“You’re out of your mind”: The one band that Eddie Van Halen asked to join
Every single band has those few members who feel irreplaceable once they start making their own records. The thought of Nine Inch Nails making an album without Trent Reznor feels incredibly wrong, and it was only fitting that a band like Led Zeppelin called it quits the minute that John Bonham passed away. It never made sense for those acts to continue without one of their core members, but Eddie Van Halen came dangerously close to leaving his band behind right as they were reaching the top of the musical mountain.
Then again, it’s hard to separate any of Eddie’s playing from his namesake band. He was always about the music more than anything, and when listening to any Van Halen record, it’s easy to hear that everyone was coming to those shows to see him annihilate his fretboard whenever he launched into one of his solos like ‘Eruption’ or the beginning of ‘Mean Street’.
But bands are all about compromise, and even if Eddie’s name was on the banner, he would have to deal with David Lee Roth. After all, Roth was the mouthpiece of the group in many respects, and since the rest of them were content to play in the background, he was the one serving as the emcee of one of the greatest parties in the world, to the point where he seemed to have his own strange party-guy language whenever he opened his mouth.
For all they had going for them, though, it’s impossible to believe they couldn’t get anywhere in California then. The glam rock look was still a big deal, but even after having Gene Simmons of Kiss finance their demo tape, the industry was convinced that this group of partiers weren’t going anywhere. Once Warner Bros decided to take a chance on them, though, everything went through the roof.
The entire world had a new guitar player and frontman duo to look up to, but that didn’t mean Eddie was completely happy. It may have been a dream come true for him to play music for a living, but the thought of having to deal with Roth every day had started to wear on him, especially with success making everyone’s ego begin to inflate to twice its original size when the money started rolling in.
“Eddie called me and said, ‘Gene, I need to see you’. He said, ‘I wanna join Kiss. I can’t take Roth. He’s driving me nuts.’”
Gene Simmons
The tension ended up getting so bad that Eddie even pleaded with Simmons to join Kiss instead of going on, with the bassist recalling, “Eddie called me and said, ‘Gene, I need to see you’. He said, ‘I wanna join Kiss. I can’t take Roth. He’s driving me nuts.’ The conversation was, ‘You’re out of your mind. You’ve gotta rough it out. Every band has their ups and downs’. Then he played us ‘Jump.’”
Simmons may have done the rock world a great service that day, but Eddie’s choice to stick it out came at the expense of losing Roth. ‘Diamond Dave’ was never going to be chained to the band forever, but since ‘Jump’ was quickly becoming one of the biggest hits of their career, it wasn’t that hard for them to switch their style ever so slightly when Sammy Hagar entered the fold for 5150.
And looking at Kiss’s history when it comes to guitarists, there’s also a good chance that Eddie could have found it a little bit of a headache joining another group. Here was one of the greatest guitarists of all time who wanted to branch out into something new, so joining a band that sang songs like ‘Christine Sixteen’ probably wouldn’t make for the smooth transition he was looking for.
