“Would have been great”: The supergroup Eddie Van Halen always wanted to form
When David Lee Roth departed Van Halen in 1985, the band were left in dire straits. They might have released their best-selling album 1984, the year prior, but after their vocalist left under a dark cloud of acrimony, the group’s fortunes had shifted markedly, confirming just how unstable a musical career can be, even for those at the top of the pyramid. It was left to Eddie Van Halen, his brother Alex, and Michael Anthony to strive tirelessly to ensure things didn’t fall apart entirely.
Despite Roth leaving because of his creative and personal differences with guitarist and band leader Eddie Van Halen, given the group’s stature, you might expect there to have been a long queue of suitors eagerly waiting for a chance to show what they could bring to the fold. However, this was not the case.
Eddie first invited Patty Smyth of the rock band Scandal to replace Roth, but she turned him down. Hinting at how Van Halen’s sonic proclivities were evolving, Daryl Hall of the pop duo Hall and Oates was offered the position but also declined. This forced the band to return to the drawing board and seriously consider their position.
Then, they got what they needed: a stroke of luck. Eddie, through his Ferrari mechanic, was introduced to Sammy Hagar in 1985. The former frontman of hard rock heroes, Montrose, was now thriving as a solo artist. He had enjoyed a stellar 1984, thanks to the hit single ‘I Can’t Drive 55’ and the album it was from VOA. As another formative connection, Hagar had also worked with producer Ted Templeman, who had brought all of Van Halen’s albums to life by then.
Although he was initially unsure about playing with Van Halen due to his distinct musical context, following their first rehearsal, Hagar and the rest of the group felt they were onto something special, and they were right. Van Halen’s first album with Hagar as vocalist, 1986’s 5150, was a number-one hit.
While the chance meeting with Hagar saved Van Halen, for a time, Eddie was thinking about contingencies. When speaking to Guitar World in 1996, he revealed that when his band was in limbo without a vocalist, he thought about putting together something of a supergroup, featuring the Van Halen members and a string of other prominent artists. It “would have been great,” he said, but he conceded that logistically, it would have been a nightmare to organise.
Eddie said: “My plan at the time–and I wouldn’t necessarily have called it a solo record because Mike and Al would have played on it–was to get Mike Rutherford [Genesis], Pete Townshend, Phil Collins, and Joe Cocker, all of whom I had talked to. I had written ‘Right Now’ back then and I wanted Joe Cocker to sing on it. It would have been fucking great. That’s what I wanted to do, write a record where I did all the music and had a different singer on each song.”
“Logistically, it would have been a nightmare–people on tour, contractual agreements, companies pissing and moaning–and we’d probably only be finishing it now. It would have been fun. Hopefully, in the future, I’ll still be able to do that,” he continued.
While Eddie never got to form the dream supergroup, he was surely safe in the knowledge that he managed to save his main project, and take it in the direction he’d always wanted to, mostly thanks to luck laying the foundations of his meeting with Hagar. Things could have turned out much differently.
