The one supergroup that David Lee Roth nearly broke up: “There was no way that was happening”
There’s no getting around the stage presence of David Lee Roth whenever talking about Van Halen.
Despite not having the same talent as an instrumentalist, the fact that he could put every single member of the audience in the palm of his hand while the band played was the kind of superpower that most frontmen wish they could have had during their prime. But while ‘Diamond Dave’ could turn virtually anything into a party, he could easily redirect that energy every now and again when he performed.
It’s no secret that he and Eddie didn’t exactly get along by the time the band started touring for 1984, but when the band severed, Roth wasn’t done trying to beat Eddie at his own game. Getting someone like Steve Vai to take his place in his solo band was already a low blow, but Eddie’s way of fighting dirty by getting Sammy Hagar as his new singer was like rubbing salt in the wound.
While ‘The Red Rocker’ was more willing to work with keyboards than Roth was when making ‘Jump’, he also brought a rock and roll energy that ‘Diamond Dave’ simply couldn’t. Roth’s bluesy chops weren’t built for tunes like ‘Dreams’ or ‘Why Can’t This Be Love’, but the kind of grit that Hagar could put into every single note is the reason why he seemed to be the perfect blend of pop-rock for Van Halen’s sound.
The honeymoon period might not have lasted as long as Hagar would have wanted in Van Halen, but compared to all the reunions the band had with both frontmen, there wasn’t a chance in hell that the Van Halen brothers were going to show up for their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. Those wounds were still far too raw, but they did have the next best thing by getting Velvet Revolver to induct them.
The combination of Stone Temple Pilots’ Scott Weiland and the former members of Guns N’ Roses was a match made in heaven, but while Hagar was around to recognise his part in Van Halen’s legacy, Roth was flip-flopping about whether he was going to play with the band until the day that the whole thing took place. And when listening to what Weiland said from the stage, saying that “drama ensued” was a bit of an understatement considering how tense everything got.
When reminiscing on the event, Hagar wasn’t shy about Roth nearly breaking up Velvet Revolver to get what he wanted, saying, “Roth called up Slash and told him if the band played ‘Jump’, he would come. When Scott Weiland got wind of Roth’s phone call, he told Slash he would quit the band if they let that motherfucker anywhere near the stage. By the time I called Slash to suggest that [bassist] Mikey [Anthony] and I join them, there was no way that was happening.”
A lot of the tension at the time could have easily been chalked up to the drug use within Velvet Revolver, but it’s not like Roth was exactly helping. He had been through the wringer of rock and roll, and judging by how the last few Van Halen tours with him ended up, he had clearly learned from his mistakes, considering that both he and Eddie were on their best behaviour and made sure not to step on each other’s toes.
But Velvet Revolver were halfway out the door after making one more album, and it wasn’t like Roth was going to leave any lasting stain on their legacy. Then again, it would have been a much more entertaining piece of rock and roll folklore to think that one of the greatest supergroups of the 2000s broke up thanks to a fight with a singer whose name wasn’t Axl Rose.
