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From Creem magazine comes this interview with Van Hagar, which illustrates why the Roth Army exists in the first place, and is a great history lesson for younger members. One of the worst interviews with any band I've ever read, the "band" piles on the bullshit at a furious pace with all the wit of a 7th grade gym class. Keep in mind that DiMartino was a big Van Halen fan, and note the title of the article. If the magazine hadn't changed owners shortly before this was published, Dave DiMartino probably wouldn't have pulled this assignment.
Give Us Van Halen!
Dave DiMartino, Creem, March 1986
"YOU DO IT one of two ways: either spectacle or personality.
"If you have spectacle, that's great – that's like the circus, a spectacle. But you've got to change that spectacle every year, people get bored quick. This is the '80s. I grew up on a heavy diet of television, as a kid and as a big kid. And it's like there's no dead space on television or radio, everything turns real quick. Every 10 minutes you've gotta have a commercial. And that's how we write our songs, and that's how we live our lives."
– David Lee Roth, said in a Detroit hotel room, in 1980.
"Dave is a, quote unquote, star type of person. I'm a musician. That's the difference. And he went off to be a star. And I wanted to continue making music, you know?
"And the best way to be a star is to be in the movies, right? So that's what he's pursuing."
– Edward Van Halen, said in his backyard, by the pool, in late November, 1985.
Funny how things change, isn't it?
"Here, gimme five, pal," says a grinning Alex Van Halen, in that same backyard. You give him five. "See," explains the affable drummer, "I just went to the bathroom. You feel a little wetness there? I'm a lousy shot."
How utterly fascinating, you say. Is your curiosity aroused in new, strange ways? Very good. For you must understand: you are sitting with the four members of Van Halen around the pool of guitarist Edward Van Halen's house, and you are trying to make an adjustment. You are trying to adjust to the newest member of the band, vocalist Sammy Hagar, who is seated across from you and wearing sunglasses and looking like nothing so much as Sammy Hagar. Distinguished vocalist with Montrose, with his own band, with Hagar, Schon, Aaronson and Shrieve and now – quite unexpectedly – with Van Halen. Van Halen.
It's enough to make one use obscenity, many times, onstage at Farm Aid with Edward Van Halen!
It's true, it's true: David Lee Roth has gone, off giving casting calls for beautiful Women in skimpy bathing suits, off in search of the screen fame that is certainly his for the taking, off on his own, leaving his three former bandmates with a career that could use some revving up. Indeed, 1984, the last Van Halen album, bears a copyright date of 1983 – and one need not master calculus to deduce that in early 1986, there is desperate need for a new record from the Finest Obnoxious Rock Band That Ever Was.
And, not incidentally, making a new record is precisely what Van Halen and Sammy Hagar are doing.
So you ask the four members of Van Halen – the VH brothers, bassist Michael Anthony and Hagar – about their new record. You ask them if, as you were told, the record will hit the stores in mid-February.
ALEX: What?
EDWARD: Who told you that shit, man?
YOU: Huh?
ALEX: What?
EDWARD: Who told you that shit?
YOU: You mean it might not?
ALEX: Huh?
SAMMY: Probably.
ALEX: What?
MICHAEL: Maybe.
EDWARD: Who told you that?
YOU: The people that got me out here to talk to you.
EDWARD: Oh yeah, maybe, then.
SAMMY: [pointing to the nearby recording studio] Are they in there? Are they in there right now? I'm gonna go talk to them.
ALEX: Huh?
YOU: Is the record coming out in mid-February or not?
EDWARD: Yeah, we're shooting for that.
YOU: Is anything finished yet?
ALEX: Sammy? Sammy? What's he talking about?
SAMMY: I don't really know.
In short: David Lee Roth left Van Halen. The remaining Van Halens considered pulling a Jeff Beck – that is, hiring random vocalists to sing on various tracks until, thanks to "a guy named Claudio who sells exotic Italian sports cars," they hooked up with their current Sambo, Mr. Hagar. "See," explains Edward winningly, "what we all wanted was a band – at least that's what I wanted – but we couldn't think of anybody who would complete that until I thought of Sammy." And think of Sammy he did!
We should all think of Sammy. He's not exactly in an enviable position. Oh sure, of course he is, you say – because Van Halen are so cool you have all their albums, and chances are you're going to get the next one even if you don't especially like Sammy Hagar, simply because you like Van Halen and now he's in it. Well said! Nonetheless, replacing anybody in a band is no fun; comparisons will be made, as they always are, and replacing the veritable rock god that David Lee Roth willed himself to become, as Hagar is doing, might be judged the toughest task of all by those in the know. The man had fans, after all. And unlike Hagar, he never admitted that he was incapable of driving 55 and thus an admitted lawbreaker. Or parachuted onto the front lawn of the U.S. Capitol! Or worse! Would you feel comfortable in such a position?
Of course not. Furthermore, consider that Van Halen have, in the past few years, been deigned a "hip" band by knowledgeable writers. Hee-hee. The sad truth is that Samuel Hagar has never been a favorite with the critics – and the look of slight dread/mild resignation in his eyes as he performs his interview duties with you confirms it. You ask Sammy himself about it. Sammy, you query, do you think you've been given a fair shake by the press? "Oh, fuck no, man" is his instant reply.
But. But. The warmth the man exudes, the candor, the honesty, are a far cry from what the poisoned rock press – what the heck, even this magazine itself – has led the public to believe. He is a workingman's rocker. He fills stadiums, has plenty of gold and platinum albums to his credit, and essentially gets his support from the audience, since most critics seem unwilling to give him theirs. He has been shunned by leftist critics worldwide for embracing the glory that is America. Says he of his New Rightist designation:
"Here's the thing: I'm not political, and I don't like to make political statements. It's just that all of a sudden, right before the Olympics, right when I was writing for my album, the Olympics were down here in L.A. I live in the vicinity, so therefore I got all caught up in all this shit – that the Russians pulled out. So I got pissed, I got real pro-America all of a sudden. I don't go around doing that all the time – it's just that that was a period of my life, and I wrote an album right before that, and it happened to come out in it.
"But any political things I have – I am very pro-American, and I hate when people down it, when our own country starts marching against us, you know? When the Russians are over there with cocked guns, and doing these big displays with tanks and missiles...Them bastards are scary, you know? And I hate seeing our own people going against themselves. So I just, once in a while, I get real 'right' about that. And to be honest with you, I think Reagan is the coolest fucker we've had in office for a long time!"
Miles overhead, spy satellites continue sending photographs of the five of you clustered near the Van Halen pool. It is good. "We're gonna be serious here for a second," confides Alex Van Halen. After a brief pause, his face lights up. "OK, time's up!"
Farm Aid. What's been the feedback Sammy Hagar has received since his memorable appearance?
"Uh, real bad," notes Sammy. The other members of Van Halen laugh. "Everybody thinks I really fucked up there. And those people are so full of shit."
"But the actual gig was great," says Edward. "We're talking about the three-piece-suiters, complaining about his language.
"It was incredible," Sammy continues. "It was one of the highlights of my career, walking out onstage. The audience was fuckin' frantic. When Edward came on, it was unbelievable. It was a huge success, it really was. Everything except for the fact that a lot of people didn't get off on the fact that I cussed, and then some radio stations shut down because of it.
"But I just couldn't think of that when I went out onstage, you know? In all honesty, I'm being naive about it, but I wasn't thinking, 'Hey, this is going out all over the world.' All I saw was 90,000 people, and I said, 'I'm gonna rock these fuckers... they ain't rocked all day like this!' "
So the other members of Van Halen didn't reprimand Sammy, or take him aside and ask him to say "darn" in the future?
"Hell no!" insists Edward. "Hey, Sammy and I were both freaked out that anyone got uptight, because it went by me like..."
"Yeah," says Michael, "in fact, Ed was the one who told Sammy to say most of that shit onstage!"
"It was my fault," says Edward, "half of it!"
"Shit," says Sammy, "it's the way I talk, you know? Would you do me a favor and print this? Anyone that took offense to that: fuck you too. No, fuck you again. Because that's honestly the way I feel.
"If anybody doesn't like the fact I walk onstage and say 'fuck,' well then, don't come to a concert of mine, you know? And I don't feel we're gonna lose any customers that way, you know?"
In 1980, if you interviewed Van Halen, you took part in the David Lee Roth Show, co-starring Alex and Edward Van Halen with a special appearance by Michael Anthony. It wasn't planned that way, understand; that was just the Order Of Who Talked Most. So perhaps it comes as no surprise that with the absence of Roth in late 1985, everybody moves up notch or so, with Sammy Hagar now somewhere in the middle. What does seem strange to you today, though, is the manner in which the former lead singer is talked about. There's almost a sense of relief in his absence that you can feel.
YOU: Are you three still friends, or is just convenience for you now, business – because [to Edward and Alex] you're brothers and [to Michael] you've been with them for a while?
ALEX: No, not at all.
EDWARD: No. We're friends. Dave was convenience.
YOU: Really?
EDWARD: Yeah.
YOU: Don't you feel kind of weird saying that?
MICHAEL: No, why?
ALEX: I wouldn't say it in quite those terms. It was basically a situation where we felt that the four of us – the previous model, the Model T as opposed to the SST right now – that we wanted to get the world to be able to listen to the music that we were making. And Dave was just one step in the chain, so to speak, to be able to facilitate that. And that's basically what we did. There was no real camaraderie, even though in the press there seemed to be...
YOU: Yeah, it really did seem that way.
ALEX: There was no real camaraderie. I'm not saying that we fought all the time or anything like that, or that we hated each other, because that's not the truth at all. It was basically a cut-and-dried, black and white situation. We looked at the structure and said, "Hey, this works – OK, so let's do it." Well, now we have something that feels right. And works.
It's ironic, then, that mere days before this interview transpires you hear from a respected source that David Lee Roth, while working on his movie, has put together a new band. Ironic? Only in that in the band is Billy Sheehan, virtuoso bassist with Talas and dubbed "the Eddie Van Halen of bass guitar" by publications just like the one you're now holding, but different. Also along for the ride is guitarist Steve Vai, a superb player who's spent time with Frank Zappa's band and replaced Yngwie Malmsteen in Alcatrazz. Not a shoddy pair by any means.
You thus suggest to the current members of Van Halen the hypothetical scenario wherein the new records by Van Halen and the David Lee Roth Group come out simultaneously. Might it not be possible that most listeners would tend to hear the Roth Group on the radio and say, in astonishment, "Wow, this must be the new Van Halen album"?
EDWARD: Then they'll come and buy our record!
SAMMY: They'll say, "I want the new Van Halen record!"
EDWARD: Put it this way: I mean, he can't hurt us. You know? The shit we got is...way beyond...
ALEX: Everybody's gonna compare, it's obvious. Whether it be, just hypothetically speaking, if we would've made another record with Roth, they would compare that record to the previous one. It's inevitable. So it doesn't matter. The bottom line is...
SAMMY: The truth of the matter is, there's no mistaking Van Halen's sound. I'm just a singer in this band, you know? And if they would've put somebody else in my place, this stuff would still sound like Van Halen. It's amazing how much identity the music in Van Halen has. Like, I never looked at it that way – you always look at Van Halen as an entity with Roth in it, right?
YOU: Sure.
SAMMY: Now, you hear it with me in it, and it still sounds like Van Halen.
MICHAEL: It does.
SAMMY: I don't sound like Roth singing, by any means, but it still sounds like Van Halen. There's such a strong identity in the sound, in the way Donn Landee engineers this band, and the way he makes the records sound.
EDWARD: And the way we play.
SAMMY: The way these guys play their instruments, the way it just comes out with a sound. But I'm telling you, it's Van Halen, and there'll be no mistaking it. When you do hear Roth's voice, it's gonna be like ‘Just A Gigolo’ – you knew that that wasn't Van Halen, that that was just him singing. Even if his music is more geared towards old Van Halen-type stuff, it still ain't gonna sound like Van Halen. If it does, it's gonna sound like a thin version – people are gonna say, "Man, their new record stinks!"
THE PROOF
The proof lies in the pudding, and when you do not eat, you must make do elsewhere. Therefore you now sit with the four members of Van Halen in the studio directly behind Edward Van Halen's house. They are playing you three tracks from their forthcoming album, and you'll be darned if each track doesn't sound like a potential hit record – as is probably the intention.
Yes, it's true. As Edward himself confided earlier: "You've never heard Sammy like with us." First and foremost, each of the three tunes sound like Van Halen. Van Halen with a new vocalist, maybe, but a lot more like Van Halen than anything from Roth's Crazy From The Heat or Sammy Hagar's own albums. The guitars are crazy: as always, Edward Van Halen knows there's a fine line between taste and excess and does his best to physically shatter it. One new track features what sounds like a constant drum solo by Alex, accompanied by the usual whoops, shrieks and maimings; another sounds like something from 1984 but is incredibly refined in its fierceness; the third, a ballad, could be a huge hit in finished form, and probably will be since the guys are calling in Foreigner's Mick Jones to help oversee proceedings.
Mick Jones?
Funny how things change, isn't it?
ALEX: In the previous things that we did, we were always open to suggestions as far as variety, such as ‘Big Bad Bill’ and ‘Dancing In The Streets’ – but Jesus Christ, who wants to dance in the streets? That song is fuckin' 20 years old. Leave it...
EDWARD: We want to do our own stuff.
ALEX: That's not our gig.
EDWARD: I'm sick of doing cover tunes. Fuck that. I've got enough inside of me...
SAMMY: I have no idea what these guys went through with Dave as a singer in the band – but with me, I tell you, being a former guitarist, I can see a guitar riff that Edward has in a song or something, and maybe appreciate it a bit more than a guy who doesn't play guitar. So like maybe someone else would overlook a really great lick just because they weren't a guitarist and couldn't say, "Hey, that's a really great lick."
EDWARD: I don't think Dave could get a handle on that as much as Sammy can.
SAMMY: When Edward presents something to me, I go, "Shit.."
EDWARD: You can relate.
SAMMY: Just about anything the guy plays is amazing, so you go, "Yeah, that would be a good song!" And then he plays this next thing – "Yeah, that could be a good song." I have this real positive outlook on almost anything he plays.
EDWARD: And that's the difference! It is. He's positive about everything.
ALEX: The bottom line is...
EDWARD: No tampons allowed in this city.
Give Us Van Halen!
Dave DiMartino, Creem, March 1986
"YOU DO IT one of two ways: either spectacle or personality.
"If you have spectacle, that's great – that's like the circus, a spectacle. But you've got to change that spectacle every year, people get bored quick. This is the '80s. I grew up on a heavy diet of television, as a kid and as a big kid. And it's like there's no dead space on television or radio, everything turns real quick. Every 10 minutes you've gotta have a commercial. And that's how we write our songs, and that's how we live our lives."
– David Lee Roth, said in a Detroit hotel room, in 1980.
"Dave is a, quote unquote, star type of person. I'm a musician. That's the difference. And he went off to be a star. And I wanted to continue making music, you know?
"And the best way to be a star is to be in the movies, right? So that's what he's pursuing."
– Edward Van Halen, said in his backyard, by the pool, in late November, 1985.
Funny how things change, isn't it?
"Here, gimme five, pal," says a grinning Alex Van Halen, in that same backyard. You give him five. "See," explains the affable drummer, "I just went to the bathroom. You feel a little wetness there? I'm a lousy shot."
How utterly fascinating, you say. Is your curiosity aroused in new, strange ways? Very good. For you must understand: you are sitting with the four members of Van Halen around the pool of guitarist Edward Van Halen's house, and you are trying to make an adjustment. You are trying to adjust to the newest member of the band, vocalist Sammy Hagar, who is seated across from you and wearing sunglasses and looking like nothing so much as Sammy Hagar. Distinguished vocalist with Montrose, with his own band, with Hagar, Schon, Aaronson and Shrieve and now – quite unexpectedly – with Van Halen. Van Halen.
It's enough to make one use obscenity, many times, onstage at Farm Aid with Edward Van Halen!
It's true, it's true: David Lee Roth has gone, off giving casting calls for beautiful Women in skimpy bathing suits, off in search of the screen fame that is certainly his for the taking, off on his own, leaving his three former bandmates with a career that could use some revving up. Indeed, 1984, the last Van Halen album, bears a copyright date of 1983 – and one need not master calculus to deduce that in early 1986, there is desperate need for a new record from the Finest Obnoxious Rock Band That Ever Was.
And, not incidentally, making a new record is precisely what Van Halen and Sammy Hagar are doing.
So you ask the four members of Van Halen – the VH brothers, bassist Michael Anthony and Hagar – about their new record. You ask them if, as you were told, the record will hit the stores in mid-February.
ALEX: What?
EDWARD: Who told you that shit, man?
YOU: Huh?
ALEX: What?
EDWARD: Who told you that shit?
YOU: You mean it might not?
ALEX: Huh?
SAMMY: Probably.
ALEX: What?
MICHAEL: Maybe.
EDWARD: Who told you that?
YOU: The people that got me out here to talk to you.
EDWARD: Oh yeah, maybe, then.
SAMMY: [pointing to the nearby recording studio] Are they in there? Are they in there right now? I'm gonna go talk to them.
ALEX: Huh?
YOU: Is the record coming out in mid-February or not?
EDWARD: Yeah, we're shooting for that.
YOU: Is anything finished yet?
ALEX: Sammy? Sammy? What's he talking about?
SAMMY: I don't really know.
In short: David Lee Roth left Van Halen. The remaining Van Halens considered pulling a Jeff Beck – that is, hiring random vocalists to sing on various tracks until, thanks to "a guy named Claudio who sells exotic Italian sports cars," they hooked up with their current Sambo, Mr. Hagar. "See," explains Edward winningly, "what we all wanted was a band – at least that's what I wanted – but we couldn't think of anybody who would complete that until I thought of Sammy." And think of Sammy he did!
We should all think of Sammy. He's not exactly in an enviable position. Oh sure, of course he is, you say – because Van Halen are so cool you have all their albums, and chances are you're going to get the next one even if you don't especially like Sammy Hagar, simply because you like Van Halen and now he's in it. Well said! Nonetheless, replacing anybody in a band is no fun; comparisons will be made, as they always are, and replacing the veritable rock god that David Lee Roth willed himself to become, as Hagar is doing, might be judged the toughest task of all by those in the know. The man had fans, after all. And unlike Hagar, he never admitted that he was incapable of driving 55 and thus an admitted lawbreaker. Or parachuted onto the front lawn of the U.S. Capitol! Or worse! Would you feel comfortable in such a position?
Of course not. Furthermore, consider that Van Halen have, in the past few years, been deigned a "hip" band by knowledgeable writers. Hee-hee. The sad truth is that Samuel Hagar has never been a favorite with the critics – and the look of slight dread/mild resignation in his eyes as he performs his interview duties with you confirms it. You ask Sammy himself about it. Sammy, you query, do you think you've been given a fair shake by the press? "Oh, fuck no, man" is his instant reply.
But. But. The warmth the man exudes, the candor, the honesty, are a far cry from what the poisoned rock press – what the heck, even this magazine itself – has led the public to believe. He is a workingman's rocker. He fills stadiums, has plenty of gold and platinum albums to his credit, and essentially gets his support from the audience, since most critics seem unwilling to give him theirs. He has been shunned by leftist critics worldwide for embracing the glory that is America. Says he of his New Rightist designation:
"Here's the thing: I'm not political, and I don't like to make political statements. It's just that all of a sudden, right before the Olympics, right when I was writing for my album, the Olympics were down here in L.A. I live in the vicinity, so therefore I got all caught up in all this shit – that the Russians pulled out. So I got pissed, I got real pro-America all of a sudden. I don't go around doing that all the time – it's just that that was a period of my life, and I wrote an album right before that, and it happened to come out in it.
"But any political things I have – I am very pro-American, and I hate when people down it, when our own country starts marching against us, you know? When the Russians are over there with cocked guns, and doing these big displays with tanks and missiles...Them bastards are scary, you know? And I hate seeing our own people going against themselves. So I just, once in a while, I get real 'right' about that. And to be honest with you, I think Reagan is the coolest fucker we've had in office for a long time!"
Miles overhead, spy satellites continue sending photographs of the five of you clustered near the Van Halen pool. It is good. "We're gonna be serious here for a second," confides Alex Van Halen. After a brief pause, his face lights up. "OK, time's up!"
Farm Aid. What's been the feedback Sammy Hagar has received since his memorable appearance?
"Uh, real bad," notes Sammy. The other members of Van Halen laugh. "Everybody thinks I really fucked up there. And those people are so full of shit."
"But the actual gig was great," says Edward. "We're talking about the three-piece-suiters, complaining about his language.
"It was incredible," Sammy continues. "It was one of the highlights of my career, walking out onstage. The audience was fuckin' frantic. When Edward came on, it was unbelievable. It was a huge success, it really was. Everything except for the fact that a lot of people didn't get off on the fact that I cussed, and then some radio stations shut down because of it.
"But I just couldn't think of that when I went out onstage, you know? In all honesty, I'm being naive about it, but I wasn't thinking, 'Hey, this is going out all over the world.' All I saw was 90,000 people, and I said, 'I'm gonna rock these fuckers... they ain't rocked all day like this!' "
So the other members of Van Halen didn't reprimand Sammy, or take him aside and ask him to say "darn" in the future?
"Hell no!" insists Edward. "Hey, Sammy and I were both freaked out that anyone got uptight, because it went by me like..."
"Yeah," says Michael, "in fact, Ed was the one who told Sammy to say most of that shit onstage!"
"It was my fault," says Edward, "half of it!"
"Shit," says Sammy, "it's the way I talk, you know? Would you do me a favor and print this? Anyone that took offense to that: fuck you too. No, fuck you again. Because that's honestly the way I feel.
"If anybody doesn't like the fact I walk onstage and say 'fuck,' well then, don't come to a concert of mine, you know? And I don't feel we're gonna lose any customers that way, you know?"
In 1980, if you interviewed Van Halen, you took part in the David Lee Roth Show, co-starring Alex and Edward Van Halen with a special appearance by Michael Anthony. It wasn't planned that way, understand; that was just the Order Of Who Talked Most. So perhaps it comes as no surprise that with the absence of Roth in late 1985, everybody moves up notch or so, with Sammy Hagar now somewhere in the middle. What does seem strange to you today, though, is the manner in which the former lead singer is talked about. There's almost a sense of relief in his absence that you can feel.
YOU: Are you three still friends, or is just convenience for you now, business – because [to Edward and Alex] you're brothers and [to Michael] you've been with them for a while?
ALEX: No, not at all.
EDWARD: No. We're friends. Dave was convenience.
YOU: Really?
EDWARD: Yeah.
YOU: Don't you feel kind of weird saying that?
MICHAEL: No, why?
ALEX: I wouldn't say it in quite those terms. It was basically a situation where we felt that the four of us – the previous model, the Model T as opposed to the SST right now – that we wanted to get the world to be able to listen to the music that we were making. And Dave was just one step in the chain, so to speak, to be able to facilitate that. And that's basically what we did. There was no real camaraderie, even though in the press there seemed to be...
YOU: Yeah, it really did seem that way.
ALEX: There was no real camaraderie. I'm not saying that we fought all the time or anything like that, or that we hated each other, because that's not the truth at all. It was basically a cut-and-dried, black and white situation. We looked at the structure and said, "Hey, this works – OK, so let's do it." Well, now we have something that feels right. And works.
It's ironic, then, that mere days before this interview transpires you hear from a respected source that David Lee Roth, while working on his movie, has put together a new band. Ironic? Only in that in the band is Billy Sheehan, virtuoso bassist with Talas and dubbed "the Eddie Van Halen of bass guitar" by publications just like the one you're now holding, but different. Also along for the ride is guitarist Steve Vai, a superb player who's spent time with Frank Zappa's band and replaced Yngwie Malmsteen in Alcatrazz. Not a shoddy pair by any means.
You thus suggest to the current members of Van Halen the hypothetical scenario wherein the new records by Van Halen and the David Lee Roth Group come out simultaneously. Might it not be possible that most listeners would tend to hear the Roth Group on the radio and say, in astonishment, "Wow, this must be the new Van Halen album"?
EDWARD: Then they'll come and buy our record!
SAMMY: They'll say, "I want the new Van Halen record!"
EDWARD: Put it this way: I mean, he can't hurt us. You know? The shit we got is...way beyond...
ALEX: Everybody's gonna compare, it's obvious. Whether it be, just hypothetically speaking, if we would've made another record with Roth, they would compare that record to the previous one. It's inevitable. So it doesn't matter. The bottom line is...
SAMMY: The truth of the matter is, there's no mistaking Van Halen's sound. I'm just a singer in this band, you know? And if they would've put somebody else in my place, this stuff would still sound like Van Halen. It's amazing how much identity the music in Van Halen has. Like, I never looked at it that way – you always look at Van Halen as an entity with Roth in it, right?
YOU: Sure.
SAMMY: Now, you hear it with me in it, and it still sounds like Van Halen.
MICHAEL: It does.
SAMMY: I don't sound like Roth singing, by any means, but it still sounds like Van Halen. There's such a strong identity in the sound, in the way Donn Landee engineers this band, and the way he makes the records sound.
EDWARD: And the way we play.
SAMMY: The way these guys play their instruments, the way it just comes out with a sound. But I'm telling you, it's Van Halen, and there'll be no mistaking it. When you do hear Roth's voice, it's gonna be like ‘Just A Gigolo’ – you knew that that wasn't Van Halen, that that was just him singing. Even if his music is more geared towards old Van Halen-type stuff, it still ain't gonna sound like Van Halen. If it does, it's gonna sound like a thin version – people are gonna say, "Man, their new record stinks!"
THE PROOF
The proof lies in the pudding, and when you do not eat, you must make do elsewhere. Therefore you now sit with the four members of Van Halen in the studio directly behind Edward Van Halen's house. They are playing you three tracks from their forthcoming album, and you'll be darned if each track doesn't sound like a potential hit record – as is probably the intention.
Yes, it's true. As Edward himself confided earlier: "You've never heard Sammy like with us." First and foremost, each of the three tunes sound like Van Halen. Van Halen with a new vocalist, maybe, but a lot more like Van Halen than anything from Roth's Crazy From The Heat or Sammy Hagar's own albums. The guitars are crazy: as always, Edward Van Halen knows there's a fine line between taste and excess and does his best to physically shatter it. One new track features what sounds like a constant drum solo by Alex, accompanied by the usual whoops, shrieks and maimings; another sounds like something from 1984 but is incredibly refined in its fierceness; the third, a ballad, could be a huge hit in finished form, and probably will be since the guys are calling in Foreigner's Mick Jones to help oversee proceedings.
Mick Jones?
Funny how things change, isn't it?
ALEX: In the previous things that we did, we were always open to suggestions as far as variety, such as ‘Big Bad Bill’ and ‘Dancing In The Streets’ – but Jesus Christ, who wants to dance in the streets? That song is fuckin' 20 years old. Leave it...
EDWARD: We want to do our own stuff.
ALEX: That's not our gig.
EDWARD: I'm sick of doing cover tunes. Fuck that. I've got enough inside of me...
SAMMY: I have no idea what these guys went through with Dave as a singer in the band – but with me, I tell you, being a former guitarist, I can see a guitar riff that Edward has in a song or something, and maybe appreciate it a bit more than a guy who doesn't play guitar. So like maybe someone else would overlook a really great lick just because they weren't a guitarist and couldn't say, "Hey, that's a really great lick."
EDWARD: I don't think Dave could get a handle on that as much as Sammy can.
SAMMY: When Edward presents something to me, I go, "Shit.."
EDWARD: You can relate.
SAMMY: Just about anything the guy plays is amazing, so you go, "Yeah, that would be a good song!" And then he plays this next thing – "Yeah, that could be a good song." I have this real positive outlook on almost anything he plays.
EDWARD: And that's the difference! It is. He's positive about everything.
ALEX: The bottom line is...
EDWARD: No tampons allowed in this city.
is what ruined your band, moron!
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