Here We Go Again with Rumors . . . . Van Halen RUMORED to have new songs and to tour

[Terry]

That seems the most logical explanation for how they operate from a business perspective... plus, no "active" management leaves them leaderless.

I'll add... Back around 1999/2000 Van Halen were early pioneers in Rock bands using the internet to promote themselves and interact with their fans. As much as we've ragged on Brad Starks and the antics of van-halen.com and the Pleasure Dome fan board... that site was very extensive in content and one of the first big-name bands to use that medium in the early days of the net.

Unfortunately... combine Ed's divorce/cancer/substance abuse debacles at the time and us... the fans on the net... and the shear madness we generated during those early years... I think we scared the hell out of the band to the point that they wanted to build a mote, raise some electric fences and stay as far away from us crazy-assed, rabid motherfuckers as possible!! This is why we can't have nice things... LOL!

Well, while others may have belittled Van Halen's official website/officially sanctioned fan board and those who ran them, I came to the conclusion fairly early on that none of the official Van Halen internet stuff was worth spending any time looking at, much less getting angry over. Mostly because the official sites were just putting out the bland band pr pablum in the late 1990s when Cherone was in the band, and then after Cherone left where there was years of nothing. No updates. No news. Zip. Nada.

I'd tend to imagine the band would want to stay removed from fan-based sites, because the criticisms of the group on those sites probably weren't something the Van Halens were even interested in hearing about, much less attaching their names to. However, what would it be worth to be a member of such a site and have the Van Halens or Roth involved if that meant you had to adhere to the principle that every time the Van Halens or Roth farted it was incumbent upon the membership to say those farts smelled like roses?

I think Dave kind of got it in terms of what the internet could be with his late 1990s Dave TV broadcasts, and later in the early 2000s putting out the odd No Holds Bar-B-Que clip online on his site. That the internet could be a way for him to get his stuff across to his audience despite not having major label backing or support. Sadly, Roth didn't follow up on these things and let his own site lapse into the same lame fodder Van Halen did theirs.