Unchained: A Van Halen User Manual

by Martin Popoff

In Unchained: A Van Halen User Manual, Martin Popoff emcees, drink foisted high, a kaleidoscopic celebration of Eddie, Alex, Mikey, Diamond Dave, Sammy and even Gary and Wolfgang.

Indeed, in the spirit of the title, Popoff unchains himself from typical bookish flow, creating a guide to make full-bodied mastery of one’s Van Halen catalogue, sending the user and abuser scurrying back to the songs, headphones on, looking for sonic nuggets likely missed the first hundred times passed during too light a repast.

And so, over the course of these pages, look for meditations swirling around the following:

top 20 Alex moments
top keyboard songs
the album covers critiqued and ranked
analysis through the words of the band members on each album
Sammy very frankly on his relationship with the guys
lengthy analysis of the US Festival
Van Halen songs in movies and TV
origins of the songs on A Different Kind of Truth
covers by Van Halen in the club days as well as after the band’s signing
Frankenstrat
a history of tapping
Alex’s kits over the years
full timeline birth to the present
20 connections to Montrose
top 20 covers of Van Halen
history of Dave solo with Steve Vai and Billy Sheehan
four-fold appendices presenting fan comments and poll results of songs, album, Eddie solos and most contentiously, Sam vs. Dave
top 20 rarities
sound effects and ear candy
the Sam and Dave tour
list of support acts
top tribute acts
the Hall of Fame fiasco
a look at the band’s gold and platinum certifications.

All of this is handled through a symphony of recurring pull-boxes spanning the otherwise sturdy chapter-per-album framework, peppered as well by both black-and-white and colour images. To reiterate, the intention, once the manual’s been studied, is full mastery on the part of the listener of one’s personal Van Halen library. Time to love Van Halen all over again, and here’s the manual to get you there.

Genres: Music

308 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2018

About the author

At approximately 7900 (with over 7000 appearing in his books), Martin has unofficially written more record reviews than anybody in the history of music writing across all genres. Additionally, Martin has penned approximately 85 books on hard rock, heavy metal, classic rock and record collecting. He was Editor-In-Chief of the now retired Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles, Canada’s foremost metal publication for 14 years, and has also contributed to Revolver, Guitar World, Goldmine, Record Collector, bravewords.com, lollipop.com and hardradio.com, with many record label band bios and liner notes to his credit as well. Additionally, Martin has been a regular contractor to Banger Films, having worked for two years as researcher on the award-winning documentary Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, on the writing and research team for the 11-episode Metal Evolution and on the ten-episode Rock Icons, both for VH1 Classic. Additionally, Martin is the writer of the original metal genre chart used in Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey and throughout the Metal Evolution episodes. Martin currently resides in Toronto and can be reached through martinp@inforamp.net or www.martinpopoff.com.