“Mean Street” is the opening track on Van Halen’s 4th album, Fair Warning.
Leading off Fair Warning is a slow fade-in of an Edward Van Halen tapping lick that is at once immediately identifiable and inscrutable. Listeners from the first track on the first album onward wondered how the guitar player was making his unique sounds with the instrument on nearly every song, but the lead-in to Fair Warning was something else again. “How is he pulling this one off?”, no pun intended, was the pervading question which perfectly ushered in the mood of the new album. After the buildup, the band springs into the first track, “Mean Street”, full blast.
Though still considered a deep album cut, “Mean Street” is among the best tunes of the band’s career, offering a interlude slogan so expressive, it was also written graffiti-style across a wall featured on the sleeve of the original vinyl package, with the slogan doubling as an explanation of the album’s title. Combined with the bizarrely disturbing painting featured on the album’s cover, with “Mean Street”, one knew that they were in for a totally new Van Halen experience with Fair Warning. Though heavily overdubbed, the end of the track provides some of Edward Van Halen’s nicest guitar touches on the album. And this new recorded journey had begun.
This song was originally recorded as a demo called “Voodoo Queen” and had completely different lyrics. The song in its original format can be found on the band’s Warner Brothers Demo.
Ed’s outrageous intro was inspired by slap funk bass. “I tapped on the 12th fret of the low E and on the 12th fret of the high E and muffled both with my left hand down by the nut,” he says.
Italian TV Lip Sync, November 1981
David Lee Roth’s original hand-written lyrics from 1981:
