Van Hagar To Tour In 2017

[FORD]

You can watch that last clip safely. No Hagar in it at all!

[Terry]

I'm assuming the clip (which I haven't watched) is from...what is it...Live Right Here Right Now, or whatever the live home video release from the FUCK tour was called.

I did watch that release once.

I think I've actually seen all the official Van Hagar live releases, if they were limited to the Live Without A Net, the FUCK tour and the pay-per-view special for the Balance tour. The band became less and less potent, even strictly and solely by Van Hagar standards, with each subsequent tour. I think that's sort of true in general for the Hagar years, where the longer that lineup stuck around, the less special they became. Like, I never once heard anyone in my social circles bragging that they scored Van Hagar tickets, whereas when Roth was in the band nabbing tickets to a show actually WAS something brag about: it wasn't like you had to go through hoops to see the band live when Sammy was with them after the first 5150 tour. Tickets were easy to get.

After Roth left, the legend of what that band had been just got larger the longer they remained split. That's why the 1996 reunion generated so much interest. Unlike the 2004 Hagar reunion tour, where the band were playing to at times less than full venues. It extends to the present, where I don't get much of a sense people are eagerly salivating over the prospect of Hagar rejoining the group. I mean, I suppose hardcore Hagar fans and Eddie grunts - who seem to accept whatever these guys undertake without reservation - will be excited about that prospect. Then again, for such peoples Sammy could take a dump onstage accompanied to Eddie producing Elephant noises on his guitar and they would think that was fantastic.

Beyond that devoted audience, I don't feel much of a reaction to Van Hagar 2018. Not nearly as much as I felt in 2007 with Roth rejoining. Maybe my personal preferences are coloring my take on that and the links, redrocker.com and vanhalen.net are going nuts over the possibilities.

[Terry]

I'm a bit proud to say that I honestly don't have the slightest clue what the fuck you are talking about.

I listened to 5150 a couple of times and saw "Live without a net" once. That's all the Hagar I could talk about if I have to.

I did end up buying 5150, OU812 and FUCK when they were released. 5150 was a given for me to get because I was huge on Eddie Van Halen and was interested to hear what the band would do with Roth gone. OU812 and FUCK to see if it was going to get any better.

I believe I heard their version of Won't Get Fooled Again off the FUCK live album once or twice on the radio. I've also heard Balance two or three times. I stopped spending my own money on their stuff after FUCK came out. Far as the studio stuff goes, all those albums had a few tracks that were fair to good on an instrumental level. All those albums also had a few tracks that sounded uninspired to the point where I don't even think Roth had enough sugar to make lemonade out of those lemons. And all those albums also had a few tracks that chugged along to no particular effect, good or bad.

It sounded at times after Roth left as if Eddie simply wasn't being challenged during the creative and recording process. One could almost hear depending on the track where it was clear Eddie was pushing himself to channel his inspiration, and also where Eddie was fobbing off (by his own previous standards) cookie-cutter rock riffs and neither Hagar nor the producers were saying that stuff could be improved with more work. A bit lax on quality control, and allowing average stuff to slip by inspection, to put it into basic manufacturing terms.

But, yeah, as has been said, Sammy Hagar is at the end of the day an average talent. Average lyricist, average musician and I'd say perhaps a slightly above average singer. Hagar wasn't going to elevate what was going on musically in Van Halen via his participation, because he simply couldn't. I mean, I never thought it was beyond the realms of possibility that Eddie could have made compelling rock music without David Lee Roth...that it was impossible for that happen if a singer other than Roth was working with Eddie. It wouldn't be CVH obviously, but it could be something fantastic in its own right. However, any thoughts I had of Eddie making that kind of music with Hagar mostly vanished by the time OU812 came out, and with the FUCK release it was clear that the only reason left to even listen to the group was to hear what Eddie was doing. It must also be said that Eddie started going a bit on autopilot at times during the Van Hagar years (rearranging CVH material at times a la Source Of Infection as a Hot For Teacher Redux or Top Of The World as a DTNA/Jump hybrid or Mine All Mine which recycled the synth music used for Dave's 1984 tour samurai sword routine), so even the reasons for continuing to listen to the band centering around Eddie's playing started to dwindle.

[Terry]

For me, Sammy Hagar and Gary Cherone are both a case of that "fake it until you make it" mentality, or the Peter principle.

I was always thought it was telling in the wake of the early autumn 1996 fallout when Ray Danniels publicly commented in a lengthy Entertainment Weekly magazine story on the whole fracas that if Van Halen were to move forward and mature the music (as to why that needed to be Van Halen's goal then I won't hazard a guess) they had no chance of doing so with Sammy Hagar continuing to put his hammy, B-level arena rock level of talent on display. Now, as to why Gary Cherone would be the candidate to forward the music beyond having been managed by Danniels when Cherone was in Extreme is another gray area. I did, however, think Danniels was spot-on with his assessment of Hagar's abilities.

What was the one other project prior to Van Halen that Hagar advocates point to as an example of Hagar's greatness? His brief time in Montrose. I'd argue whatever greatness one thinks Montrose reached had a bit more to do with the instrumental end than the lyrics and vocals. Same with Cherone: he was in Extreme, and Extreme did some good stuff, but most of that to me had to do with what Nuno Bettencourt brought to the table, with Cherone being along for the ride (unless one thinks More Than Words was timeless rather than - as I do - merely timely).

What Hagar and Cherone had in terms of talent reserves was fine when put into the context of the caliber of Hagar's solo career or Extreme. Neither of which were up to anything approaching the standards of what CVH did. Hagar and Cherone by nature of who they were couldn't help relaunch Van Halen to the supersonic heights the band reached as a matter of course during the Roth years, because neither of them had enough game prior to Van Halen to reach those levels before joining: Eddie couldn't do all the heavy lifting for them. All Eddie could do was hand them the baseball bat. He couldn't swing it for them and knock the ball out of the park.

[vandeleur]

I'm a bit proud to say that I honestly don't have the slightest clue what the fuck you are talking about.

I listened to 5150 a couple of times and saw "Live without a net" once. That's all the Hagar I could talk about if I have to.

Well said

[Nickdfresh]

I'm assuming the clip (which I haven't watched) is from...what is it...Live Right Here Right Now, or whatever the live home video release from the FUCK tour was called.

I did watch that release once.

I think I've actually seen all the official Van Hagar live releases, if they were limited to the Live Without A Net, the FUCK tour and the pay-per-view special for the Balance tour. The band became less and less potent, even strictly and solely by Van Hagar standards, with each subsequent tour. I think that's sort of true in general for the Hagar years, where the longer that lineup stuck around, the less special they became. Like, I never once heard anyone in my social circles bragging that they scored Van Hagar tickets, whereas when Roth was in the band nabbing tickets to a show actually WAS something brag about: it wasn't like you had to go through hoops to see the band live when Sammy was with them after the first 5150 tour. Tickets were easy to get.

After Roth left, the legend of what that band had been just got larger the longer they remained split. That's why the 1996 reunion generated so much interest. Unlike the 2004 Hagar reunion tour, where the band were playing to at times less than full venues. It extends to the present, where I don't get much of a sense people are eagerly salivating over the prospect of Hagar rejoining the group. I mean, I suppose hardcore Hagar fans and Eddie grunts - who seem to accept whatever these guys undertake without reservation - will be excited about that prospect. Then again, for such peoples Sammy could take a dump onstage accompanied to Eddie producing Elephant noises on his guitar and they would think that was fantastic.

Beyond that devoted audience, I don't feel much of a reaction to Van Hagar 2018. Not nearly as much as I felt in 2007 with Roth rejoining. Maybe my personal preferences are coloring my take on that and the links, redrocker.com and vanhalen.net are going nuts over the possibilities.

I've only seen a couple solos but I think some at the Links said that although things might have been weak overall on Balance Tour,
that Ed was playing well and was relatively sober for most of it...

[Terry]

I've only seen a couple solos but I think some at the Links said that although things might have been weak overall on Balance Tour,
that Ed was playing well and was relatively sober for most of it...

From my own perspective, that Balance pay per view show was kinda...meh. Like, I'm glad I didn't pay $29.99 or whatever it cost to watch it when it was originally broadcast.

The band gave a functional, perfunctory performance. I mean, I suppose it says something about Van Halen's sustained drawing power in the mid 1990s that they would have been considered a worthy enough draw in terms of paying tv viewers. I have no idea what kind of ratings or profits that Balance ppv drew, and I didn't even get around to watching the show until I got it as an unrequested (and unwanted, but whatever, I didn't complain) extra threw in by a trader when I used to swap bootlegs. I think I was trading for Brazil 1983, and I had Argentina 1983, and the dude had been looking for Argentina 1983...this was in the late 1990s, when I was still trading on VHS. So he was so happy to get his hands on Argentina 1983 that he just threw the Balance show in on a separate tape along with the Brazil 1983 show. Boot traders throwing in extra stuff is (or was 20 years ago, anyway) the height of swap etiquette, where it's more the thought that counts rather than if you like the content.

So I got to watch the Balance show. Honestly, it was more interesting watching the band perform with Cherone in 1998 Down Under (gary's nutsack), if only because they were actually doing more CVH stuff than Hagar ever did...although to Hagar's credit he tended to fondle his own grundle onstage much, much less than Cherone would during his stint with the band...

[chuckjitsu]

Terry squarely hits the nail with this: "The band became less and less potent, even strictly and solely by Van Hagar standards, with each subsequent tour. I think that's sort of true in general for the Hagar years, where the longer that lineup stuck around, the less special they became."

Totally agree with that. Each subsequent Van Hagar album/tour became more of a "meh" experience for me. Maybe it was just me getting older, but my enthusiasm for the band definitely decreased over the course of the Sam years. For me, there's just no comparison between the Dave and Sam eras. The Dave era tunes are better and the live experience was better. If i was given a choice between ADKOT or any Sam Halen era disc I'd take ADKOT without hesitation and that's even with half of ADKOT being updated versions of old songs. What does that say about the Sam era stuff?

There was some decent music in the Sam era, 5150 and Humans Being come to mind, but even on those few and far between exceptional tracks, I always wondered what Dave could/would have done with that music. '85 truly was the end of a great era.

[Terry]

Terry squarely hits the nail with this: "The band became less and less potent, even strictly and solely by Van Hagar standards, with each subsequent tour. I think that's sort of true in general for the Hagar years, where the longer that lineup stuck around, the less special they became."

Totally agree with that. Each subsequent Van Hagar album/tour became more of a "meh" experience for me. Maybe it was just me getting older, but my enthusiasm for the band definitely decreased over the course of the Sam years. For me, there's just no comparison between the Dave and Sam eras. The Dave era tunes are better and the live experience was better. If i was given a choice between ADKOT or any Sam Halen era disc I'd take ADKOT without hesitation and that's even with half of ADKOT being updated versions of old songs. What does that say about the Sam era stuff?

There was some decent music in the Sam era, 5150 and Humans Being come to mind, but even on those few and far between exceptional tracks, I always wondered what Dave could/would have done with that music. '85 truly was the end of a great era.

I mean, I'll tell you without hesitation when I was into the band during the CVH years, probably 60% of my interest (if not slightly more) was totally focused on what Eddie was doing. I appreciated what the rest of the group brought to the proceedings, but not really quite as much as I was just laser focused on Eddie's guitar work.

It's hard to believe now, but way back then there were more than a few people (and a LOT of rock critics) who flat-out thought that Roth was solely a show off with a loud mouth and some cool stage moves who couldn't sing worth a shit...that on some level what Roth was doing wasn't equal to what Eddie brought to the group. I never felt that way, but back in 1985 while I was as surprised as anyone when Roth quit I didn't think it was therefore impossible that Van Halen wouldn't go on to create new music that was just as good as what the band had been doing: I mean, hey, the band still had Eddie. Alex and Mike would still be there. It wouldn't be the same without Dave, but back then Eddie had just came off of 6 albums where he had (as Frank Zappa once said) reinvented rock guitar.

When I heard Hagar was going to be the new singer, my reaction wasn't automatically negative. I wasn't a huge Hagar fan prior to the announcement, but I figured what Eddie would be doing going forward would continue to be as spectacular as all the CVH stuff had been. I wasn't exactly huge over the Crazy From The Heat EP. The videos were goofy and funny, but the music wasn't exactly astounding (a feeling I still have to this day). I barely knew who Steve Vai was when it was announced he was joining up with Roth, had never even heard of Billy. In late 1985, the circumstances were such that I would have been a prime candidate to remain a fan of Van Halen, and my expectations for a David Lee Roth solo career weren't particularly high.

5150 came out, and man...THAT was a bigger shock than Roth leaving the band a year prior. "What the FUCK happened to Van Halen?" was the question of the day. A few months later, Eat 'Em And Smile was released, and by the end of the first time listening to the album it was clear where the essence, attitude and fury of CVH went. By rights of simple mathematics, one would have thought 3/4's of CVH would have carried that CVH essence forward in a way that a CFTH-period Roth could never have hoped to. Just goes to show what I knew!

However, I was still a huge fan of Eddie Van Halen. I kept listening, but I couldn't make allowances for what the band was doing with Hagar because my reaction to music is just visceral. Music either moves me or it doesn't. I couldn't turn dogshit into diamonds where the Van Hagar stuff was concerned just because I totally dug what Eddie had done on the first 6 albums. I couldn't convince myself the band was as good to me as it had been, because to me it simply wasn't. And it wasn't all because of what Sammy was doing, either.

For me, OU812 was even less underwhelming than 5150 had been. About the only track I even liked was AFU (Naturally Wired). In some ways there was a rebound on an instrumental level with FUCK, but it was even more clear that Hagar had upped his game as much as he was capable of doing on the first record he recorded with the band. And I think Van Halen got a little lazy, self-satisfied and complacent when Sammy joined. Possibly because they had a pretty big commercial success right out of the box with Hagar with 5150. Whatever percentage of those sales being inherited from CVH or whatever to one side, to give that album the due it is owed one has to say it moved a lot of units right out of the gate.

However, I think this was a double-edged sword for the band, because they just started not quite trying as hard. And the albums weren't coming out nearly as fast as they had during the Dave years. To be sure, Sam Halen didn't have a 4 year head start prior to making their first album and tons of material in reserve to spread out among subsequent releases like CVH did. But I think there were generally 2 or 3 year gaps between albums when Sam was in the band. Even taking into account one year of that gap was utilized for touring, that gives them at least a year to make each album after 5150. And there's an awful lot of filler on those albums, where the band is clearly coasting, considering the amount of time they had to make them. To be sure Diver Down was a rush job, so CVH weren't 100% blameless when it came to putting out some filler themselves. However, at least with Diver Down it WAS an admitted rush job. There were 3 years between the releases of OU812 and FUCK, the same with FUCK and Balance. There's an awful lot of filler on OU812 and Balance. What's the excuse there? Eddie had a studio in his backyard for some of those albums (I think Balance wasn't recorded at 5150, if I recall correctly), unlike Diver Down.

By the time Balance came out, I had a couple of listens to the record and it was an endurance test to get to the end of the album BOTH times. Really, the only Van Hagar record I semi-enjoyed listening to overall was FUCK, because at least the instrumentation was a bit more muscular than the previous two albums had been and the album sounded like a proper Van Halen album in terms of production (no electronic drums and trebly synths). I mean, for me, Can't Stop Loving You and Never Enough...hearing that shit was just depressing...even by Van Hagar standards. And even the rock tunes on that last Van Hagar album just rang hollow off my ears. Just a bunch of disposable bunk. By the time Balance was released, unlike the other three studio releases Van Hagar weren't even able to come up with a couple of rock tunes that I thought had potential for being something better.

Can't Stop Loving You sounded like it could have been written and played by just about anybody. In point of fact, it sounded like a pop tune somebody else had written that Sammy and Ed were covering...like something Desmond Child or Michael Bolton would have written. What was that other single...Don't Tell Me What Love Can Do? Lazy and plodding musically, with these faux-sincere college freshman Psych 101 lyrics...

Like, it may have shocked the Van Halens, but it wasn't a surprise to anyone else why the Return Of Roth in 1996 was getting so many people psyched up in a way that I personally never felt the whole time Sammy was in the group.

[Von Halen]

There were several issues with Van Hagar. The cheesy lyrics and Clichegar sounding pretty much the same on all the songs are a couple. But I think the biggest issue is, the songs just came too easy. I don't think they put in the work on the songs with Clichegar, that they did with Dave. Also, there really wasn't any conflict or aggression in most of those songs. I don't think it is a coincidence that the consensus among most is, Humans Being is probably one of the best songs of the Van Hagar era. Before the horrific few songs they did in 2004, Humans Being was the last song they wrote together. There was massive tension at that time, as it was the end of the road for Van Hagar. I think it makes a big difference when everything isn't always fun and games, and you're not all on the same page, even though you all have the same goal.

Not to mention my age old theory on what every great band needs, and that is chemistry. Van Hagar had okay chemistry, but Van Halen had knockdown drag out chemistry. Chemistry that was developed over many years of hard work, and playing anything and everything. It's the reason Dave era Van Halen can cover virtually any song ever written and Van Halenize it making it their own. Not many bands can cover any song, and make it as great or greater than it was originally. Dave era Van Halen could do that. I attribute that to Dave more than the Van Halens, but they also played a lot of different styles of stuff in their youth, and it helped them immensely. I do not believe Dave had great chemistry with the EEAS band, as I don't believe Van Hagar had great chemistry. For all the yapping by the ched heads about how great Clichegar's range is, and how much better of a singer than Dave he is, he cannot cover just anything. Clichegar can only cover stuff that is in his type of singing. Dave can cover ANYHING, and if it's not great, it's still pretty fucking good. I mean look at all the stuff Dave has covered over the years. Solo and with VH. He fucking nails everything.

Ray once told me when he was in the DLR Band, they'd go sit out in Dave's backyard and Dave would bring out a ghetto blaster with all different genres of music. They would sit out there and work on, and jam those songs for hours and hours, learning every single thing about them. He said Dave was adamant about being both versatile, and diverse. Dave also demanded that of Van Halen. Whether or not the VH brothers would admit that was a big part of their success, I don't know. But as Greg wrote about in his book, those guys worked their asses off honing their craft. Playing everywhere and anywhere. They never did, or had to do that, with Clichegar. They were already established, and so was he. The effort just wasn't there.

[Terry]

There were several issues with Van Hagar. The cheesy lyrics and Clichegar sounding pretty much the same on all the songs are a couple. But I think the biggest issue is, the songs just came too easy. I don't think they put in the work on the songs with Clichegar, that they did with Dave. Also, there really wasn't any conflict or aggression in most of those songs. I don't think it is a coincidence that the consensus among most is, Humans Being is probably one of the best songs of the Van Hagar era. Before the horrific few songs they did in 2004, Humans Being was the last song they wrote together. There was massive tension at that time, as it was the end of the road for Van Hagar. I think it makes a big difference when everything isn't always fun and games, and you're not all on the same page, even though you all have the same goal.

Not to mention my age old theory on what every great band needs, and that is chemistry. Van Hagar had okay chemistry, but Van Halen had knockdown drag out chemistry. Chemistry that was developed over many years of hard work, and playing anything and everything. It's the reason Dave era Van Halen can cover virtually any song ever written and Van Halenize it making it their own. Not many bands can cover any song, and make it as great or greater than it was originally. Dave era Van Halen could do that. I attribute that to Dave more than the Van Halens, but they also played a lot of different styles of stuff in their youth, and it helped them immensely. I do not believe Dave had great chemistry with the EEAS band, as I don't believe Van Hagar had great chemistry. For all the yapping by the ched heads about how great Clichegar's range is, and how much better of a singer than Dave he is, he cannot cover just anything. Clichegar can only cover stuff that is in his type of singing. Dave can cover ANYHING, and if it's not great, it's still pretty fucking good. I mean look at all the stuff Dave has covered over the years. Solo and with VH. He fucking nails everything.

Ray once told me when he was in the DLR Band, they'd go sit out in Dave's backyard and Dave would bring out a ghetto blaster with all different genres of music. They would sit out there and work on, and jam those songs for hours and hours, learning every single thing about them. He said Dave was adamant about being both versatile, and diverse. Dave also demanded that of Van Halen. Whether or not the VH brothers would admit that was a big part of their success, I don't know. But as Greg wrote about in his book, those guys worked their asses off honing their craft. Playing everywhere and anywhere. They never did, or had to do that, with Clichegar. They were already established, and so was he. The effort just wasn't there.

I think so...I think so...to all of what you said.

Van Hagar really only had two types of songs. Hard rock tunes (which sometimes used a combo of keyboards and guitar, but were usually guitar-oriented) and synth or piano-driven ballads with a guitar solo thrown in. I mean, I suppose one could call Finish What You Started sort of country-esque, Can't Stop Loving You was a guitar-based pop ditty and Best Of Both Worlds was a guitar-based pop rock tune. Those three were pretty much it in terms of diversity from the main two Van Hagar song types.

And as you said, it all sounded like it came way too easy. Little to no tension in any of it. Virtually none of it sounded like at any time Hagar said to Eddie "hey, that tune might need some work"...Ed plays something, Hagar says "sounds great!" and puts whatever lyrics and vocals he wants over it, end of tune.

Also as you said, Hagar has a pretty small wheelhouse in terms of his stylistic comfort zone. For whatever technical vocal shortcomings Roth may have had vs. Hagar, Hagar had a limited vocal range he was comfortable with. Hagar had no bottom end to his voice.

I mean, you look at probably the most-lamented CVH album Diver Down and look at the degree of stylistic variation on it, then try and find one Van Hagar album that is comparable in that aspect: you can't. Van Hagar albums went hard rock tune, synth ballad, couple of hard rock tunes, piano ballad, another hard rock tune, rinse, lather and repeat.

That's what made Humans Being stand out the way it did in 1996: you could hear the band trying again, and you could hear the tension in the music. By that point in Sam Halen's career, they were no longer smiling and publicly high fiving each other every 5 seconds when they were working together. Sam and Eddie weren't getting along at that point, and out of that came something by Van Hagar standards that was fairly compelling.

Maybe if Ed and Sam didn't start that instant bromance from the moment they hooked up in 1985, where every musical utterance was met with uncritical Happy Happy Joy Joy glee, Van Hagar would have produced more tunes that had that compelling tension. That lineup got too satisfied too quickly with what they were doing, and that bred the complacence that set in just as quickly.

Clearly, Eddie wasn't at his best when he was his happiest. He said he wanted to quit in 1981 during the making of Fair Warning. Listen to how that album turned out. Ed claimed he was happy during the making of Van Halen III ("Gary's a brother" blah blah blah), where he took total creative control of the band. Listen to how THAT album turned out. No, really, YOU listen (please don't make me listen again).

[Va Beach VH Fan]

The Van Halens are so fucking clueless..ya see the instagram clip of Ed playing that same old elephant and horse sounds? Why not a clip of a killer new riff that hasnt been heard?...fuckin clueless..

Not to mention basically the same solo since, what, the Diver Down tour?

[Fairwrning]

Hell, he was noodling Mean street/spanish fly/cathedral while doing eruption in '81...

[Kristy]

Appears F A T S P A M M Y has his drummer for the tour

[Kristy]

She's "hard core" Van Halen, too unlike you cretins, in a non-homoerotic kind of way

Check out the Different Kind of a Turd t-shirt and she plays way better than F A T Alex.