Category: Van Halen

Van Halen Tour On Hold But Still In The Works
A prospective Van Halen tour with original frontman David Lee Roth has derailed. Sources tell Billboard.com the decision to postpone the outing indefinitely was not due to any internal strife among band members. Insiders close to the situation say a tour is still in the works and will happen, though when is anybody’s guess.
The tour, negotiations for which were first tipped here on Jan. 24, will feature Roth, Eddie and Alex Van Halen, and Eddie Van Halen’s teenage son Wolfgang on bass. A spokesperson for the Van Halen brothers confirmed the tour in a Feb. 3 press release.
Indeed, wheels were in motion for a 40-date, Live Nation-produced amphitheatre tour to be announced Feb. 20, including venues and on-sale dates.
The Van Halen camp has yet to make any official announcement about the postponement or the reasons behind it.

Planned Van Halen tour hits roadblock
Van Halen (music)’s recently announced summer reunion tour with original lead singer David Lee Roth (music) has been indefinitely postponed, according to a reliable source.
Earlier this month, Van Halen issued a press release in which the group announced it was hitting the road with Roth in tow for the first time since the mid-’80s. The announcement promised 40 shows featuring Roth, group co-founders Eddie and Alex Van Halen, and new bassist Wolfgang Van Halen, Eddie’s son, who was to take over on stage for fired original bassist Michael Anthony.
The Feb. 2 press release came from Eddie Van Halen’s girlfriend, Janie Lisewski, whose publicity firm, High Profile Media, recently became the guitarist’s official mouthpiece. Neither the band’s management, nor the management’s publicity firm, ever commented publicly on the group’s plans.
Reports indicated that a Roth-era best-of set was due out from Rhino Records this spring in anticipation of the tour, but it is believed that those plans have also been shelved.
While the band’s future remains uncertain, one thing is for sure: the group will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame during a March 12 ceremony at New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Traditionally, inductees perform during the event, but Van Halen’s volatile state has many fans wondering if the group will honor that tradition.
Roth split from Van Halen in 1985, and was replaced by Sammy Hagar.
Hagar parted with the band on bad terms in 1996 and was replaced by former Extreme frontman Gary Cherone, who recorded one album with the group, then split after a 1998 tour in support of the set.
Hagar returned to the group for a 2004 reunion tour, but went back to his solo career at tour’s end after having another falling out with Eddie Van Halen. Hagar and Anthony subsequently toured with Hagar’s solo band, and last year performed at each of Hagar’s tour stops as The Other Half, a group whose setlist was comprised entirely of Van Halen material.
Eddie Van Halen has since expressed his displeasure about the Hagar/Anthony venture, in the wake of which the guitarist bounced Anthony out of the group.

And Van Halen Will Rock
It turns out David Lee Roth was right. Not about fashion sense or talk radio, mind you, but about the inevitability of a Van Halen reunion.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-bound bandóRoth includedóhave announced plans for a 40-date North American summer tour.
“I am very excited to get back to the core of what made Van Halen,” Eddie Van Halen said in a statement Friday.
Roth, who unceremoniously parted ways with Van Halen in 1985, told billboard.com last summer that getting him and his former hair-band brothers back together would not be “rocket surgery.”
“It’s very simple to put together,” Roth said. “And as far as hurt feelings and water under the dam, like what’s-her-name at the end of the movie Chicagoó’So what? It’s showbiz!’ So I definitely see it happening.”
Unlike, say, his career in morning radio.
The former heavy metal frontman last rocked out with his fellow “Hot for Teacher” artists in 1996, when they recorded a few songs that ended up on the greatest hits album Best of Volume I. But an appearance at the MTV Video Music Awards that year by all four original bandmatesósiblings Eddie and Alex Van Halen, Roth and bassist Michael Anthonyóproved that the guys weren’t really ready to reconcile.
While fans hoped that their group showingóthe quartet’s first public appearance together in 11 yearsówas a sign of a full-fledged reunion, Roth issued a statement several weeks later saying he’d been the “unwitting participant” in a publicity stunt engineered to sell more copies of Best of Volume I, and that he told Eddie at the time he didn’t “think it was a good idea for the band to go to New York half-cocked.”
The Van Halen brothers and Anthony denied Roth’s take on the situation, saying “the intention all along was to do two new songs” and that Roth was “never led to believe anything but that.”
Despite the inauspicious undertones of that exchange, along with Roth’s comment to tmz.com last month characterizing a possible Van Halen reunion as “Jerry Springer meets Knots Landing,” it looks as if fans are going to get the chance to “Jump” for Roth, Eddie & Co. after all, with Billboard reporting that a contract could be signed as early as Wednesday.
Anthony, however, will not be along for the proposed ride, having since joined up with Van Halen’s second former frontman Sammy Hagar for a series of shows in which they billed themselves as the Other Half and performed both Roth and Van Hagar-era Van Halen tunes.
Instead, Eddie’s 15-year-old son, Wolfgang, will take over bass responsibilities when the band hits the road again, a notion that apparently doesn’t sit well with Hagar, who last performed with Van Halen in the summer of 2004.
“Thatís a lot of pressure for Wolfie,” Hagar told billboard.com a couple weeks ago. “Just ’cause he’s Eddie’s son doesn’t mean he can go out and play in arenas and perform and entertain an audience for two hours. I would love to see Eddie and Alex get behind Wolfie, with a kid of his age singing, and produce the record for him and help him launch a career. I’d rather see it go that way than come out and say ‘Wolfie’s the bass player in Van Halen and maybe singing, too.’ Van Halen’s got way too much history to have that put on him.”
Hagar will have a chance to give Eddie some parenting advice in person in March, when Hagar, the Van Halen brothers, Roth and Anthony are scheduled to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
“My hope is that everyone lets everything go and we go there in complete respect of each other and in a loving way, with the attitude that ‘I couldn’t have done it without you’ toward everybody,” said Hagar, ever the optimist.

Van Halen reuniting with Roth for summer tour
NASHVILLE (Billboard) – A deal is almost set for David Lee Roth to return to the Van Halen fold for a summer tour of amphitheaters, sources told Billboard.com
They said a contract could be signed as early as Wednesday for tour promoter Live Nation to produce a 40-date trek, which would mark Roth’s first outing with the rock band in more than 20 years.
Spokeswomen for Roth and the band said they were unable to provide any confirmation.
Guitarist Eddie Van Halen’s 15-year-old son Wolfgang has stepped in for original bassist Michael Anthony in the new incarnation of the group, which also features Eddie’s brother Alex Van Halen on drums.
Van Halen last toured in 2004 with vocalist Sammy Hagar, Roth’s replacement, grossing nearly $40 million, according to Billboard Boxscore. Hagar refused to collaborate further with the Van Halen brothers after the tour’s completion, although he has consistently played live with Anthony in recent years. The warring factions may wind up meeting in public in March when Van Halen is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Hagar Hoping Van Halen Takes High Road At Rock Hall
Van Halen’s appearance at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony on March 12 “could go a lot of different ways,” according to Sammy Hagar. That said, Hagar — the group’s second frontman, from 1985-96 — tells Billboard.com he has high hopes that the famously combative group will take the high road on that particular night.
“My hope is that everyone lets everything go and we go there in complete respect of each other and in a loving way, with the attitude that ‘I couldn’t have done it without you’ towards everybody,” says Hagar, who received the official word of Van Halen’s selection at his Cabo Wabo Cantina in Mexico, where he and Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony have spent the past week jamming with Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith in a newly developing side project called Chickenfoot.
But he also notes that, “The biggest fear for me is there’ll be animosity and ‘I won’t talk to that guy’ and maybe some harsh words towards each other or some sly remarks in speeches … and it’s not out of the question that that could happen. But in the end, no matter what happens, when you hear the music you’re gonna go, ‘That’s one of the greatest rock’n’roll bands in the world, ever, and well-deserved the inauguration into the Hall of Fame.”
Hagar says he hadn’t spoken to anyone other than Anthony about the induction but planned to put in a congratulatory call to drummer Alex Van Halen. He expects that manager Irving Azoff “is gonna try to spin everyone together somehow” and says he’ll “go with the flow” with induction ceremony plans, which Hagar expects will include a live Van Halen performance.
However, Hagar deemed talk of a Van Halen tour this year with original frontman David Lee Roth and guitarist Eddie Van Halen’s 15-year-old son Wolfgang on bass speculative and voiced concern for that particular turn in the band’s course.
“Wolfie’s a great guy; I love Wolfie. But I don’t think Van Halen should bring a 15-year-old kid to replace Sam, Dave and Michael Anthony,” Hagar says. “That’s a lot of pressure for Wolfie. Just ’cause he’s Eddie’s son doesn’t mean he can go out and play in arenas and perform and entertain an audience for two hours. I would love to see Eddie and Alex get behind Wolfie, with a kid of his age singing, and produce the record for him and help him launch a career. I’d rather see it go that way than come out and say ‘Wolfie’s the bass player in Van Halen and maybe singing, too.’ Van Halen’s got way too much history to have that put on him.”

R.E.M., Van Halen Lead 2007 Rock Hall Class
R.E.M., Van Halen, Patti Smith, the Ronettes and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame March 12 during a ceremony at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. To be eligible for induction, this year’s class had to release their first single no later than 1981.
The upcoming event will also pay tribute to late Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun, who served as the chairman of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation.
R.E.M. and Van Halen face the decision of whether to perform at the ceremony with ex-members. R.E.M. reunited with former drummer Bill Berry last fall to celebrate its induction into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame and even hit the studio with him to record a track for an as-yet-unreleased charity album.
For Van Halen, the situation is more complex. The group is without a lead singer, although rumors are swirling that original frontman David Lee Roth will tour with the outfit this summer. In addition, Eddie Van Halen’s teenage son recently replaced longtime bassist Michael Anthony in the band.
Black Sabbath, the Sex Pistols, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Blondie, Miles Davis and record moguls Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss were enshrined in the Hall in 2006.

Van Halen reunion rumors gain steam
Rumors of Van Halen reuniting with original singer David Lee Roth, which have swirled around the group for years, have taken a turn toward reality now that guitarist Eddie Van Halen apparently has invited the motor-mouthed frontman back to the group.
“I’m telling Dave, ‘Dude, get your ass up here and sing, bitch! Come on!'” Eddie recently told Guitar World magazine. “As it stands right now, the ball is in Dave’s court. Whether he wants to rise to the occasion is entirely up to him, but we’re ready to go.”
That revelation appears in the February issue of Guitar World, according to managing editor Jeff Kitts, who said that the guitarist will also be featured on the cover of the magazine’s March issue.
Roth–who for years has publicly campaigned for the gig–has remained uncharacteristically silent since news of Eddie Van Halen’s remarks surfaced last week.
Eddie’s comments follow last month’s revelation that Van Halen is currently in the studio writing and rehearsing for a 2007 summer tour. Should Roth return to the helm for that outing, fans still won’t be seeing the original Van Halen lineup; as previously reported, Eddie recently announced that bassist/vocalist Michael Anthony had been bounced in favor of Eddie’s 15-year-old son, Wolfgang Van Halen.
“Wolfgang breathes new life into what we’re doing,” Eddie said during the recent Guitar World interview. “He brings youthfulness to something that’s inherently youthful. He’s only been playing bass for three months, but it’s spooky. He’s locked tight and puts an incredible spin on our s—.”
One of the few people who has heard Wolfgang Van Halen’s work with the band is photographer Ross Halfin, whose latest encounter with Eddie Van Halen took place last week.
“Edward is in a great mood, he’s easy to work with,” Halfin wrote in an online diary entry about the Dec. 13 photo shoot. “And I’m not saying who or what I shot, but I will tell you Edward played a couple of CDs which I thought were from 1978 (it was from two days ago) of Van Halen rehearsing with Wolfgang Van Halen on bass. It was jaw-droppingly amazing. They played ‘On Fire,’ ‘I’m the One,’ ‘Atomic Punk.’ I’m not listing the rest, but I will tell you the band sounded untouchable.
“It was as exciting as the first time I saw them,” Halfin continued. “They will come back and destroy the world. … Having Edward’s son on bass has rejuvenated them.”
Despite Halfin’s rave, it remains to be seen how the group’s decision to oust Anthony–a fan favorite whose background vocals are widely recognized as a defining element of the band’s signature sound–will impact the success of any reunion tour.
Van Halen last toured in 2004, at which time estranged singer Sammy Hagar–who replaced Roth in 1985, and then split with the group himself in 1996–returned to the fold. That outing ended with more bad blood between Hagar and Eddie Van Halen, and Anthony has since said that the Van Halen brothers had fired him before negotiating a discounted deal that allowed him to participate in the 2004 run.
Earlier this year, Anthony teamed up with Hagar for a summer tour that featured Hagar performing one set with his solo band, and a second set with his drummer, guitarist and Anthony. Billed as The Other Half, the quartet’s setlist was comprised entirely of Van Halen tunes.
Eddie expressed displeasure with the Hagar/Anthony outing during a September telephone interview that aired on “The Howard Stern Show.” For their part, Anthony and Hagar have claimed that Eddie’s alcohol consumption derailed the group’s 2004 reunion.

Eddie Van Halen Taps Teenage Son As New Bassist
Eddie Van Halen has tapped his 15-year-old son, Wolfgang, as the replacement for Michael Anthony in Van Halen, a spokesperson confirms to Billboard.com. Father and son, along with Eddie’s drummer brother Alex, have been rehearsing for a 2007 tour, but it is unknown who will serve as the band’s vocalist.
Rumors continue to swirl that David Lee Roth will be back in the fold for the first time in more than 20 years. Roth told Billboard.com in May that he hadn’t seen Eddie Van Halen in “a couple of years” but that he was up for reuniting with his old mate.
“I see it absolutely as an inevitability,” said Roth. “To me, it’s not rocket surgery. It’s very simple to put together. And as far as hurt feelings and water under the dam, like what’s-her-name says to what’s-her-name at the end of the movie ‘Chicago’ — ‘So what? It’s showbiz!’ So I definitely see it happening.”
No details have been provided about Anthony’s departure, although Van Halen knocked the bassist for aligning himself with Sammy Hagar during a September appearance on “The Howard Stern Show.”
“I got no problem with these guys, but they’re billing themselves as the other half of Van Halen,” he said. “My brother is the other half of Van Halen. They’re out there selling hot sauce and tequila and playing all my songs. It doesn’t bother me. It just makes them a cover band.”
As for the musical acumen of Wolfgang, he enthused, “If I excel at the speed of sound, he excels at the speed of light. This kid is just a natural.”
As previously reported, Van Halen is one of nine acts on the ballot for the 2007 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction.

Former Van Halen front man Roth Strummin’ With the Devil on bluegrass tribute
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – The blond mane and leather pants are gone from his days fronting Van Halen in the ’80s. But David Lee Roth’s boisterous personality is still intact.
He was in town recently to promote his latest project, a bluegrass tribute to his former band called Strummin’ With the Devil: The Southern Side of Van Halen that came out Tuesday, and he seemed every bit the Diamond Dave of old – a wisecracking, motormouth cross between Robin Williams and Wolfman Jack.
“It’s been 27 summers – like the way I put that?” he asked, explosively laughing. “That’s metric for years. Sounds like less. Sounds thinner (more loud laughter). Easier to digest, like, ‘I’m watching what I eat as opposed to I’m on a diet’ (laughter). I venerate the language also, sir (laughter).”
Roth’s emerged as Van Halen’s party-loving lead singer in the late ’70s and stayed with the group until splitting on less-than-amicable terms in 1985 for a solo career that started strong, then petered out. Rock fans still debate whether Van Halen was better under Roth or his successor, Sammy Hagar.
In January, Roth took on the daunting task of replacing Howard Stern on a syndicated morning show for CBS Radio. His show was cancelled in April.
In a posh hotel suite with the bed still unmade and empty beer bottles on the end tables, the 51-year-old picked up a guitar and played a country-flavoured tune he said he wrote when he was nine and discussed his appreciation for 1970s country-tinged rock acts like Jackson Browne and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
The tribute album began with Roth deciding he wanted to cut an acoustic record and putting out the word to some of Nashville’s finest pickers, including Blue Highway, the John Cowan Band, Mountain Heart, Larry Cordle and David Grisman. He said he wanted the album to be a credible interpretation of Van Halen, rather than a tongue-in-cheek exhibition.
“Nine times out of 10 when people do a tribute album or tribute songs for somebody, it’s what I call ‘white boys playing reggae,’ ” Roth said. “They know they can’t, we know they can’t, so they sing like they can’t and play like they can’t. They gently make fun of the idiom or sing in a false accent.
“My only real insistence was that we reinvent the songs completely. Take it way past where we found it to the degree you may not even recognize the song until the vocals come in, so other ingredients of the music present themselves that you may not have been consciously aware of before.”
As odd a concept as the record might seem, it mostly works. Hard rock classics like Panama and And the Cradle Will Rock … retain the energy of early Van Halen, but with mandolins and fiddles instead of electric guitars and drums. The first single, Jamie’s Cryin’, takes a new, mournful tone with the acoustic instrumentation.
Roth sings on only two tracks: Jump and Jamie’s Cryin’. The singer who made a career of leaping into the air on stage and surrounding himself with scantily clad women in his videos didn’t want to go over the top.
“I’ll never convince you that I’m either a cowboy or black. Those two songs stuck out as the most legitimate,” for his vocal style, Roth said.
If he had sung on the others, “Well … white boys playing reggae.”

Roth predicts Van Halen comeback
DETROIT (Billboard) – Now that he’s lost his radio job, David Lee Roth is seeking gainful employment in another capacity — as lead singer of Van Halen. Again.
“I see it absolutely as an inevitability,” says Roth, who was deposed by CBS Radio in late April as one of Howard Stern’s replacements. “There’s contact between the two camps, and they have legitimate management; Irv Azoff is part of their loop now.
“To me, it’s not rocket surgery. It’s very simple to put together. And as far as hurt feelings and water under the dam, like what’s-her-name says to what’s-her-name at the end of the movie ‘Chicago’ — ‘So what? It’s showbiz!’ So I definitely see it happening.”
Despite that claim, Roth — who was Van Halen’s singer from 1974-1985 — acknowledges that he hasn’t seen Edward Van Halen “in a couple of years.” The last time Roth recorded with Van Halen was for the group’s “Best Of Van Halen Volume 1” album in 1996, though there have been periodic rumors ever since.
Roth isn’t sitting around while he waits for the call, however. He joins the John Jorgensen bluegrass band for two songs — “Jump” and “Jamie’s Cryin’ ” — on “Strummin’ With the Devil: The Southern Side of Van Halen,” a bluegrass-styled tribute to Van Halen. Roth calls it “a detour” as well as “an interesting return … Before there was rock ‘n’ roll, there was me and a single guitar, flat pickin’ Doc Watson (songs).” Roth plans to make a number of TV appearances on behalf of the album, which comes out June 6.
Roth is also planning to tour later this summer to play Van Halen hits — “I’m so proud of that music,” he says — favorites from his solo album and covers. He’ll leave the banjos and fiddles at home, though.
“I like to bring out the brass section now and the keyboard players and the singers and so forth,” Roth explains. “It’s probably a little closer to the Rolling Stones’ revue than to the early three-piece power trio. But the demand is amazing; I guess I’m lucky enough to be one of those guys now who can point at the map and say ‘Let’s go here’ — or, rather, my favorite expression, which is ‘Let’s follow the sun.”‘