For hard rock and metal, 2012 certainly wasn’t the best year that I can remember. In all honesty, there were only a few albums that came across my desk that really excited me.

Part 2, Mainstream and Modern Jazz >>> For the sixth straight year, it’s time to look back on the year in music to recollect which albums I really, really liked this year and make a list.

Producer Andy Johns has worked with Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones, but he never saw anything like Eddie Van Halen — who displayed a genius for guitar and every-day home tools during sessions for 1991′s For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.

Recent positive reports of Eddie Van Halen’s recovery from surgery following a nasty case of diverticulitis have proven true: Van Halen has rescheduled the Japanese shows that were postponed in the wake of the guitarist’s health scare.

Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth, in the new episode of his online program “Roth TV,” pokes fun at his own 1980s-era sartorial choices — adding commentary to the over-the-top video for his No. 12 hit “Just a Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody.”

It probably came as little surprise that some long-time fans of Van Halen chafed when the band’s guitarist chose his teenaged son to replace departed co-founding bassist Michael Anthony.

Episode 2 of “The Roth Show,” starring Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth, takes fans into the creative process behind his memorable videos for the 1980s hits “Jump” and “California Girls.”

Wolfgang Van Halen, filling in on Creed guitarist Mark Tremonti’s solo tour, says he arrived in Birmingham, England to a rude welcome — and from the British singing group One Direction, no less.

When Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart crossed paths with Van Halen in 1979, the brothers Eddie and Alex were at the height of their wild-and-crazy days. Nancy, in Heart’s just-released memoir, says the pair even propositioned her and her sister.

Journey co-founder Neal Schon knew, from the first, that Eddie Van Halen was a special guitar talent. He’d also worked with Sammy Hagar on a project away from Journey — and that’s how Schon played a role in the second Van Halen era.