10 Rock Albums Made Out Of Obligation

The ultimate sign of a band having staying power is striking while the iron is hot. When Van Halen first burst onto the scene, the California rock scene was already looking for something new, and their signature brand of party rock sent the entire Sunset Strip into the stratosphere, outdoing themselves on every subsequent record. There comes a point where any band needs a break though, but the labels got ants in their pants once the band put out a cover of Roy Orbison's Pretty Woman.

While the initial plan was to just have this song as a little promotional single to tide over fans during their break, its massive success made the label rush the band into the studio to make a whole new record, which none of the band were particularly happy about. That explains why over half of this record is comprised of covers, pulling some odds and ends from their live set and making something that sounds like a Van Halen project, with their version of the Kinks' Where Have All the Good Times Gone sounding like a retread of when they did You Really Got Me.

There are a few times where even the rest of the band doesn't show up, with songs like Intruder and Cathedral just being little nuggets of Eddie shredding in the studio that were added into the mix to pad out the runtime. Considering that 1984 was going to come just a few years after this, Diver Down feels more like a mixtape of Van Halen songs than a proper album.