“That fucking little prick”: The rivalry that defined Van Halen
Considering that Van Halen were named after their drummer and lead guitarist’s family name, it would take one hell of an ego to come in and challenge them for creative control of the band. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately if you’re Eddie Van Halen, that’s exactly what they found in the form of David Lee Roth.
On the one hand, he was a preening, unreconstructed narcissist who saw this band, one named for how incredible their lead guitarist’s skill was, as his side men. On the other, he’s one of the most charismatic frontmen in the history of heavy metal.
Without him, Eddie Van Halen’s legitimately shocking talent would never have gotten the spotlight it deserved. At best, he would have been poached by a bigger band. Famously, Gene Simmons had an eye on him to join Kiss when Ace Frehley was starting to get restless in their rigid, catsuit-clad world. At worst, he would have tipped the band straight into the Steve Vai/ Yngwie Malmsteen world of stuffy “virtuosos” clogging up guitar conventions across the country.
Roth’s sheer swagger and stage presence made them bonafide rock stars. The kind that may have cut their teeth touring with Journey and Black Sabbath, but not as adoring disciples, just happy to pay tribute. They completely blew the hoary old legends off stage night after night and by the end of the 1970s were poised to be the defining hard rock band of the next decade. Needless to say, Eddie and Roth both had slightly different ideas of who exactly was responsible for this level of success.
An illuminating interview Eddie gave to Guitar World in 1996 (conducted by The Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan, of all people) demonstrates the sheer, poisonous level of jealousy emanating from the two rock legends. When asked about why their album Fair Warning is such a dark album, Eddie responds: “It was kind of a dark period in my life. I was getting married, which flipped Roth out to the bone. I actually overheard him say, ‘That fucking little prick, not only is he winning all the guitar awards, but he’s also the first to marry a movie star’. So that’s what I was up against. A guy that wanted everything that was going my way.”
That record was followed up by Diver Down. Generally regarded as the low point of Van Halen’s imperial phase, Roth demanded the record contain a number of covers. He was trying so hard to replicate the success of their version of The Kinks’ ‘You Really Got Me’ that he kicked the record off with another Kinks cover, this time the song was, fittingly ‘Where Have All The Good Times Gone’. This was joined by versions of songs by Roy Orbison, Martha and the Vandellas and, bafflingly, a Roy Rogers track.
You could imagine how into this Eddie was, but you don’t need to, as he was more than happy to slag off this choice in the same interview. He said, “Half that album was damn cover tunes, and I hated every minute of making it. David Lee Roth had the idea that if you covered a successful song, you were half way home. C’mon–Van Halen doing ‘Dancing in the Streets’? It was stupid. I started feeling like I would rather bomb playing my own songs than be successful playing someone else’s music.”
Because of this, the band’s follow-up was an entirely original record, recorded in the studio Eddie built for his own work. Considering the resulting album was 1984, one of the defining Rock albums of the decade, he would not have to find out whether he’d actually prefer to bomb playing his own songs. Those original songs did just fine, all things considered.
