I read this earlier this week... Any more details?
https://montrealgazette.com/entertai...0-7a67653d790d
I read this earlier this week... Any more details?
https://montrealgazette.com/entertai...0-7a67653d790d
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I just hope we get to hear the 17 hours worth of studio demo outtakes of "How Many Say I" before Ed goes to that great mullet graveyard in the sky.
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Nickdfresh (10-13-2019)
From the article...
Fake news™...Though former front man David Lee Roth recently claimed in a radio interview that Van Halen was near death – possibly battling a return of the tongue cancer that almost killed him in 2000 — he was recently spotted at a Hollywood bar. He had very short hair and wore sunglasses, and was not drinking at the bar.
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How about this? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...itar-pick.html
TMZ, too
https://www.tmz.com/2019/10/13/eddie...cer-treatment/
Eddie Van Halen has been flying between the United States and Germany to get treatment for throat cancer ... and we've learned he's been doing it very quietly for years.
As for how Eddie developed the cancer ... we're told he believes it's from a metal guitar pick he used more than 20 years ago. Seems Eddie would cradle the pick in his mouth, and he's been told that could well have been the source of the cancer, despite the fact he was a heavy smoker. Back in 2000, shortly after he was diagnosed, doctors removed around 1/3 of his tongue.
Eddie was diagnosed nearly 20 years ago. Sources with direct knowledge tell us ... over the years there were times some of the cancer cells migrated down to his throat, and doctors would scrape them out.
Our sources say ... Eddie has flown to Germany for 5 years to get radiation treatment, and for the most part it's worked to keep the disease in check.
As for his current condition ... there are lots of rumors, but people who know him say he's seems to be doing okay -- at least on the surface.
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I wish Edward well and a full recovery if all of this is true...but the metal guitar pick thing reminded me of his humor ala I am boiling my strings... or the one instance where he went to his manager (before marrying Valerie) asking if it was possible to get a woman pregnant from a blowjob (from VH rising).
Yeah I hope he was joking but I doubt it.
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I'm skeptical... the metal guitar pick crap came from 2002. I'm sure smoking and heavy drinking had nothing to do with it...
The trips to Germany for radiation treatment originally surfaced in 2012 and he claimed they cleaned that up too.
Cancer is a beast... plus it's Edward's personal business. I'll remain optimistic he's just got typical age related issues that make not touring/performing a common sense choice and not some dire ailment taking him out at this phase in life. Plus... all this talk of EVH... Alex is the older brother...
Nickdfresh (10-13-2019)
Hadn't heard about the trips to Germany for radiation treatment prior to the last couple of days, although I had assumed all along Ed was getting treated for cancer somewhere, even if he has been in remission...I assume even those in remission are still on some sort of treatment.
I couldn't agree more that all of this is Edward's personal business as to if he wants to address it publicly, or not, or whatever.
To be sure, Van Halen's habit over the last 20 years of not saying much of anything was at times irksome as a fan...but more and more I actually kinda grew to appreciate the band NOT saying anything unless they were DOING something. Because, honestly, in terms of the Van Halens, what is there really to SAY anymore? I've always been far more interested in what Ed was playing than anything he was ever saying, even back in the day. Don't really have much interest in anything Wolfgang has to say...not a slam against the kid, but I just have no interest. Pretty much the same goes for Alex.
If Van Halen isn't playing music, little to nothing of anything they could say is of real interest to me at this point. Like, I remember when ADKOT came out and I bought the 2 disc collection with the interview disc where Dave was interviewing Ed and Al, and by and large Ed and Al were boring as fuck to listen to...to the point where I think I didn't even make it to the end of the interviews. Which is as it should be, because Ed is a guitar player and Al is a drummer.
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Like, did we really need lengthy, periodic commentary from Ed, Al or Wolfie re: the band not doing anything post-2015? Did anybody need to have any of those guys deliver a lengthy discourse or a Van Halen State Of The Band to announce that nothing new was going to be happening for the upcoming year?
It shows the complete fucking shitty nature of these publications that the subheading on TMZ is 'It All Started With Metal Guitar Pick'
I seriously doubt there are any real treatments available for throat cancer in Germany that you can't get in the US which does make you worry he is not treatable and falling for some quack or desperate shit although the traditional place for fleecing cancer patients is Mexico not Germany. He does fit the gullible bill for that kind of scam - electromagnetic woo in the studio gave him cancer not smoking like fuck at all times forever with the added booze multiplier?
That said there is enough shit in the article and there only is one article that the others are all copying, that maybe it's nonsense.
And the way TMZ (I guess it's not really employees, just hacks with cameras hanging around) stalks LAX, how has no one seen Ed there yet? He can't be that unrecognizable.
The metal pick thing reminds me of all the other shit..."I don't use a tuner, I tune the guitar to itself!"
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Dave sounded bitter when mentioning Ed and the postponement of the tour. Was he aware of his health condition or what...
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Posted on a FB group. pic of EVH "out and about" but no date
and a tweet from his ex brother in law
Guitar World rehashes the story
https://www.guitarworld.com/news/edd...CsAgZL-kznQzYU
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DLR Bridge (10-14-2019)
So much buzz about this on the internet news over the last couple of days.
It makes part of me think no wonder the Van Halens try to always keep things private because of all of this shit which if you take a step back is basically a bunch of people trying to monetize your cancer v. make a statement and take away the gossip.
It's complicated but he's married to a publicist yet it seems like they often choose the worst of both worlds.
ZahZoo (10-19-2019)
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It’s because they don’t give a damn for whatever reasons. Making albums and going on tour doesn’t seem to be a high priority. VH seems to still sell tickets when they go out even after years of having terrible public relations. EVH Gear is still in business bringing new products out.
Stuff seems to sell whether Eddie is in the window waiving or not.
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Thinking back, through most of the period when CVH was active, I don't really recall even hearing Edward talk during those years. Doubtless there are archival interviews of him in the late 1970s/early 1980s when he talked, but I don't have any memory of seeing/hearing any of that stuff at the time.
I read as many print interviews of Ed's as I could back then, but virtually all of it was from Guitar Player magazine, or Guitar For The Practicing Musician or Guitar World.
I think I may have read one interview each from Mike Anthony and Alex Van Halen, and those were from one of the guitar mags and Modern Drummer. I don't recall having seen an interview where I heard either of those guys talk during the bulk of the CVH years, though doubtless like Ed both of them were surely interviewed at some point on camera talking during the CVH years.
The first time I really remember hearing Ed, Alex and Mike talk was on a MTV Van Halen special after Hagar joined, where they were each individually interviewed.
I have an old bootleg dvd around somewhere that has a bunch of CVH promo appearances - many of them overseas in Japan or Europe or South America - where CVH were miming performing to studio tracks for whatever single they were pushing, and I'm sure the hosts of those shows must have asked all of the band some questions on some of those clips...but I didn't see any of those clips back when CVH was active.
I mean, Van Halen didn't even get put into heavy rotation on MTV until the 1984 promo videos came out, and the few CVH MTV specials I saw back then were mostly Roth-centric: Roth WAS the voice of the band back then, and certainly the main interview subject back in the CVH days.
And, overall, the interviews I have read of Ed's in the various guitar mags (mostly Guitar World for the last 30 years)...like, when Ed isn't specifically talking about whatever gear he is selling or the music he is making...the guy really doesn't have much to say of interest outside of that stuff. I mean, I suppose he had some interesting stuff to say when I enjoyed reading the mudslinging between Ed and Dave, and later Ed and Sam - when I was enjoying the whole soap opera - but once I no longer gave a shit about the soap opera (plus, I have plenty of adequate non-EVH guitar gear, so I don't have any interest in whatever EVH gear Ed is pushing) Ed's non-music oriented comments weren't things I much cared to hear about.
Things like his nonsensical reasons for chucking Anthony out of the band, or his bizarre claims that he had to show Anthony everything he played, or that Ed's backing vocals were more important than Anthony's, or that he got cancer from chewing on a metal guitar pick...all the blather he has uttered post-2000 during the years he went off his nut on a Smoking Loon/crystal meth binge and beyond...yeesh.
DavidLeeNatra (10-21-2019)
Ed didn’t talk much when Dave was in the band. He never talked on stage and he never did interviews other than the guitar magazine ones. I think Ed might have gotten some bogus coke laced with meth. He went off the wagon big time and drinkers love coke. Whatever it was it was more than just booze. I was expecting to hear that Ed was dead in those days. He was riding the fast crazy train to the graveyard and looked like a corpse to boot.
In light of this recent, re-hashed to make new, Eddie news....I do find it interesting Dave hasn't done a Roth show clip and hasn't done any radio interviews plugging his Vegas gigs.
DavidLeeNatra (10-21-2019)
Eddie Van Halen thinks he developed cancer from sucking on
metal guitar picks, but a doctor says this probably isn't true
https://www.insider.com/eddie-van-ha...r-pick-2019-10
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The funny thing was, the more Ed started to talk after Dave left in terms of giving interviews, the less I wanted to hear from him.
Even in the guitar mag interviews as the 1990s dawned, he'd piss and moan about Nirvana, other guitarists who had the temerity to say that Ace Frehley (and not Ed) inspired them to pick up the guitar, what an asshole Dave was, what an asshole Sammy was...
That's why, for me, it's preferable if Ed doesn't speak, because it reminds me of when I liked him best and what I liked him for: that high-energy, innovative rock guitar playing, the sound of which always elicited positive emotions from me. When Ed talks, it's actually a buzzkill.
Shit, that whole 2003-2006 period, I was half-expecting the guy was gonna drop dead any moment.
I remember watching clips of the NAMM show appearance he made in late 2006, just before it was confirmed that Roth was working with the band again, and Ed turned in such a disjointed appearance...at points barely able to play close to what had been considered standard or par/normal for him.
He started off playing pretty well on the 2007 leg of the reunion tour, but he appeared to have relapsed early into the 2008 leg: he was having trouble playing the set 5 months into the tour at a point where that far into the tour, if anything, Ed should have been improving. I seem to recall post-tour he claimed he was having arthritis-related issues with his hands and underwent treatment for it, but at the 2008 Tampa gig he just plain looked drunk: his solo spot late into the show was just embarrassing, and the majority of the arena was silent watching him trying to conjure up the speed and brilliance which used to come to him so easily...and failing.
Fortunately, he got his shit together in a big way by the time 2012 rolled around: the Tampa gig I saw from the ADKOT tour was spectacular. In 2008, Roth carried the show. In 2012, Ed carried it.
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