Mean Street
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"Mean Street" is the lead off track from Van Halen's 1981 album Fair Warning. The song set the tone for the album in that it is a very dark and almost brutal sounding song. It starts with some extremely fast playing from Eddie Van Halen as the song fades in and the lyrics deal with life on the rough side of town. The aforementioned intro is a "myriad" of tapping harmonics and bass-slap like techniques that Eddie Van Halen has continued to incorporate in his live guitar solo. [1]
"Somebody Said Fair Warning! Lord strike that poor boy down!" sums up this song pretty well. Interestingly, the music for the song was the product of two different songs that were recorded on their demo. A song called "She's the Woman" uses the solo as a bridge between verses, and the main riff is from the song called "Voodoo Queen". [2]
This is not entirely uncommon in Van Halen, considering Eddie saying the piano riff for "Right Now" was being played by him as far back as 1983.
