“Who knows what would’ve happened”: Patty Smyth’s regret about turning down Van Halen
The mid-1980s was a strange time for Van Halen. At the height of their success and during a majorly explosive time for the band, something happened that would threaten to pull the rug out completely—David Lee Roth left. Fans were baffled by the sudden turn of events, left wondering why such an integral member would decide to throw in the towel, but Roth had his reasons, and Van Halen had to think fast.
Roth had been somewhat distracted since the moment he joined the band, not just with his desires to go and work on solo music, but because of a thought that plagued him, one that he couldn’t shake. This was centred around the inherent belief that one day, without expecting it, he would wake up “in a cold hotel, all the rooms would be empty and I would be stuck by a phone with a busy signal.”
The success of the band didn’t change this, and every day, he felt he was growing infinitely closer to realising his premonition. At the same time, his mind started to wander over into other potential projects beyond just his solo music. In 1986, Eddie Van Halen claimed Roth had gone to the band and said he couldn’t work with them anymore because he wanted to turn Crazy from the Heat into a film. Although he said he might return afterwards, it looked pretty unlikely.
The truth would come out years later when Roth revealed he wanted greater “control”, and he was consistently disagreeing with Ted Templeman creatively, which caused a lot of friction in the studio when they couldn’t see eye to eye about how to approach a particular record. So he left. “My philosophy has always been I’d rather bomb with my own music than make it with other people’s music,” he reflected in 2014.
Roth’s departure in 1985 meant several things for Van Halen. Firstly, and perhaps most obviously, it marked the end of an era for a band very much in their prime. Roth didn’t exactly leave during a time when things were looking uncertain; everything was going better than great, and his decision not only threatened to change their dynamic but left them wondering whether it made sense to go on at all.
Secondly, and most importantly, the decision to continue left them with one sobering question: Who was going to fill Roth’s shoes? At the time, Eddie and his wife were good friends with Scandal singer Patty Smyth, and, following Roth’s departure, they felt she was fitting to signify the new era of Van Halen, so they offered her a gig as the new lead singer. However, their partying antics and life on the road didn’t really agree with her, so she turned it down.
Looking back now, Smyth regrets her decision, knowing how successful she would have been had she said yes. “For a long time I regretted it,” Smyth told Stereogum. “When you start to have regrets, I was like, ‘Oh, man, I would’ve made so much money,” she admitted, continuing, “They were heavy drinkers, I don’t drink. I [also] never saw myself living in LA. I was like, ‘I’m from New York, we don’t move to LA.'”
However, things could have been different if Eddie had framed the question differently because Smyth also said she would have agreed if he had asked her to work on a new album with them. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be, and she remains haunted by the countless ‘what ifs’ that linger from her decision to turn down such an immense career opportunity. As she reflected, “Who the heck knows what would’ve happened if I joined Van Halen?”
