The Van Halen song David Lee Roth refused to sing
For many Van Halen aficionados, few albums can touch what the band did with David Lee Roth. Although the group were able to sculpt themselves into a completely different animal with Sammy Hagar, the amount of charisma that oozed out of ‘Diamond Dave’ is something that comes only once every generation. Despite the band’s chemistry working like a charm across the early 1980s, it was only a matter of time before everything came crashing down.
As the group entered the MTV generation, Roth was unhappy about Eddie Van Halen favouring the keyboards more than his guitar. While Eddie felt most at home behind the fretboard, his experiments on the keys led to songs that many weren’t even sure the band could pull off, from the pure pop of ‘Jump’ to the distorted sounds of ‘And the Cradle Will Rock’, the latter of which led some to believe that Eddie was still playing the guitar.
By the time Eddie had put his foot down about keyboards having a spot on the album 1984, Roth would leave following the tour, electing to work on his solo material. Although the band recovered with classic hits from the Hagar era of the band, there was always a question of whether the original lineup would ever get back together.
After Hagar left while Roth was in the band, Van Halen began to fracture once Gary Cherone was brought in behind the microphone. Trying to blend both Roth and Hagar’s styles, the fallout of the album Van Halen III led many to wonder whether any new version of the band could succeed.
Once the band went onstage with Roth and Hagar for a tour, though, the wheels started turning for one of the frontmen to return. As Eddie began to clean up his act, Roth would return to the band again, albeit without longtime bassist Michael Anthony, who would be replaced with Eddie’s son, Wolfgang.
Since the tour was going so well, Wolfgang was eventually able to convince his old man to work on some new material, leading to the long-awaited return to the studio on A Different Kind of Truth. Although the album was a hodgepodge of the best riffs that Eddie had written during Roth’s first stint in the band, Wolfgang remembered one song never getting the studio treatment.
Born out of a jam, the Van Halens had created a new song from scratch under the joke title ‘Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Panama’, only for Roth to shoot the idea down. Speaking to Louder, Wolfgang remembered how Roth was emphatic about not including it, saying, “[The producer] He told Dave. ‘Hey, check this out…’ And Dave was, like, [abruptly] ‘No, not doing it. We were, like, ‘If you’d listened to us, it could have been another cool song on the album.’ The relationship between Van Halen and their singers was always complicated”.
Even though the track could never be fleshed out, A Different Kind of Truth was still a more than competent hard rock record that allowed the band to bow out gracefully, especially on songs like ‘Chinatown’ and ‘She’s the Woman’. Then again, fans can still dream about the day when another one of Eddie’s classic licks can finally see the light of day.
