Thirty years ago this week, Van Halen had a chance to pull off one of the greatest rock reunions imaginable. The original lineup – Eddie and Alex Van Halen, David Lee Roth, and Michael Anthony – stood together at the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards, marking the first time the four had appeared publicly together since Roth left the band in 1985. For a few minutes, it looked like the impossible had finally happened.
What followed was one of the strangest moments in the band’s history, with Roth apparently convinced he was about to be back in the band while the siblings Van Halen had other ideas. The reunion quickly went from triumphant to uncomfortable, and Roth and the brothers were barely on speaking terms again by the time the night was over. In retrospect, it was almost a harbinger for everything that followed, though no one could’ve predicted just how bad it was going to get.
Over the next three decades, every move by Van Halen has been tainted by missteps both egregious and trivial. From picking the wrong lead single to excluding a beloved member from a long-awaited reunion to puzzling decisions concerning reissues, it’s been a frustrating road for fans and one that’s sufficiently damaged the legacy of one of America’s greatest rock bands.
12
The Roth Reunion That Wasn’t: Part I
Image via Everett Collection.
Van Halen had already survived Roth’s departure and thrived with Sammy Hagar. But things soured with the Red Rocker as the tour to support 1995’s Balance wound down, and when the record label came calling for a couple of new songs to tack onto a Van Halen greatest hits collection, Hagar wanted nothing to do with it. Tensions escalated, and it ended with the singer’s exit. Whether he left or was fired still depends on who is telling the tale.
Coincidentally, Roth was sniffing around the VH camp, wanting to know how his era was going to be represented on the compilation. He had reached out to Eddie, and the two got on so well that the guitarist invited him to the studio and work on a track or two. To the frontman, that signaled he was back in the band. The MTV VMAs appearance on September 4, 1996, where they presented the award for Best Male Video in front of cheering peers and dozens of artists influenced by Van Halen, all but confirmed it.
Not so fast. Minutes after coming off the stage, Roth and Eddie got into it verbally and, if you believe the latter, told his one-time singer, “You ever speak to me like that again, you better be wearing a cup.” While the awards show appearance was the lead story at the watercooler the next day, the rekindled flame was already extinguished. Roth soon put out a press release saying he was lied to, an unwitting participant in a publicity stunt, and Van Halen countered with a promise to make music with a new singer.
One month to the day of the MTV Video Music Awards fiasco, Extreme’s Gary Cherone was named the next Van Halen singer.
11
Leave It to Van Halen to Screw Up a Greatest Hits
Image via Warner Bros. Records
Best Of – Volume I, the compilation that many point to as the flashpoint to the whole mess in 1996, came out in late October of that year. In a particularly Van Halen twist, neither frontman represented on the collection was actually in the band when it was released. Out of 17 tracks, 10 were from Roth’s tenure – including two new songs – and seven from Hagar’s.
“Runnin’ With the Devil” was an obvious choice for the anthology: It opened Van Halen’s 1978 debut, was one of the few songs Roth performed at virtually every show, and even served as the band’s walk-on music at the VMAs. Yet the wrong mix was used on the first pressings, flipping the second and third verses. The same error resurfaced on the Detroit Rock City soundtrack three years later and remains on streaming services.
10
Lightning Strikes Twice…Not Three Times
Many might consider the selection of Gary Cherone for the third Van Halen singer as a misstep, but that’s too easy. There wasn’t a better choice at the time than the Extreme vocalist in terms of who could pull off any era of the band. He wasn’t a complete unknown, but he wasn’t a household name either. Interestingly, he wasn’t the first choice.
Skid Row’s Sebastian Bach was considered, as was bluesy songstress Sass Jordan. Nashville-based singer/songwriter Mitch Malloy had even been offered the gig, but once he saw the Video Music Awards and the reception Roth received, he wisely backed out. And despite the circuitous route that led them there, Cherone’s experiment had potential if things had been done differently.
When he entered this soap opera, the band went right into recording mode as fans seethed for more than a year over Roth’s deception in favor of “More Than Words” guy. The band emerged from hiding with Van Halen III in March ‘98, which debuted at No. 4 on the charts but ultimately tanked. “Without You” was a strong first single, but beyond that, nothing else connected. It didn’t have enough of that classic carefree Van Halen attitude and felt too abstract overall. Critics trashed it. It quickly became clear that this LP was essentially an Eddie Van Halen solo album since he not only handled guitar but played most of drums and bass on it – he even sang on one track.
“It was basically Eddie’s baby,” Cherone said. “The songs could have been gems if we nurtured them properly. It felt rushed because we didn’t write enough material for it. We really became a band after touring. If I could do it all over again, I would have joined first, toured playing some hits along with maybe one or two new songs – then recorded an album. That might have given us a better chance for an audience to embrace our third singer.”
Instead, as they entered studio in 1999 for another attempt with Cherone, expectations had plummeted.
