After more than two decades of playing sold-out concert halls, selling millions of albums and enduring various lineup changes and solo projects, Van Halen is recognized as one of the most resilient and successful rock bands to emerge from the 1970s. Eddie and Alex Van Halen were raised in Pasadena, the children of Dutch immigrants who immigrated to California in 1967. The Van Halen brothers grew up taking classical piano lessons, switching to guitar (Eddie) and drums (Alex) as teenagers. In 1974, they hooked up with David Lee Roth (vocals) and Michael Anthony (bass), while gigging around town in their band Mammoth. Within a few years, they had become one of the most popular draws on the Los Angeles scene. Fans packed L.A.'s smoky rock clubs to check out Eddie's unconventional guitar riffs and Roth's over-the-top showmanship. The band got a break in 1976 when Kiss bassist Gene Simmons noticed them at a local club and financed a recording session for the band. On the strength of Simmons' recommendation, as legend has it, Van Halen was signed to Warner Bros. Their debut album, Van Halen, was released in 1978 and included the hit singles "Runnin' With the Devil" and a cover of the Kinks' "You Really Got Me." Eddie Van Halen took electric guitar technique to new heights with his patented two-handed tapping and pull-off effects, while Roth's tongue-in-cheek histrionics proved to be a refreshing alternative in an industry chock full of self-important rock stars. Within six months of its release, Van Halen was certified platinum. The album not only launched Van Halen's career, but it came to influence countless American rock bands during the next decade. During the next few years, Van Halen became one of the hardest working and most profitable bands in the recording industry, releasing a string of multi-platinum albums in quick succession; 1979's Van Halen II, 1980's Women and Children First, 1981's Fair Warning and 1982's Diver Down. But it was the album 1984, released on New Year's Day of that year, that solidified the band's superstar status. The album contained the mega-hits "Jump," "Panama" and "Hot For Teacher," with their accompanying raucous videos that received seemingly non-stop airplay on MTV. All was not well within the band, however. Rising tensions between Roth and the other band members were increasingly evident; on their 1984 world tour the band didn't even play on the same stage, but rather performed on four separate platforms, symbolic of the escalating rift among its members. Finally, in 1985, after taking time off to record a successful solo album (and delaying work on the follow-up to 1984) Roth parted ways with Van Halen.