Alex Van Halen - ISOLATED Track - "Big Fat Money" from "Balance" (1995)

Balance is the tenth studio album by American rock band Van Halen, released on January 24, 1995, by Warner Bros. Records. The album is the last of the band's four studio releases to feature Sammy Hagar as the lead singer. It is also the final Van Halen album to feature bassist Michael Anthony in its entirety. Balance reached number 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 in February 1995 and reached triple platinum status on May 12, 2004, by selling more than three million copies in the US. "The Seventh Seal" was nominated for a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance. Recording and production: According to Ian Christe's book, Everybody Wants Some: The Van Halen Saga, Balance was released amid internal fighting between Hagar and the Van Halen brothers. The band worked eight-hour days for three months recording the album. The first song on the record, "The Seventh Seal", features mystical overtones that came, in part, from Eddie Van Halen's newfound sobriety. His therapist, Sat-Kaur Khalsa, urged him to relax and imagine where he was after drinking a six-pack of beer. After smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, and playing guitar for 20 years, he tried writing songs sober and wrote three songs in one half hour period. The album then moves into Hagar's territory with "Can’t Stop Lovin’ You." The song was taken from his ex-wife's point of view, believing that she was still in love with him. The album reached number one on the Billboard 200, their fourth consecutive number one studio album. Most of the Balance album was recorded at Eddie's 5150 Studios, located in Studio City, except for five lead vocal tracks that were recorded in Vancouver, where the album's producer Bruce Fairbairn resided. It was mixed by Mike Fraser and mastered at Sterling Sound, New York, by George Marino. Following the recording of Balance and its subsequent Ambulance Tour (the band renaming the tour as Eddie was having hip issues and brother Alex had to wear a neck brace), Van Halen's second incarnation broke up. Regarding this time period, in 1996 Eddie Van Halen told Guitar World: "There had been a variety of conflicts brewing between manager Ray Danniels, Sammy, and the band since I quit drinking on October 2, 1994... It got so bad that I actually started drinking again." Artwork: The original title of the album was The Seventh Seal, for which photographer Glen Wexler created some concepts, including one with an androgynous four-year-old boy. Eventually they picked Balance, which Alex explained to Wexler was about the turmoil and changes surrounding Van Halen, including the recent death of long-time manager Ed Leffler. Alex asked for something "exploring the duality of the human psyche"; Wexler then sketched some new concepts, with the band liking the one with conjoined twins on a see-saw. The androgynous boy, who actually hailed from Denver but fans mistakenly considered to be Eddie's son Wolfgang Van Halen, was then photographed in Wexler's Hollywood studio, with Wexler's daughter being the hand model that pulled his hair. The images were combined with a miniature landscape for the background using Fractal Design Painter (now called Corel Painter). Wexler detailed that the Balance cover had a number of ironies: "the impossibility of the conjoined twins actually playing on the seesaw; the 'calm' twin actually being the aggressive one, pulling the hair of his sibling to create the appearance of an aggressive child; and having no one else to play with in a desolate post-apocalyptic setting, in which unusable playground equipment is the only object in sight." He added that the twins were “designed” to mimic the shape of the “VH” logo. An alternate cover was used for the Japanese release, citing a cultural offense to the original version. On the inside, the compact disc shows the Leonardo da Vinci drawing Vitruvian Man, and the back of the booklet shows an egg balanced upright on a guitar. The album was remastered by Donn Landee and released on October 6, 2023 as part of The Collection II; the four studio albums with Hagar, plus an extra disc of eight rarities from this era. Released: January 24, 1995 Recorded: May 25 – September 2, 1994 Studio: 5150 Studios (Studio City), Little Mountain (Vancouver) Genre: Hard rock, pop metal Length: 53:18 Label: Warner Bros. Producer: Bruce Fairbairn