Its Offical:Roth was never in Van Halen

I know Eddie has done everything he could to erase David Lee Roth from Van Halen but last night I saw a TV ad for the new Greatest hits and when they showed videos from the songs..Diamond Dave was no where to be found!!!! All the videos from the "old" days just showed Eddie and Alex mostly..When they were from the "Van Hager" days..Sammy was front and center!!! They only spot that Dave was shown was during his twirl and Kick spot during JUMP. They edit it so you did not see his face..just the leg wiz by!! At the end of the ad, each name was flashed one at a time..at first I thought they would say Dave's name but nope. After the names were flashed the ad then flashed ON TOUR NOW!!! Nice duck guys!




So all these people that used to be rock stars should call Ringo and see when the next All Star Band Of Used to Be' s is going on tour again. Can't you just see Diamond Dave singing along with YELLOW SUBMARINE!!!!! One more thing,according to a quiz show on NPR, David Lee has decided he can be a EMT now! I can see it now, your laying in the street covered in your own blood and then you look up and see DAVID LEE ROTH leaning over you with his littlefunky shades on saying: You see what Eddie has forced me into doing..now stop your crying and put on this band aid!

 

Time to fan the flames...

To me, David Lee Roth WAS Van Halen. I just do not like Sammy Hagar's singing. I have all of the David Lee Roth Van Halen CDs and NONE of the Sammy Hagar Van Halen CDs.

 

I agree. Roth, obnoxious as he was, took all the band's personality with him. The Hagar-era band was a generic power-ballad outfit without a single original idea in its collective empty head.

 

I agree. The attitude of the band left along with Dave. It doesn't help matters that Eddie couldn't come up with 1 cool riff since Dave left too. He was/is all riffed out I guess...

 

This whole thing just shows how immature/egotistical EVH really is. What a shame!

 

EVH is actually a really nice guy. Truth is, the two personalities just don't jive. Eddie is a perfectionist almost to a fault, David is a daring showman with a huge hedonistic side.

DLR and EVH are amazing talents, but like any relationship, the real problems float to the top and it makes it very hard to get real work done. Life is real different too.

Sammy's done great things with the band but I miss DLR too. Those last two songs on GH1 had promise.

 

I certainly don't think erasing DLR from the records is in anyone's best interest, but it'd be awfully hard to do that without taking the records OOP permanently.
On the other hand, if I was EVH, and everyone kept telling me how I was much better 20 years ago with a co-worker I couldn't stand on my team, I'd be pretty annoyed.

 

To me it's the same if they replaced Robert Plant with someone else in Led Zeppelin. It's not the same band. With DRL they were (argubly)the greatest hard rock band of their time. With Sammy they are more like..hmm...Journey.

 

They probably just don't want to pay DLR for the use of his image in the commercials.

 

No, but they could go back to the multitracks, mix out his vocals, and replace them with...oooh, just about anyone. Michael Bolton, perhaps?

No biggie to me: I have all the albums with Roth, and none with Hagar. I don't think the Van Hagar era was really bad (I even like a couple of the songs), but it just didn't grab me the way Roth's VH albums have.

 

Met him once, VERY nice guy. Went against his manager's wishes and signed my Guitar World mag.

I really think he just tries too hard these days. He needs to go back to basic riff writing. He tries to be too complex with his song structure.

I do enjoy a lot of the Sammy stuff as well as the DLR stuff.....but yeah, those 2 songs on GH1 were pretty awesome.

 

He still gets I think 25 % of all Van Halen,He was on Stern saying they Incorporated and he refused to sell when he leftthe band.

Howard asked him how he felt that Van Hagar was selling more then the Dave's Van Halen years.

 

Wow, am I surprised! I really didn't expect people to agree with me about DLR. I thought I set myself up to be a target with my remarks.

 

As a "corporation," can't they just vote him out or force him to sell somehow? I always wondered if Vince Neil still was a "partner" in Motley Crue when they got John Corabi to replace him after signing a multi-bazillion dollar contract.

I have heard a rumor that Sammy isn't officially a member of the band at this point. He was probably disolved as a partner when he left in 96 and that's it. He is really a hired hand. Notice how in his latest quotes, Sammy seems to be backpedalling on all the big plans this "reunion" had coming up - tours, a new record etc..

 

I am sure that those clips are owned by WB and DLR has no say in the matter. I am sure that WB knows that Dave has more cache than Sammy, but the band probably has approval over what gets used. Just look at the artwork in the CD case. Roth isn't even shown.

 

That's a pretty apt comparison, though VH3 wouldn't have been (IMO) the greatest VH record ever if DLR had been singing...

 

Here are some comments from Steve Lukather on VH from MelodicRock.com. What's funny is a friend who is a former writer interviewed Steve Smith from Journey and he said Eddie told him that he always wanted to write songs like Journey. I guess he sort of got his wish...

Van Halen this year didn't get a …(this is in reference to the RNR HOF)
No because they refused to play it again. They're not going to play with Roth again. I can't speak for them but I'm saying they want it all tied up into a nice, neat little package. They'll eventually get in. They deserve to get in.

Of course they do.
But, you know, it'll be when they have another hit record. And there is a Van Halen band attack. That's probably another reason, there's not another Van Halen band attack right now. Let's face it, the name of the band is Van Halen. That means Eddie and Alex. The singers have come and gone, hopefully they'll pull it back together again. It's not fair, there's a lot of bands…once…I know they're thinking, once they let a Journey or a band like that in, who deserves to be in it, they'll have to let all the rest of us in. You know what I mean?

 

Can he say that again IN ENGLISH!?

 

Actually, this comparison is a little off only because "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" is often ranked in the top 3 or 5 of Bond Films (usually ahead of all of Roger Moore's films). Now Lazenby benefitted from a good script while Cherone suffered because Van Halen III was just plain bad. Cherone was actually quite good with Extreme and was in a lose-lose situation with VH primarily because in concert, he had to be both Roth and Hagar.

I agree with all the sentiments that say that Roth's VH had both good music and personality. Hagar's VH had some good songs but it was virtually faceless. I would even dismiss the comparison to Journey because for all its "faults", most people still knew that Steve Perry was the lead singer. In VH's case, most people only knew Sammy Hagar as the replacement for David Lee Roth and would be hard-pressed to recognize him at the mall. By "most people", I refer to rock fans who might know the music but not be the biggest fans of the respective groups.

Cliff

 

You sure you're referring to the VH Hagar albums? I thought that maybe you were actually talking about Roth's solo albums.

 

Lisa, I was just havin' some fun with ya . There really is no right or wrong answer to this sort of discussion.

Cliff

 

What surprises me is that people still care about Van Halen. They were the premier iconic hard rock group of the 80s- can't we leave it like that? Why do they and we feel like they need to re-unite to prove themselves? Does anyone actually expect them to do anything comparable to their old material?

If EVH was a real artist, he would move on to other pastures. Jeff Beck, for example, didn't want to work with singers, so he made excellent instrumental albums. There's plenty of other things Eddie and Alex can do, together or on their own, but they're stuck in this mentality that they can only be the Van Halen band. This tell me that they're no longer relevant musically. I'll spin their debut album for some kicks now and again, but am not holding my breath for any more of their embarrassing albums or tours.

 

Bingo!

I do like the first two Van Hagar albums.

Does no one ever mention poor Michael Anthony? It's like he's just..there.

 

Actually, seeing Sammy with Van Halen live was a lot better than I could have imagined. I was, like most of us I think, so used to DLR's methodology that we expected the same kind of performance. Not gonna happen! Dave is Dave and Sammy is Sammy and both are really good IMO, just different.

Did anyone else notice how Sammy was actually taught to sing more like DLR on the second album OU812 where as on 5150 he didn't quite have the DLR magic vocally and just sounded different than the rest of the later albums?

 

Oh! He's more than just "there". He's doing backup vocals for both DLR and Sammy! In fact, without Mike, it makes the VH formula kinda fall apart. There's a reason why he was ALWAYS in VH. He also has a very intuitive musical sense.

Plus, he's just an excellent bass player. Pitty most of the CDs you buy today kinda take him out of the mix....

But yeah- Michael is kind of an underdog, but so are other bass players. Do we talk about bass players so much? Maybe Bootsy, maybe Larry Graham.