the reimagining.”
LISTEN TO VAN HALEN III REIMAGINED
Listen To The Latest Episode Of “Regarding Van Halen 3”