I meant waiting in the wings to join the band, not perform at the VMAs. I think I misread yer post.

Roth has one thing in common with Hagar: Both singers talked to Alex VH daily on the phone when they were in the band.

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/van-halen-conflict/

David Lee Roth: ‘There is Always Conflict’ in Van Halen
by Matthew Wilkening

David Lee Roth has been securely back in the Van Halen camp for over five years now, but he says that doesn’t mean the band members are done arguing with each other, as they’ve apparently done since the moment they formed: “The conflict was immediate and sustained from day one. Not a note of this symphony has changed.”

In a recent interview on the Opie and Anthony show, Roth explains, “There is always conflict. I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. In our band, there is constant back and forth, and at the same time, I think everybody’s more than old enough now to really respect what we’ve been allowed to do. We’ve been allowed to do this job for how many summers in a row? It’s like we’ve never been kicked out of summer camp!”

Roth also explains that while he talks to drummer Alex Van Halen almost every day to plot out the band’s next moves — “I call it, ‘Coffee With Al’” — he and guitarist Edward Van Halen aren’t nearly so chatty. “I probably won’t speak with Edward for six to eight months at a time. And when we do get together — I’ve had girlfriends like this — it was new, it was exciting, it was fresh.”

When the hosts lightheartedly suggest that perhaps group therapy would be a way for the band to communicate better, Roth sums up his thoughts on the profession with his typical brand of humor and wit: “I think all you learn in therapy is how to lie to each other.”

http://www.vhnd.com/2013/03/27/27-years ... -frontman/

27 Years Ago Today – Van Halen’s First Concert With Sammy Hagar As Frontman


Van Halen was so late delivering the 5150 tapes that the album was delayed and it’s release date pushed back. Two warm-up shows in Anchorage, AK, and a third in Hawaii were cancelled because the album was still being mixed by Eddie, Donn Landee, and Mick Jones in-between rehearsals. (They were later rescheduled for the end of the tour, but for unknown reasons were again cancelled).

Then finally, when the new album was completed and the tour ready to start, the Hagar/Van Halen union was about to face the ultimate test – the fans. 5150 was released March 24, 1986. Three days later in Shreveport, Louisiana, Sammy Hagar was formally introduced to the standing room only crowd at the Hirsch Memorial Coliseum as Van Halen’s new lead singer. The media was there in droves to witness the event, piqued by a keen interest to see how Hagar would be accepted. That night, a packed house of 10,000 people shouted their approval.

A reformed Bachman Turner Overdrive opened the much-anticipated tour. In the weeks to come, the Van Halen road show was enthusiastically greeted by energetic, sold-out audiences around the country. A month after 5150 was released, it started a four-week run at the top of the Billboard charts. It was the first Van Halen album ever to attain No. 1 status. In May, “Why Can’t This Be Love” piqued at No. 3, and by July the record had sold 3 million copies. Millions of fans loved the union between Hagar and Van Halen. But not everyone was buying it – no matter how many albums were sold, many fans still prefered the original Van Halen lineup. There were basically three camps of fans – those who preferred Dave, those who preferred Sammy, and those who loved the band with either frontman. As far as the media went, some journalists that applauded the group’s new direction, while others believed the band would soon run its course with Sammy Hagar.

“I liked the controversy,” claimed Sammy. “If you want to get down to it, I thrived on it. I liked the fact that I had given up a successful solo career in order to join a band, rather than quit the group to have a solo career like everyone else does. We got a lot of album reviews on that record – some good, several bad. For example, lyrics were printed on a Van Halen album for the first time. This guy in Playboy accused me of being on an ego trip because of it. There were some great lyrics on 5150 that I was extremely proud of, especially in songs like ‘Best of Both Worlds’, ‘Good Enough’ and ‘Love Walks In’.

Sammy later admitted in his autobiography to being extremely nervous about the first gig with Van Halen. “We went to Shreveport, Louisiana, to do that show on March 26, 1987. I was a wreck. I don’t think I’ve ever been more nervous before a show. We came out and open with “One Way To Rock,” one of my songs. The barricade went down. The audience went crazy. It happened in an instant, a flash. It was killer. We were on top of the world at that moment.” [VHND notes two errors in his recollection: the year was 1986, and the song they opened with was "You Really Got Me"].

“I refused to sing ‘Jump’. It was just hard for me. I write my own songs. ‘Jump’ was tough for me lyrically – ‘Can’t you see me standing here, I’ve got my back against the record machine, you know what I mean, you know what I mean? I might as well jump’. That was hard for me. I couldn’t sing the song with any heart and soul. I’ve got to sing something that I mean.

“‘Hey, hey, hey you, who was that? Hey, baby, how you been?’ I just couldn’t sing that shit, great as it was. The first night, in a moment of panic, I pulled a guy out of the crowd to sing it. The audience went nuts. The band thought it was great. When the guy got to “I might as well…”, I’d spring in the air like a maniac. It worked. We kept it. I’m the entire tour, I sang ‘Jump’ maybe twice.”

As far as the set list for the tour, Sammy told Ed, Al, and Michael that he didn’t want to play too much of the old stuff. They were totally down with that. They decided to go out and make a stand with mostly new material. The tour was documented in the concert DVD Live Without A Net.

Never-seen shot of Eddie on stage in Shreveport, Louisiana, March 27, 1986

Typical 5150 set list:

You Really Got Me
There’s Only One Way to Rock
Summer Nights
Get Up
Drum Solo
Why Can’t This Be Love?
“5150″
Bass Solo
Panama
Best of Both Worlds
Love Walks In
Good Enough
Guitar Solo
I Can’t Drive 55
Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love
Jump
Rock and Roll


Read more: http://www.vhnd.com/2013/03/27/27-years ... -frontman/

Well, now it appears that Sammy wants to make nice...

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/sammy-ha ... van-halen/

Sammy Hagar Would Love to Hang Out With Eddie Van Halen Again
by Dave Lifton

The relationship between Sammy Hagar and Van Halen has been strained, to say the least, for quite a number of years now. However, in a new interview, the singer and alcohol magnate says that he’d love to try to patch things up with Eddie Van Halen.

Hagar was asked by Vegas Rocks! (via Blabbermouth), what he would say to the guitar legend if he had the opportunity. Without much hesitation, Hagar spoke of his willingness to reconnect. The video is embedded below.

“Well, right now I’d say, ‘Wow. Great. I’ve seen some pictures of you recently. You look like you’re healthy and doing great,” he told Sally Steele. I’m really proud of you and I’d like to see you continue doing that. Here’s my phone number. Call me up if you wanna hang and just have some fun and goof off.’”

However, Hagar acknowledged that he learned his lesson from his previous attempt at reuniting with Van Halen. He said that he would be more cautious about any further projects with the band, while also practically demanding that his old buddy be brought back into the fold.

“And whatever that led to,” he continued. “I wouldn’t say, ‘Hey, let’s get together and do it again,’ because you would have to do that slow, because I would never do it again under the last circumstances. But I would do it again under different circumstances. So it’d be like that. And then I would also say, ‘And also here’s Mikey’s [Anthony] phone numbers with mine.’”

Of course, Hagar doesn’t need to be in Van Halen. In addition to his work with Chickenfoot, he’s currently working on a new solo album to be released this year. Last month he reunited in the studio with his former Montrose bandmates Bill Church and Denny Carmassi.

Van Halen kicked off their Japanese tour on in Nagoya on Tuesday.

The Van Halen News Desk reports the show, at the city’s Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium, featured 27 tracks and clocked in at 2 hours and 20 minutes.

The band’s expanded setlist (normally 24 songs on this tour) included three additional tunes: “Atomic Punk,” “Jamie’s Cryin’” and “Mean Street.”

Frontman David Lee Roth’s solo featured a new twist from the 2012 shows, with his recent short film trailer “Tokyo Story” playing behind his introduction to “Ice Cream Man” as opposed to last year’s “Dog Story” vignette.

You can watch the “Tokyo Story” video here.

Before the show, Wolfgang Van Halen posted a photo of himself and his father Eddie joking around backstage (above), writing “We’re almost ready for ya, Nagoya. Just gotta tune up real quick… ”

Van Halen are playing four concerts in Japan this month as part of their “A Different Kind Of Truth” tour; these were rescheduled dates from last fall when the group went on hiatus while Eddie recovered from surgery for a severe case of Diverticulitus.

The band will play Tokyo on Friday before heading to Osaka for two shows next week.

Sammy Hagar wasn't Van Halen's first choice to replace David Lee Roth when Roth quit the band to start a solo career in 1985, according to Patty Smyth who has revealed details about being approached to join the group.

Journalist Roger Hillis recently spoke with Smyth, the frontwoman for the band Scandal which had a hit in 1984 with "The Warrior" that hit No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100. The News Journal ran portions of the interview on Thursday, ahead of Patty Smyth and Scandal's show this Saturday in Dewey Beach, Delaware, but Hillis has sent antiMusic some portions of the interview that didn't make the Journal's final article that provide a little more detail about Smyth and Van Halen.

"Eddie asked me to join Van Halen," Smyth said. "When Valerie [Bertinelli] wrote her book, she downplayed the whole thing, which I don't understand. They had asked me not to talk about it in interviews at the time, because they didn't want Sammy Hagar to feel like he was the second choice. It was a long time ago; I never bring it up, but people do ask me about it and there's no reason to deny it."

Hillis asked Smyth how serious the Van Halen proposal was and she responded, "Eddie was dead serious. He wanted me to join the band, and we talked about it repeatedly.

"I had several problems with it," Smyth said. "I had just gotten pregnant with my daughter; I didn't want to move to California, plus those guys were partying very hard at that time."

In the News Journal article the quote ends there, but Hillis tells us that she went on to say, "The very last time we talked about it was after a David Letterman taping in New York; we were sitting around a table with Paul Schaeffer, Danny Kortchmar and Valerie. Eddie said he needed a 'yes' or a 'no' from me so he could move on and find someone else if I wasn't interested. When I said 'no,' Eddie called Sammy."

Smyth went on to score a No. 2 hit in 1992 with "Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough," a duet she recorded with the Eagles icon Don Henley. "I had sang backgrounds on all of Don's solo albums, so I asked him to sing it with me and he agreed. We didn't know it was going to be a big hit, but I did know it was the best song I had ever written," Smyth said. "I'd tried recording that song twice before and I was on the verge of giving up on it."

As for turning down the gig with Van Halen, "In retrospect, I would have loved to have played with Eddie and the guys," Smyth said. "I haven't always made all of the right decisions from a career perspective, but things worked out in the end. If I had done that, I never would have written 'Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough.'

Read more at http://www.antimusic.com/dayinrock/#32HaopcyjhDv071A.99

Could have been interesting.

I vaguely remember hearing something about that a few years ago.

The Patty Smyth thing was never much of a secret. I remember it being mentioned on MTV News at the time.

At this rate it might be more interesting to hear who Eddie didn't approach about replacing Dave...

Wonder if he asked Wolfie..............

Mark Tremonti was on That Metal Show last night and said they've begun working on the second Tremonti album, and Wolfie is involved from the get-go this time. After the first album, the bass player decided he didn't want to tour, so Mark brought Wolfie in the day before the tour. I saw them at Experience PRS, when Wolfie had been with them three days, and he nailed it.

This is NOT meant as an insult to Chris, it is meant as an insult to Van Halen:

Anthony, let it go. Van Halen hasn't been relevant since the 80's.

I've never cared about "relevance."

That much should be obvious by now. I think Mikey's got a right to feel the way he does.

It's like Dave once said, Eddie's a genius with a guitar, but a lousy human being.

Wanna feel old? Eddie is 60 this week! The rock God is now officially a senior citizen.

It's actually 55 for everything except SSI these days.