Who could have imagined that a synthesizer, not a guitar, would put Van Halen over the top? But that was indeed the case when the first blast of Oberheim OB-Xa announced the arrival of "Jump" and the quartet's leap into the rock superstar strata with the album "1984," the latter of which was released 30 years ago today on January 9, 1984. After five platinum previous albums Van Halen was already there of course and following a headlining performance (for a whopping $1.5 million) at the 1983 US Festival, it was clear that even bigger things lay ahead for the band. But how big, and how different, was the surprise. Stylistically, Van Halen...
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