Mean Street

"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. The track opens with high tempo guitar 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] The lyrics, 'Somebody said, "Fair Warning! Lord strike that poor boy down!"' are the only lyrics that appear in the liner notes, shown spray painted on an outside wall of a building, part of which, where the Van Halen logo is also spray painted, is smashed. Interestingly, the music for the song was the product of two different songs that were recorded on Van Halen's demo from the mid-seventies. The solo from a song called "She's the Woman" is used as a bridge between verses, and the main riff is from a song called "Voodoo Queen". Neither of these songs have been officially released.[2]