Straight outta Pasadena, Van Halen were America's ultimate party band, monstrously entertaining and gleefully ambitious, a classically Californian quartet formed by two Dutch immigrants. They also happened to revolutionise rock music.
When the band’s debut album was released on February 10, 1978 – on the same day as that other late-70s game changer, Judas Priest's Stained Class – singer David Lee Roth was typically hyperbolic. “This is the 1980s!” he boasted, keen to show just how far ahead of the pack his band was. “And this is the new sound – it’s hyper, it’s energy, it’s urgent.”
