For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge
| For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Van Halen's studio album | ||||
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Publication |
June 18, 1991 |
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admission |
March 1990 - April 1991 |
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| Label (s) | Warner Music Group | |||
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Format (s) |
CD, LP |
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Title (number) |
11 |
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running time |
52:00 |
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| occupation | ||||
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Andy Johns , Ted Templeman , Van Halen |
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Studio (s) |
5150, Hollywood , California |
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For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge (German: For unlawful carnal knowledge and shortly also: FUCK ) the title of the published in 1991 ninth studio album is the US hard rock - band Van Halen and the third of four albums the band, the one after the top spot of the US album charts reached. The band received a Grammy Award for this album .
Background and origin
Van Halen first reached the top of the US music charts with the album 5150 in 1986 and was able to repeat this success in 1988 with OU812 . Both albums had been awarded platinum multiple times by the RIAA because of their high sales figures of more than 11 million ( 5150 ) and more than 5 million albums ( OU812 ) in the USA alone .
After touring with OU812, the band paused for a year before starting work on their next studio album.
At the beginning of the recordings in March 1990 the band decided to go back to their roots musically and to do without keyboards and synthesizers. The British music producer Andy Johns, who had already worked with Led Zeppelin , the Rolling Stones and Free , was hired to produce the album . Drummer Alex Van Halen in particular had high hopes for Johns:
“I think Alex mainly ... Alex really wanted ... He always wanted to sound like Bonzo. And I remember the first time he plays me this one fill of 'Stairway to Heaven,' he goes, 'Make my snare sound like that.' I said well, you know, 'Yeah right! Sure, no problem. ' So we went from there and it took a very long time. "
“I think mostly Alex ... Alex really wanted ... He always wanted to sound like Bonzo. And I remember that the first time he played me this fill from Stairway to Heaven and said: “Make sure my snare sounds exactly like this”. I said, you know, “Yeah, sure! Of course no problem". We started with that and it took a lot of time. "
Work on the album took more than a year. Such a long time was not unusual for big bands at the time, but against the background of the supposedly lower production costs, it was hardly understandable. Sammy Hagar later explained the long working hours as follows:
“We wanted to make the definitive Van Halen record and we were getting along pretty good then. But I'll straight up say it - the only problem with that record was that we were a little bit lazy. "
“We wanted to make the definitive Van Halen record and got on really well with each other. But I want to be straightforward - the only problem with the record was that we were a little lazy. "
Hagar explained that he and Eddie van Halen had a lot of fun during this time, buying a new car almost every day and then racing against each other on the Pacific Coast Highway - this was one of the reasons the album was recorded dragged on so much.
However, he contradicted himself when he published his autobiography Red - My Uncensored Life in Rock in 2011 . In it he stated that the work on the album was "like pulling teeth", which was due, among other things, to the fact that he had to take care of his mentally ill wife. There were days when he couldn't come into the studio while the other band members were there almost day in and day out. In addition, producer Andy Johns was "a disaster" with whom he refused to work after he had deleted traces of Hagar's vocals. This also led to Ted Templeman's engagement, with whom Hagar then re-recorded all vocal tracks.
The last song the band completed for the album was Right Now . Hagar had written the lyrics, but Eddie van Halen couldn't think of any suitable music. One day Hagar van Halen heard a melody play on the piano, ran to him and explained that this was the music for his song. Van Halen replied that he had played this tune to Hagar when he was working on OU812 in 1988, but that he did not like it. In Hagar's opinion, however , it was a perfect match for Right Now; nothing needed to be changed.
Album title
The album title goes back to Sammy Hagar's will to give the record a provocative , vulgar title. So he suggested calling the album “Fuck”. However, when he learned that "Fuck" was supposedly an acronym for the term "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge" (which, however, is etymologically incorrect), he decided to use this expression.
Track list
| For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| No. | title | Songwriter | length |
| 1. | Poundcake | Sammy Hagar , Eddie Van Halen , Alex Van Halen , Michael Anthony | 5:22 |
| 2. | Judgment Day | Hagar, E. Van Halen, A. Van Halen, Anthony | 4:41 |
| 3. | Spanked | Hagar, E. Van Halen, A. Van Halen, Anthony | 4:53 |
| 4th | Runaround | Hagar, E. Van Halen, A. Van Halen, Anthony | 4:21 |
| 5. | Pleasure Dome | Hagar, E. Van Halen, A. Van Halen, Anthony | 6:57 |
| 6th | In 'N' Out | Hagar, E. Van Halen, A. Van Halen, Anthony | 6:05 |
| 7th | Man on a mission | Hagar, E. Van Halen, A. Van Halen, Anthony | 5:04 |
| 8th. | The Dream Is Over | Hagar, E. Van Halen, A. Van Halen, Anthony | 4:00 |
| 9. | Right now | Hagar, E. Van Halen, A. Van Halen, Anthony | 5:21 |
| 10. | 316 | Hagar, E. Van Halen, A. Van Halen, Anthony | 1:29 |
| 11. | Top of the World | Hagar, E. Van Halen, A. Van Halen, Anthony | 3:55 |
| Overall length: | 52:00 | ||
reception
For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge is now considered to be “the most coherent” and “hardest” of all Van Halen albums “of the post-David Lee Roth era”. It started at number one on the US album charts on the day it was released and stayed in the hit list for 74 weeks. In Germany it reached number six and in Great Britain number twelve on the music charts.
In a retrospective review, Daniel Böhm wrote for Rocks in 2010 that producer Andy Johns had "done a great job of staging the rhythm section based on Jimmy Page & Co. Led Zeppelin". The drills at Poundcake are “legendary” , Judgment Day drives “like no other number in the combo”, and in The Dream is Over , Right Now and the “famous conclusion” Top of the World , “the combination of intelligent, right down to the last Detail of elaborate hard rock, virtuosity and the ability to chart art “. The album is "just awesome".
The album won the Grammy Awards ceremony on February 26, 1992 in the " Best Hard Rock Performance " category . The music video Right Now won the title "Video of the Year" at the MTV Video Music Awards 1992 and was also recognized for best director and best editing.
For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge was awarded gold and platinum records just one month after its release in the US , received double platinum in November 1991, and was last awarded triple platinum in August 1994.
Web links
- Poundcake on YouTube , accessed June 20, 2020.
- Top of the World on YouTube , accessed June 20, 2020.
- Right Now on YouTube , accessed June 20, 2020.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Illustration of a tour t-shirt , accessed on June 21, 2020
- ↑ Worldwide album sales on statisticbrain.com, March 17, 2015, English. Retrieved November 1, 2015.
- ↑ a b c d Sammy Hagar and Joel Selvin: Red - My Uncensored Life in Rock (English), HarperCollins 2011, pages 130-134
- ↑ a b How Van Halen Reached Back on For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge at ultimateclassicrock.com , accessed on June 21, 2020
- ↑ Sammy Hagar: The Evergreen Rocker Lives Life Up Interview at melodicrock.com (English), accessed on June 22, 2020
- ↑ Rosen, Craig. The Billboard Book of Number One Albums . Billboard Books, 1996 ISBN 0-8230-7586-9
- ↑ a b Rocks - The magazine for Classic Rock, issue 05.2010, page 36
- ↑ Chart sources: DE AT CH UK US
- ↑ Van Halen nominations and awards list on grammy.com , accessed June 21, 2020
- ↑ award database of the RIAA , accessed on July 1, 2020
