Songfacts®:

• Rock comes in many forms - hard, soft, punk, folk, Christian and alt to name just a few. But according to Sammy Hagar, there's really just one way to rock: with all the passion of your being. In that way, Air Supply (soft) is just like Guns N' Roses (hard), although we get the feeling Sammy is partial to the louder and faster forms of rock.
  
  The song is a celebration of music and of life itself.
• Released in 1981, "There's Only One Way To Rock" came in the midst of Sammy Hagar's solo career after he left the group Montrose (1975) and when he joined Van Halen (1985). It's one of his most popular songs and a live favorite, but it wasn't sold as a single so it didn't chart on the Hot 100. Many radio stations played the song though, and it helped drum up interest for his album Standing Hampton, which went Platinum.
• We can thank Hagar for popularizing the phrase "mental masturbation" in the lyric:
  
  And you can analyze this situation
  To me it's all just mental masturbation
  
  Hagar has always been much more of a doer than a thinker, although in his later years he released some very introspective songs, including "Eagles Fly" and "Deeper Kinda Love."
• "There's Only One Way To Rock" often showed up in Van Halen's setlists when Hagar fronted the band. Many fans feel the definitive version of the song is a Van Halen live recording from New Haven, Connecticut (New Halen!), which appears on their Live Without A Net album. The show's opening was a veritable explosion with Hagar - no mean guitarist himself - sharing the lead with Edward Van Halen. For many fans, this is indeed the only way to rock, and the only way to start a Van Halen concert. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England