LemonMacPhisto said:
The Hagar era transformed them into a "hair metal ballad" band
I thought of them as a lesser Journey at that point, even if they had the immortal Eddie Van Halen.
Van Halen with Diamond Dave will always be the Van Halen I remember
The transformation to lighter stuff began pre-Sammy (again I refer to the train wreck that is "Jump").
EVH writes all the music, and the singer du jour is responsible for lyrics, so you can't blame Sammy, had DLR stayed the music would have continued to get a wee bit fluffier.
That being said, the Hagar era had some great rock tunes as well, just that radio embraces the lighter stuff (just like in Roth era the tunes with the most radio play were songs like "Jamie's Cryin'", "Dance the Night Away" and the train wreck known as "Jump").
In the Hagar era, radio embraced songs like "Dreams", "Why Can't This Be Love", "When its Love", "Runaround", "Right Now", and "Can't Stop Lovin' You"(notice the preponderence of "Love"), definitely lighter material. But there's plenty of good rockers that radio of course ignored, stuff like "5150", "Mine All Mine", "AFU", "Sucker in a 3 Piece", "Poundcake", "The Seventh Seal", "Aftershock", and "Humans Being" (for my money the top song from the Hagar era and a top 10 all time VH song).
Clearly Roth era VH rules, but I think thats more a reflection of Eddie being a young aggressive guitarist/songwriter more than a reflection on Dave(remember DLR tried his hand at lounge singing for a while). There's still some great material in the Hagar era catalog (and even a couple of good tunes with Gary Cherone off VH3), you just need to dig for them, you won't hear 'em on the radio.