The name of ‘Blood and Fire,’ a newly-previewed song from Van Halen‘s ‘A Different Kind of Truth’ album, probably won’t ring familiar to longtime fans of the band. But Alex Van Halen’s beat and Eddie Van Halen’s noodling on the track may take some knowledgeable fans back to the mid-’80s. That’s because the new song — previewed in the video below — is based on an instrumental called ‘Ripley’ from ‘The Wild Life’ movie.

Rolling Stone first revealed the 90 second clip of he song, but we can thank an old article on the Van Halen News Desk for explaining the origins of the track. ‘The Wild Life’ was released on VHS in 1984 and starred Chris Penn. Eddie Van Halen wrote the score for the movie, but only one song (‘Donut City’) was included on the official soundtrack. Others, including ‘Ripley,’ are heard throughout the Cameron Crowe directed flick.

This is the third song confirmed to be a reincarnation of a previous effort from the David Lee Roth led quartet. Their first single, ‘Tattoo‘ was based off of the 1977 unreleased track ‘Down in Flames,’ and ‘She’s the Woman‘ (a song heard at the Jan. 5 show in New York City) was originally recorded in 1976.

‘A Different Kind of Truth’ hits stores on Feb. 7. The band begins their American tour on Feb. 18. Click here to enter an Ultimate Classic Rock contest to win two tickets a show of your choice.

Industry Figure Bob Lefsetz commented on Tattoo

Now if that doesn’t make you want to log on to Ticketmaster and buy a ticket you probably don’t have a tattoo and never contemplated getting one, you probably graduated from college and are a winner, you never drove a mini-truck, drank a case of beer and wished you were something more but decided that for now, who you are is enough.

Now this is not the unexpected sonic explosion of "Why Can’t This Be Love", when Van Halen truly had something to prove with Dave off on a solo career and new singer Sammy Hager in place. Still, if you were ever a fan it satisfies.

Top Forty radio ain’t gonna play it, doesn’t matter what the reviewers say, they hated the band until everyone suddenly agreed Eddie was one of the greats, this is just for you. Who’ve waited, who’ve still believed, that despite your pot belly and thinning hair, despite the sand running through the hourglass, your prayers could still be answered, that deep inside you’re still eighteen and it’s so fucking great to be alive.

You’re sitting there hoping it doesn’t suck. And the repetition of the lyric in the chorus is a bit disappointing, Dave never took the easy way out, but then suddenly your butt is squirming in your seat, your arms are in the air, you’re dancing, you’ve wearing a shiteating grin and you’re saying to yourself THIS IS FUCKING GREAT!

Now you’ve got to start with the video, on the band’s homepage:
Van Halen home page
Sure, you miss Michael Anthony, but you get over that pretty quick since Wolfie’s aged, but what gets you is the swagger, the essence of what the band always was is still there. Dave knows we’re watching and he’s doing his best to be the coolest dude on the planet. Still, as always, it’s about Eddie. This is what made us all want to pick up the guitar and play. He just looks so fucking COOL! His axe is part of him, the way he bends his knee, how the fuck does he do this?

Meanwhile, they appear to be having fun. You remember fun, right? Sure, the money and the chicks were good, but it meant nothing if that amplified sound didn’t make you feel like the most powerful person on earth!

And just when you think it’s Dave’s monopolizing the track, two and a half minutes into it, Eddie starts to WAIL! His guitar is firing bullets and you’re writhing in ecstasy with the pain of being shot.

And it’s all so fucking EFFORTLESS!

But it gets better, hang on until the end, just when you think the song is over…. At 4:20, when the track quiets down and Eddie wrings this writhing sound from his guitar, like in "Finish What Ya Started", but this is mellower and so simple yet so utterly perfect.

And the second time through you notice a bit more texture under the track, Eddie was always a keyboard wizard too, never forget "Jump", and you’re contemplating whether the track is really that great and then you say, FUCK IT, I LOVE THIS!

I almost bought it, I couldn’t take the time to steal it.

Then I wondered, how hip was this band, how of the moment. The Vimeo clip on the homepage stuttered a ton the first time through, could "Tattoo" be on Spotify? OF COURSE!

And I played "5150" until the grooves were gray. Even though I believe the Dave era was better. When they remastered the greatest hits the first time through, back in ‘96, I couldn’t stop playing "And The Cradle Will Rock…"

And it positively will. Any young ‘un who sees this video is gonna have to go to the show. This ain’t nostalgia, this is as new as an iPhone, but it’s positively ALIVE!

Nerds have inherited the world, with their software and gadgets. But in one fell swoop Van Halen has taken it back.

THAT’S THE POWER OF ROCK AND ROLL!

and although it's mostly a rant about audio technology, I kind of agreed with this post more...so here goes:

Somebody e-mailed me an MP3 of "Tattoo" and it sounded positively AWFUL! All compressed, with the vocal right up front, and if I was a self-satisfied smugster I would have said it sucked.

But when I listened to a higher res version via my $250 Sennheiser headphones, when I listened on my $1500 AUX speakers, it came alive.

Now despite the advocates of the vinyl revolution, I've got to ask, how many people purchasing those discs have the systems to play them back on? I'm not talking about those Restoration Hardware record players we gave up in the mid-sixties, but amps with watts of power and speakers that could blow the doors off their hinges?

You see fifteen years ago, when cheap all-in-one systems replaced stereos, you got a lot of bang for your buck. It's just that the bucks involved were about $150. Which is like being amazed that a Honda Fit drives so well when you've never been behind the wheel of a Mercedes-Benz or BMW, never mind a Ferrari.

Yup, that's what we all aspired to. Instead of unloading our dough on electronic gadgets from phones to tablets, everybody saved up for a stereo, there were chains developed just to cater to this market. And there still are stereo shops, but if you've ever been to one your jaw will drop at the price. You've got to be rich to afford stereo today, never mind the fact that these high end shops are really video oriented, you end up getting a 5.1 system that's good for DVDs but just ain't right for music.

And that's what's replaced the stereo, TV sound systems. Home Theatre In A Box. Or a soundbar. Felice has got the best soundbar Yamaha makes, and for music it's positively awful, it hasn't got that power, that punch.

And then you've got the musicians. Cranking up the tracks they do produce so they sound good on radio, eliminating all dynamic range.

And what you end up with is music produced to sound good on the shitty listening devices people employ today. You're gonna have a hard time making it as an acoustic act in this day and age, because there's not one playback system that evidences that warmth, certainly not the CD whose sampling rate is too low to deliver quality.

So, we've got clowns to the left of us and jokers to the right and the end result is we get the music we deserve.

In other words, if you're listening to hard rock or acoustic music on earbuds, anything but Top Forty dreck, you're gonna be predisposed to think it sucks. Because you've got to feel the music. And almost nobody has enough power to generate that kind of oomph, only distortion.

And just like the rest of the problems in our nation, no one wants to take responsibility. The acts and the industry just want to blame the public.

First and foremost we need a better broadband system. So we can deliver hi-res sound over the Internet. But instead of looking to the dividends to be paid, the entertainment companies want to put on the brakes, they want SOPA, they want to jet us back to the past. If people could hear what great music sounds like, don't you think they'd be excited and want more?

And just like HDTV was sold by word of mouth, people insisting their friends come over to see it, if we had hi-res audio playable on hi-res units, the scene would burgeon.

But even if you use good headphones on an iPod, it's still gonna sound like shit, because there's just not enough power to boost the highs and lows, to avoid clipping.

So stereo continues to live in darkness. (And let's stick with stereo, we've learned two channels are enough, the public has shrugged its shoulders at more twice.) And it's our own damn fault. But the problem is if you make arena rock, your potential audience is gonna hear it like a tinny radio playing in the background while you're taking a shower. And an acoustic guitar will resemble something made of plastic. And instead of soul, we've got two-dimensional garbage.

I guarantee you if I packed all the Van Halen naysayers into a studio control room and blasted "Tattoo" with hundreds of watts of power via high end speakers they'd be floored.

But trying to listen to the song on earbuds is like making love wrapped in a shower curtain, with glasses made of steel wool so it's almost impossible to see your partner.

Sex would take a hit.

And music's taken a hit.

And nobody's doing anything about it. Because they're just not shooting high enough. They want better laptop sound. Higher resolution MP3s. No, what we want is uncompressed audio played through high end systems. This will sell, if someone would just lead the way.

But instead all we know is the public is stupid and won't spend for this even though iPhones and iPads are being scarfed up by the millions and cable bills are stratospheric. People will pay if you give them a high quality offering, isn't that what Steve Jobs taught us?

And if you're listening to "Tattoo" on fifty nine dollar speakers, or the ones that came free with your computer, YOUR OPINION DOESN'T COUNT!

Tattoo Disappears

There’s no money in the damn record anyway. So why was Van Halen’s "Tattoo" pulled from Spotify in the U.S. (and not in the U.K?)

I’m sick and tired of these acts putting money first. Refusing to be on the bleeding edge but insisting on pulling up the rear, screaming, kicking and crying all the way that they just can’t make the kind of money they used to. Meanwhile, they kick us in the balls by charging in excess of a hundred dollars for a concert ticket, have you seen the Van Halen ticket prices? $162 bucks a ticket? Hell, you already did the reunion show, isn’t this one supposed to be for the fans?

Everyone complains they can’t get rich. Black Keys are not on Spotify, nor is Adele. Because they need to get all that cash. If these acts were in a burning building they wouldn’t turn around and save their coworkers, they’d rush out, putting chairs under doors so no one could impede their descent.

Just because you’re old doesn’t mean you’ve got to be antiquated, doesn’t mean you can’t enter the future. You make these damn records on computer, maybe we should make you go back to a studio with tape and an analog board and have you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. NO RECORDING AT HOME KIDS!

And magnetic tape is in short supply because the future arrived. But not in business. Buy that damn disc. Oh, now they want you to buy the MP3, even though they kicked and screamed about downloads for almost a decade.

And now everybody’s against streaming services. Which pay seventy percent of their revenues plus to rights holders anyway. And it’s the future, just like you can now find Led Zeppelin and the Beatles on iTunes, it won’t be long before everybody’s on Spotify.

And stop complaining about money. Shit, without your fans you’re NOTHING! And if you think these fans aren’t stealing and streaming on YouTube where you don’t get paid at all…

You’re so damn stupid. Finally, someone gets ahead of the public, which we’ve been waiting for for a decade, and you want to pull them back into the past. If your bank was robbed in the old west you’d have gotten a giant megaphone and yelled for them to bring the cash back, instead of doing what they do in every western, form a posse AND CUT THEM OFF AT THE PASS!

That’s what Spotify does.

And it’s not only Spotify, that’s the winning service so far, but pick MOG or Rdio or Rhapsody, I don’t care. They’re the future.

As for ownership… You might be able to play your vinyl records today, but if you think you’ll be able to play MP3s even a decade from now, you haven’t tried to open up a Windows 3.0 file in XP, never mind Vista or Windows 7. Instant obsolescence baby, which is why it’s all about access instead of ownership.

What kind of messed up, screwed up country do we live in where the acts, who are supposed to lead, are far behind? That’s what blew up music decades ago, the acts led. Now everybody’s whored out to the corporation and bitching and moaning that they just can’t get paid, that they just can’t get rich.

The longer you insist on people buying tracks, the longer you leave even more money on the table. Recordings have lost half of their income, the way out is to get everybody to subscribe to a streaming service, which they will do, just like they bought mobile phones, because they’re so damn great. Push people into the future, where they pay, don’t try to pull them back into the past.

If kids were running the music business it would look completely different.

But the oldsters on their iPads and iPhones are writing checks and are afraid of the Internet.

Utterly ridiculous.

P.S. If everything’s on Spotify that’s where everybody goes! It makes finding and listening to music that much easier, and isn’t that what it’s all about, connecting with the fan? But no, you’d rather hide behind samples on iTunes, not knowing that people can listen for free on YouTube AND MOST PEOPLE JUST DON’T CARE! Most people have got no idea your record came out, but if everybody’s got a streaming service, they’re tuned in, they keep checking for new stuff, IT’S GOOD FOR ALL OF US!

misterID wrote:

Nothing wrong with that, Tyler. I love Prostitute. I think its one of Axl's best moments.

But I've heard a remix of Prostitute, might have been Axlin's, where it starts out with the piano and synths. And another mix started out with just the opening guitar riff, and holy hell those were fantastic. There's some great string arrangements there also.

Kind of shows me that Prostitute wasn't mixed properly to take it to it's full potential. If it would have taken a less is more approach, with less guitar and drum loops, it would be one of my top 5 GN'R songs, possibly top 3. Right now it's in my top 10.

Wow, somebody remembered it. Thanks for the shout out.

Here it is for anyone that wants a refresher...

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=KMQJ6B8G

Basically I just brought forward and highlighted the stuff that was so strong in it. More of Axl's piano for an extended intro. Bucket's brief but sweet solo was highlighted more, and the outro had the added string sections to lock it out just for those who didn't get to hear it.

There was SO much great stuff buried in that song.