Ye Olde Hit Parade: I'll Wait

1984: Van Halen - I'll Wait

George Orwell was definitely on the nose with some of his predictions about 1984, but there were a lot of things that happened that year he didn't foresee. Like Apple running a 1984-themed ad during the Super Bowl hyping the new Macintosh personal computer. Or crack cocaine making its first appearance on the streets of Los Angeles. Or astronauts making the first untethered space walk from the Space Shuttle Challenger.



Meanwhile, in my little part of the world, things were going okay. We were settling into life in New Hampshire. I got my driver's license (which was a necessity in a place where things are so spread out), got a girlfriend, lost a girlfriend, was in a band for about 10 seconds, got a job stocking shelves at Market Basket and generally just did stupid teenager stuff.

That included going to my first concert, which conveniently enough took place in Kingston, where I lived. It was a festival show with Cheap Trick, Ratt, Twisted Sister and Lita Ford, all acts I had knowledge of and interest in. I had a been a fan of Cheap Trick since the late '70s when Live at Budokan came out; they had tailed off in popularity of late, but I was still excited to see them. Anyway, it took place on an 80-degree day in mid-July, where we stood in the middle of a packed field and didn't move, drink anything or go to the bathroom for about eight hours. "Round and Round" had just come out and the video was hot on MTV, so everybody was really there to see Ratt, and they were a lot of fun. The crowd started to thin out a bit after their set, but I didn't complain because I was able to get up front for Cheap Trick's set. Sure enough, I got a Rick Nielsen guitar pick (to be fair, he throws dozens into the crowd at every show so I'm sure there are thousands of people who can say the same thing) and the band was excellent. Later in the year, I saw a few shows (Rush and Dio/Twisted Sister) at the Worcester Centrum, which at the time was the busiest arena venue for rock shows in the Boston area.

As for my musical tastes, they were all over the place. Sure, there was the heavy stuff. It was the year hair metal really busted out, but I didn't like all of those bands. I was more into heavier bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Metallica, which introduced thrash metal to the masses a year earlier. But I also liked Prince, who was having a monster year with the release of Purple Rain, U2, R.E.M., INXS, Duran Duran (although I would never admit it to anybody at the time), the Fixx and plenty of other poppier acts. I didn't like Madonna, Wham or what Billy Joel or Stevie Wonder were up to at the time.

But the bridge between my hard rock and my pop interests was Van Halen, who were always more than just a hair metal act, although they sure inspired a lot of those kinds of bands. They weren't as serious as the heavier (and often unintentionally sillier) bands, especially with David Lee Roth at the helm, but with their album 1984, they introduced a lot of synths into their sound. "Jump" was their first #1 hit and "Panama" and "Hot for Teacher" were traditional riff rockers, but I liked "I'll Wait" because it sounded so different than their other songs. I didn't find out until decades later that Michael McDonald of the Doobie Brothers was called in to help Roth finish the lyrics of the song. The song also resonated with me as I pined over one girl or another (and there were a few) during that tumultuous year. Hormones are rough, man.

Honorable mentions: Van Halen - "Panama"; Iron Maiden - "Two Minutes to Midnight"; Judas Priest - "Some Heads Are Gonna Roll"; Yes - "Changes"; The Fixx - "Saved By Zero"; Real Life - "Send Me An Angel"; Duran Duran - "New Moon on Monday"; Duran Duran - "The Reflex"; Scorpions - "Rock You Like a Hurricane"; The Cars - "You Might Think"; The Icicle Works - "Whisper to a Scream"; Rush - "Distant Early Warning"; The Psychedelic Furs - "The Ghost In You"; Ratt - "Round and Round"; Russ Ballard - "Voices"; Stevie Ray Vaughan - "Couldn't Stand the Weather"; Prince - "Let's Go Crazy"; Prince - "When Doves Cry"; Prince - "Purple Rain"; Suicidal Tendencies - "Institutionalized"; Twisted Sister - "We're Not Gonna Take It"; Dio - "The Last In Line"; Kim Mitchell - "Go For Soda"; R.E.M. - "So. Central Rain"; R.E.M. - "Pretty Persuasion"; Sheila E. - "The Glamorous Life"; U2 - "Pride (In the Name of Love)"; U2 - "Wire"; Dokken - "Just Got Lucky"; The Honeydrippers - "Rockin' at Midnight"; Deep Purple - "Perfect Strangers"; Bryan Adams - "Run to You"; The Kinks - "Living On a Thin Line"