My Summer 2017 Playlist Sounds A Lot Like '1984'

My summer 2017 playlist is sounding a lot like 1984 - quite literally.

I recently ended up revisiting Van Halen’s landmark album “1984.” The nostalgia trip came after tuning into the “Rolling Stone Music Now” podcast’s interview with Noel Monk, Van Halen’s manager during the band’s heyday in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Monk discussed his new tell-all book, “Running with the Devil: A Backstage Pass to the Wild Times, Loud Rock, and the Down and Dirty Truth Behind the Making of Van Halen.”

Monk described David Lee Roth and the Van Halen brothers as true characters - and Monk is quite a character himself. For example, Monk related a story in which Van Halen was on tour and, after the brothers got into an out-of-control argument with Roth over something relatively trivial, they tied Roth up in a straitjacket to keep him from trashing a hotel room.

After listening to Monk’s wild and crazy tales of life with Van Halen, I pulled up YouTube and listened to classics like “Jump,” “Panama” and “Hot for Teacher” (the stripped-down version with just the drum track is definitely worth checking out).

And, of course, no musical nostalgia trip back to the summer of 1984 would be complete without revisiting Prince’s “Purple Rain.” This summer, we Prince fans received a special treat when Warner Bros. released “Purple Rain Deluxe (Expanded  Edition).” The package not only has previously unreleased songs and alternate versions of the familiar songs we all love like “Let’s Go Crazy” and B-sides like “Another Lonely Christmas,” but a concert DVD as well.

One of my favorite songs from the “Purple Rain Deluxe (Expanded Edition)” is a live version of “I Would Die 4 U” from the “Purple Rain” tour. As a lifelong Prince fan as well as a lifelong Ohioan, it’s cool that the show was recorded during the tour’s Cleveland stop. (I live in Columbus, the Buckeye State’s capital city, which is about two hours south of Cleveland.)

Listening to the live version of “I Would Die 4 U,” I love it when Prince calls out to the crowd to sing along: “Cleveland, help me!”

For my full review of “Purple Rain Deluxe (Expanded Edition),” click here.