Diver Down is the fifth studio album by American rock band Van Halen and was released on April 14, 1982. It spent 65 weeks on the album chart in the United States and had, by 1998, sold four million copies in the United States. Background The album cover artwork displays the "diver down" flag used in many US jurisdictions to indicate a SCUBA diver is currently submerged in the area. Asked about the cover in a 1982 interview with Sylvie Simmons (Sounds, June 23, 1982), David Lee Roth said it was meant to imply that "there was something going on that's not apparent to your eyes. You put up the red flag with the white slash. Well, a lot of people approach Van Halen as sort of the abyss. It means, it's not immediately apparent to your eyes what is going on underneath the surface." While impressed by Roth's creative marketing spin, manager Noel Monk also explained the sophomoric sexual double-entendre "dive her down" in his 2017 band memoir Running With the Devil. The back cover of the album features a photo by Richard Aaron of Van Halen on stage at the Tangerine Bowl in Orlando, Florida, that was taken on October 24, 1981, as they concluded a set opening for The Rolling Stones. Music Five of the twelve songs on the album are covers, the most popular being the cover of "(Oh) Pretty Woman", a Roy Orbison song. In retrospect, it turned out to be one of the Van Halen brothers' least-favorite albums, with Eddie stating "I would rather bomb with my own music than be the world's biggest cover band." However, at the time while he admitted to the pressure the band was put under to record it, he was able to tell Guitar Player (Dec. 1982) that it "was fun": In addition to this, two of the original songs were around long before the album was made. "Hang 'Em High" can trace its roots back to the band's 1976 bootlegs as "Last Night", which had the same music but different lyrics. "Cathedral" was played in its current form throughout 1981 with earlier versions going back to 1980. Additionally, "Happy Trails" had been recorded for their 1977 demos. Songs Two interviews from the period give the best account of how the band – especially Roth and Eddie Van Halen – saw the album at the time. The comments