Eddie Van Halen

Van Halen is an American hard rock band formed in Pasadena, California, in 1972. The band achieved success after the release of its debut album Van... Halen . As of 2007, Van Halen has sold 75 million albums worldwide and has had the most #1 hits on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, Van Halen is the 19th best-selling band/artist of all time with sales of over 56 million albums in the United States alone, and is one of five rock bands that have had two albums sell more than 10 million copies in the U.S. In 1996, the RIAA certified their debut album diamond for ten million in U.S. sales. The band is also known for the drama surrounding the exits of former members. The multiple exits of lead singers David Lee Roth, Sammy Hagar and Gary Cherone were surrounded in controversy and press coverage, including numerous conflicting press statements between the former singers and the band.
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Warner Bros. Records Inc. is an American record label. It was the foundation label of the present-day Warner Music Group, and now operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of that corporation. It maintains a close relationship with its former parent, Warner Bros. Pictures, although the two companies... are independently owned. Rob Cavallo currently serves as Chairman of the company. Warner Bros. Records was originally established in 1958 as the recorded music division of the American movie studio Warner Bros. Pictures. For most of its existence it was one of a group of labels owned and operated by larger parent corporations. The sequence of companies that controlled Warner Bros. and its allied labels evolved through a convoluted series of corporate mergers and acquisitions from the early 1960s to the early 2000s. Over this period, Warner Bros. Records grew from a struggling minor player in the industry to become one of the top recording labels in the world. In 2003 these music assets were divested by their then owner Time Warner and purchased by a private equity group. This independent company traded as the Warner Music Group , before being bought by Access Industries in 2011.
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Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has... its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of other genres such as blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical and other musical sources. Musically, rock has centered around the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with bass guitar and drums. Typically, rock is song-based music usually with a 4/4 time signature utilizing a verse-chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse and common musical characteristics are difficult to define. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political in emphasis. The dominance of rock by white, male musicians has been seen as one of the key factors shaping the themes explored in rock music. Rock places a higher degree of emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and an ideology of authenticity than pop music.
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