“Will you do some writing”: The supergroup Eddie Van Halen never got to form
The word “supergroup” tends to spark debate among rock fans. While some bands naturally reach supergroup status by featuring members who are among the best at their instruments, assembling a team of legends can feel unfair compared to up-and-coming artists trying to break into the industry. These bands are built for spectacle, but even Eddie Van Halen wasn’t afraid to turn down musical giants if he didn’t have the time for them.
For someone who had played the best guitar music that anyone had ever touched, though, Eddie was never someone who casually appeared on other people’s tracks. There was the one exception where he turned Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’ into one of the most rocking pop songs that the charts had ever seen, but beyond that, a lot of what turned up on record were his brainchildren rather than him throwing in anything new.
While Van Halen effectively became a supergroup once Sammy Hagar entered the mix, no one was arguing about who was steering the ship. ‘The Red Rocker’ was the one responsible for turning every one of Eddie’s licks into actual songs, but the lion’s share of most of the work was being done by Eddie tinkering away in the studio trying to find the best tone, riff, or little musical moment that would suit the song.
Then again, Eddie already had that vision from the day that he started. He and his brother had the idea of throwing together something a bit heavier than usual when working in their first band, Mammoth, but when their original name was Genesis, they had to move on when they realised that one was trademarked quickly.
If you look at how Eddie constructs songs, it’s not all that different from what the prog rockers were doing. The Peter Gabriel iteration of Genesis had already made their songs into different exercises, and while David Lee Roth condensed Van Halen tunes into songs, Eddie was more than happy to make a song sound a bit more off-the-beaten-path than normal. But no one expected him to actually form a group with the prog legends, either.
Despite being one of the biggest artists in the world, Eddie was extremely close to making a supergroup with Mike Rutherford, but the plans never came together, with the Genesis bassist recalling, “I think Eddie heard a song from my second solo album, which I sang – God knows how I thought of this –and he rang me up and said, ‘Will you do some writing?’ We had some sessions. We wrote some songs. I can’t find the tape. I’ve got two boxes of cassettes. I’m not sure I’m mad enough to go through them.”
Given that this was in between Genesis’ break and Rutherford forming Mike + the Mechanics, this could have been a way for him to compete with Phil Collins with the kind of group that no other instrumentalist could touch. If you look at what Eddie was doing around this time, though, it might have been done for the wrong reasons as well.
Since Rutherford’s solo album came out in 1982, it’s possible that he was looking for some band to have on the side while he slowly got rid of Roth after work was completed on 1984. It would have made for an interesting collaboration, but if they had collapsed after Rutherford returned to Genesis, we most likely would have to kiss the beginnings of 5150 goodbye.
