Diver Down

Diver Down is the fifth studio album by American rock band Van Halen, released on April 19, 1982. It spent 65 weeks on the album chart in the United States and had, by 1998, sold four million copies in the United States. Background The album cover artwork displays the "diver down" flag used in many US jurisdictions to indicate a SCUBA diver is currently submerged in the area. Asked about the cover in a 1982 interview with Sylvie Simmons (Sounds, June 23, 1982), David Lee Roth said it was meant to imply that "there was something going on that's not apparent to your eyes. You put up the red flag with the white slash. Well, a lot of people approach Van Halen as sort of the abyss. It means, it's not immediately apparent to your eyes what is going on underneath the surface." While impressed by Roth's creative marketing spin, manager Noel Monk also explained the sophomoric sexual double-entendre "dive her down" in his 2017 band memoir Running with the Devil. The back cover of the album features a photo by Richard Aaron of Van Halen on stage at the Tangerine Bowl in Orlando, Florida, that was taken on October 24, 1981, as they concluded a set opening for The Rolling Stones. Music Five of the twelve songs on the album are covers, the most popular being the cover of "(Oh) Pretty Woman", a Roy Orbison song. In retrospect, it turned out to be one of the Van Halen brothers' least-favorite albums, with Eddie stating "I would rather bomb with my own music than be the world's biggest cover band." In addition there are three short instrumentals "Cathedral", "Intruder" and the "Little Guitars" intro, leaving only four original full Van Halen songs on the album. However, at the time while he admitted to the pressure the band was put under to record it, he was able to tell Guitar Player (Dec. 1982) that it "was fun":