Why Daryl Hall turned down the chance to join Van Halen: “He was half joking”
Van Halen had a very particular sound associated with them. The shredding guitar and heavy distortion style really set the band apart from any other rock outfit in the mainstream at the time. While the tapping technique that Eddie Van Halen was famous for is pretty popular now, it was completely alien at the time and blew away even the most veteran guitar players.
When Van Halen went on tour with Black Sabbath, the father of heavy metal, Tony Iommi, couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing when Eddie started playing. “Eddie was playing things I’d never seen before,” he said, “We’re still friends, and we became friends then. Of course, he set off a whole new load of players playing like that, and now I can’t believe some of them. I can’t follow it. I certainly couldn’t do it.”
Of course, that heavy rock sound wasn’t the only thing that Van Halen made. With their 1984 hit, ‘Jump’, the band ventured into much more pop-rock territory, embracing the synthesiser and various other sounds when trying to achieve something completely different. Eddie Van Halen confirmed that one of the biggest inspirations for the song ‘Jump’ was the Hall & Oates single ‘Kiss On My List’.
“That is correct,” said Daryl Hall when asked about the track, “That is what [Eddie] always told me. That inspired ‘Jump’.” The writing of this kind of music coincided with the band going through a rough patch as singer David Lee Roth was leaving the group. As such, when Van Halen started looking for a replacement, it made sense that they should ask the artist who was currently inspiring them.
“I knew those guys really well. We actually shared some people – crew, and things like that,” said Hall, “And Eddie came to a show with Valerie [Bertinelli, his wife at the time]. This goes back, you know? And David had just left the band. And Eddie said, ‘Do you want to join Van Halen, man?’” Whether or not Eddie Van Halen was joking remains to be seen, as Hall wasn’t too sure himself at the time.
“He was half joking,” he said, “But I think he was serious. I really do believe he was serious. And I took it seriously. I went, ‘Meh, I think not. I think I’ve got my own shit going on.’”
The band ended up opting for Sammy Hagar, who performed with them for several years. The truth is, with the musical talent on display within Van Halen, anybody could have taken to the mic and been given room to work. They had already proven themselves adaptable by seamlessly introducing synths into their sound. Subsequently, it would have likely been easy for them to take on a singer who required them to develop their style.
