Rising up from the backyard party circuit of 1970's Pasadena, California, Van Halen reached the pinnacle of their success with the release of the multi-platinum selling album, 1984. Already a headline act that could routinely fill arenas across the country, their sixth album made Van Halen virtually a household name. With the help of three heavy rotation videos on MTV and their first and only number one single, there was no bigger rock band at that point in time. They were the very definition of “rock star†in the 1980’s. They embodied, and in fact embraced, the excesses of the decade. 1984 was almost the perfect storm, the likes that we may never see again. This is the story of the events that led to the making of the ten-times platinum record that ended up tearing the band apart.