“The worst idea”: The band Van Halen should have never toured with
There was never any limit to what Van Halen could do every single time they got on stage.
Even if they weren’t always the most consistent band every time they played during the David Lee Roth era, you weren’t going to find anyone more animated whenever they hit the stage, whether it was ‘Diamond Dave’ strutting up and down the stage or Eddie Van Halen tapping his way through some of the greatest guitar solos of all time. But even for a band that had countless road miles under their belt, things were going to be a lot different once Sammy Hagar stepped into Roth’s shoes.
Because while ‘The Red Rocker’ had a lot of great moments in his solo career before Van Halen, he wasn’t going to be the same kind of presence that Roth was whenever he performed. Nor was he really trying to be, either. Most other replacement singers would have tried to be a carbon copy of one of the greatest frontmen of all time, but since Hagar saw Roth as a Vegas act more than a rock and roll performer, he wanted to give the band a shot in the arm once he joined.
But the rock and roll world had looked a lot different by the time that Hagar joined the group. The biggest names in music had started to follow Van Halen’s lead and sing about partying all night long, but the copycats started to expose themselves pretty quickly. There was no shortage of guitarists trying to steal all of Eddie’s licks, and while the hair-metal scene was practically all descended from Van Halen, Hagar didn’t want to give all of them the time of day once they hit the road.
He saw the band as being in the same league as the greatest bands of the 1970s, like Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin, and that meant trying to compete with some of the biggest names in that category. But even though they were generous about bringing out new acts like Alice in Chains on tour with them later in their career, there was something about touring with Bon Jovi that never seemed to click with Hagar.
But you have to remember where Van Halen were when they took out the New Jersey heroes. The band were coming off making records like Balance, and since their brand of rock and roll was at a low point, bringing Bon Jovi along for the ride meant that they were playing catch-up with the people who had come in off the back of them when they first got started making their biggest hits.
To this day, Hagar doesn’t hold any hard feelings by any stretch, but he did have more than a few moments where he felt like the band picked the wrong tour to be on, saying, “As soon as we finished playing, our people left and the Bon Jovi kids came to the front of the stage. It was total oil and water. Nothing against Jon Bon Jovi. H and I went to dinner many times on this tour. But it was the worst idea to go out with Van Halen. We got nowhere on that tour. I could feel the end coming.”
And it’s not like Eddie was having the best time, either. Before the tour was ever over, Hagar remembered Eddie talking with him about potentially going their separate ways, and even when Hagar was blindsided by the rest of the band letting him go a few months later, it was almost a relief for him not to worry about pleasing Eddie at every single turn.
So when Hagar came back to his solo career, he seemed far more content where he was than the average ex-member sob story. He was more than happy to continue playing rock and roll the way that he wanted, and seeing how Van Halen III was received, he was probably not to be there for when those sessions began.
