How a 1976 demo became Van Halen’s final hit
By the 2000s, Van Halen no longer felt the pressure to produce mainstream hits.
Having achieved global success twice over, the band had honed their craft to perfection, whether touring with David Lee Roth or Sammy Hagar as frontmen. While Eddie Van Halen was content to keep playing music for anyone willing to listen, their final studio album resulted in one of their old demos finally making its mark on the charts.
For a long while, though, it looked like Van Halen was never going to be making music again. Although they had recorded the occasional track with Roth or Hagar, it was anyone’s guess as to whether that kind of camaraderie was going to last throughout an entire album. Since the last time the band switched singers with Gary Cherone dried up almost instantly, Eddie was not looking to make music to get that kind of reaction.
After the band got Roth back in the band, though, there was some new blood behind the fretboard. Since Hagar went his own way with bassist Michael Anthony, Wolfgang Van Halen would be brought it to provide the low end, doing Anthony’s parts justice while trying his best to match that searing high harmony.
Then again, a reunion with Roth wouldn’t be complete without at least a little bit of material to show for it. Rather than work on a bunch of songs from scratch, Wolfgang was able to talk his dad into cutting a record, basing many new tracks off of riff tapes that Eddie had accumulated since the first Roth era.
That approach gave the whole project a strange sense of time collapsing in on itself. Instead of chasing whatever sound the 2010s demanded, the band were effectively reaching back into their own past and asking what still had life left in it.
In that sense, A Different Kind of Truth wasn’t just another comeback record; it was a chance to finally give those shelved ideas their moment. Songs like ‘She’s The Woman’ weren’t being dragged into the present so much as being allowed to arrive properly, decades after they were first conceived.
One such single would be the basis for the song ‘She’s The Woman’. Although the song was demoed all the way back in 1976, years before the band had even released their debut. Featured on a few demos that they had shopped around to artists like Gene Simmons of Kiss, the band were already trying out material before realising that it didn’t fit with the rest of Van Halen.
After being on the shelf for nearly 40 years, the song would eventually be polished off for the album A Different Kind of Truth, becoming one of the lead singles after the song ‘Tattoo’. The song would eventually work its way into the top 40, reaching as far as number 23 on the mainstream rock charts, standing alongside artists of the day like Foo Fighters.
Compared to the newer songs cut for the record, it’s clear that we’re listening to the glory days of Van Halen from the minute the song starts. Produced just like the Roth era was back in 1981, the song feels like it wouldn’t be out of place on an album like Women and Children First, complete with the most zany guitar work that Eddie had ever played.
While Roth’s voice definitely leaves something to be desired by toeing the line between his old croon and a nasal squawk, the song is a unique glimpse into what the Roth lineup could have been had they stuck together. And with Eddie now long gone, this is the last taste that the charts got to hear of any new Van Halen music.
