Where Van Halen Got the Name for Their ‘5150’ Album

This week on the WPDH Album of the Week, we'll feature another great Van Halen album 5150.

5150 is the seventh studio album from Van Halen and the first of four albums to be recorded with lead singer Sammy Hagar, who replaced the high kicking David Lee Roth.

The album was named after Eddie Van Halen's home studio, 5150, in turn, named after a California law enforcement term for a mentally disturbed person, a reference to section 5150 of the California Welfare and Institutions Code.

Van Halen has used the name 5150 several times.

The album was a huge success reaching number one on the Billboard 200 chart, surpassing Van Halen's 1984, which peaked at number two behind Michael Jackson's Thriller album, which Eddie Van Halen made a guest appearance on.

Replacing David Lee Roth was not an easy task, with neither of the Van Halen brothers wanting to do it. In July of 1985, Eddie Van Halen was referred to former Montrose singer Sammy Hagar by a mechanic who was working on his Lamborghini.

Sammy and Eddie hit it off and Hagar and the band immediately began work on new songs. The album was started in November of 1985, and finished by February 1986, a month before it's release.

This was the culmination of what people would call 'Van Hagar', and even Warner Brothers encouraged the band to change their name to that. Despite the controversy that surrounded replacing Roth, the album was the band's first to top the Billboard 200, and went Platinum in the first week, according to Sammy Hagar.

The album's opening song Good Enough can be heard in the movie Space Balls.

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