Eddie Van Halen’s musical potential wasted by fans

[Bertie_Wooster]

In my opinion Eddie had a lot more to offer us but the close minded VH fans would not let him play to his potential.   He has always wanted to experiment but was shut down by either Sammy or Dave.
He finally got to make music like he wanted to with VH III (which is my favorite VH album)  but fans
didn’t like it. So then he pretty much said to heck with this and stayed in his house and got drunk.
I know His drinking also had a lot to do with it but cultural forces made it so he never made it to a
Place he wanted to go musically. It is too bad because he was a monster at composition. One of his best songs “crossing over” was relegated to being a japanese bonus track on Balance.

[max_security]

I have a really hard time believing that EVH did or didn't do ANYTHING that was not on his terms.

Edit : and as a fellow alcoholic I can say for certain that he did that on his own terms as well. God bless him he is still with us and he has the resources to take a wonderful musical journey to any degree he chooses I'm sure.

[KevShmev]

I agree that EVH always did what he wanted, Hagar or Roth be damned, but the Hagar lineup did a fair amount of stuff that was pretty different for them, so I don't think he always kowtowed to what the fans wanted. However, once VH3 was a flop with the fans, he probably realized that they would accept a) either Roth or Hagar as the singer, and b) music in the style of classic VH, hence the only new album since being a record that sounds like it could have been from 1979 (helped by the fact that many of the songs were written back then).

[Mosh]

Eddie only has himself to blame for any wasted potential. With few exceptions, the last 20 years of his band has been squandered by drama and low activity.

Nobody is stopping him from doing other projects. I doubt there's a musician in the world who wouldn't want to work with him.

[Adami]

Eddie only has himself to blame for any wasted potential. With few exceptions, the last 20 years of his band has been squandered by drama and low activity.

Nobody is stopping him from doing other projects. I doubt there's a musician in the world who wouldn't want to work with him.

2019. Mike Portnoy and EVH.

[KevShmev]

Eddie only has himself to blame for any wasted potential. With few exceptions, the last 20 years of his band has been squandered by drama and low activity.

Nobody is stopping him from doing other projects. I doubt there's a musician in the world who wouldn't want to work with him.

While that is true, I think it goes without saying now that Eddie doesn't want to work with anyone whose last name isn't Van Halen.  He only tolerates Roth because he know fans won't accept any other lead singer in VH (unless that singer's last name is Hagar).

[Mosh]

Eddie only has himself to blame for any wasted potential. With few exceptions, the last 20 years of his band has been squandered by drama and low activity.

Nobody is stopping him from doing other projects. I doubt there's a musician in the world who wouldn't want to work with him.

While that is true, I think it goes without saying now that Eddie doesn't want to work with anyone whose last name isn't Van Halen.  He only tolerates Roth because he know fans won't accept any other lead singer in VH (unless that singer's last name is Hagar).

That's exactly my point. His stubborness is what wasted his potential. There's only so much you can do with Van Halen and I think Eddies abilities go beyond that, but sadly we will never hear that.

[Mosh]

Also, i don't know what his problem with Hagar is, but if it were up to me they'd bring him back and forget about Roth. He can't sing anymore and it's just not worth dealing with him. And I say that as someone who prefers the Roth era, like most people.

[KevShmev]

I think is problem is more with Michael Anthony (for whatever reason), and he knows that he cannot bring just Hagar back; Hagar and Anthony are a package deal, and he is not about to kick his son out of the band, or even ask him to step aside for a tour, to make room for a couple guys he probably doesn't like that much.

Knowing EVH, he is probably still bitter about them making a killing off of Sammy's tequila, which EVH bought into it and lost money back in the day, only to sell his shares to Sammy and then see it go through the roof.

[max_security]

I was never a huge fan of anything after Fair Warning back in the day and it wasn't until at least the late 1990's that I sat down and listened to 1984. The song " Top Jimmy " just totally floored me man , his parts and overall arrangement are just genius pure and simple and I totally missed it . At that point I became a EVH fan again ( man got that song stuck in my head now lol ).

[TAC]

Max, 1984, other than the "hits" is awesome!

[max_security]

I was Iron Maiden 24 / 7 back when it came out , lol. Totally consumed.

[TAC]

I think if you were turned off by Diver Down, and then heard Jump, I can see why you'd skip 1984 altogether.

[KevShmev]

I was totally oblivious to Van Halen prior to 1984 (if MTV played any VH prior to then, I didn't remember it), but I can honestly say that I thought Jump was, to quote Jeff Spicoli, "totally awesome" the first time I heard it.  Say what you want about Eddie Van Halen, but how many all-time great guitarists can say they wrote a song that huge where the hook was a synth lead (not guitar)?   

[TAC]

MTV played the Fair Warning performance videos, most notably So This Is Love and Unchained. Then Pretty Woman was played a ton.

[jammindude]

MTV played the Fair Warning performance videos, most notably So This Is Love and Unchained. Then Pretty Woman was played a ton.

YUP

[King Postwhore]

Eddie was his own problem. Eddie is a reason Van Halen did not release an album for a long time. Eddie alienates other in the band. It's all on Eddie.

[SystematicThought]

When he went and did Beat It for Michael Jackson, David Lee Roth got really pissed off, but I think that was mainly because of the money Eddie missed out on. He's made random appearances on other albums too, and apparently a softcore porn flick as well. Fans have nothing to do with it, he just wants to jam with him and his brother and son and that makes him happy. I would love access to the 5150 vaults though to hear what he has hidden away. He could be more prolific than Buckethead with all of the tapes he has

I think Alex is wasted potential as well, he's never appeared outside of a Van Halen record or the Twister soundtrack with Eddie. He's such a great drummer with a great sound that I can instantly recognize.

[Anguyen92]

^^ Even Wolfgang Van Halen, who about 5 years ago has got a bright future with not just Van Halen, but with Mark Tremonti's solo band and the prospect of him doing a solo album, akin to the first Foo Fighters' album, where one musician does the majority of the instruments. 

Now, Van Halen, dormant.  Tremonti, well, they are pretty much inactive, right now, due to Mark, rightfully, focusing on Alter Bridge and even then, Wolfgang didn't seem to be interested in touring with Tremonti in 2016 and wanting to focus on his solo album.  Even now, Wolfgang is sure taking his sweet time trying to get all the pieces together for his solo album.

[Kwyjibo]

In my opinion Eddie had a lot more to offer us

I'm with you so far but

Eddie only has himself to blame for any wasted potential. With few exceptions, the last 20 years of his band has been squandered by drama and low activity.

Nobody is stopping him from doing other projects. I doubt there's a musician in the world who wouldn't want to work with him.

This is the main problem. Nobody's holding him back. I think at this point he could release an album full of dive bombs and rhythmic farting noises and the fans would be glad to get anything new from him.

He finally got to make music like he wanted to with VH III (which is my favorite VH album)  but fans
didn’t like it.

I don't buy this, VH3 is (imo) not more or less what EVH wanted than any other record he's made. It's not that different, it's just very badly produced and the songs aren't always up to par, that's why the fans don't like it. And I personally think it is much better than its reputation. It's not top 5 VH material but still an enjoyable listen.

[Lowdz]

He must have been recording stuff over these years? Locked in a vault. Maybe we'll get to hear it when he dies and the estate sells it off.

Certainly wasted his talent, at least as far as letting us hear it goes. But I guess he's not interested in putting it out there.
And surely if EVH did what Roth wanted, Roth wouldn't have had to leave?

[Stadler]

I'm really struggling to see EVH as a victim here.   He's immensely talented - that goes without saying - but he's his own worst enemy, by a long shot.  He had a tour with Roth that sold out arenas in MINUTES, with no album, nothing to promote, and by the end of it, he was a drunken mess.   And I do not believe that was "Roth", because that's how the last tour with Sammy ended, with Ed a drunken mess.   


He lives in his own world.    And in his world, he doesn't have to put out an album every year, or do 120 dates a year, or anything else.  Frankly, I'm surprised that the Roth re-incarnation has lasted this long.  I have no idea why, and I can't even speculate, but if I had 30 minutes to interview Ed, that would be a big part of it: 
- Who actually SETS the vision of the band?  Is it a democracy?  A benevolent dictatorship?  Or something more like the Dead, where it's a communal flow that just so happens to tend in the direction Jerry wanted it, even though Jerry wanted NOTHING to do with being the "leader" of the Dead.
- What drives your vision for the band?  (It seems it's more important to be "Van Halen^TM" that does talk shows, tours arenas with the same 25 song setlist, and put out an album every five years than to be a creative entity that pursues it's muse and adds up to greater than the sum of it's parts on a daily basis, ala U2). 
- What drives your vision of the music?  Do you have aspirations beyond the industry-standard 50 minute CD with 12 songs, 10 about the "party"?  Concertos?   Other genres? 


I remember hearing a commentary - I can't remember where, but it may have been the Used Bin Radio guys - speculating about the personnel of the band and why Mikey got what seemed on the outside to be such a raw deal, and one of the answers was, he was the one guy that didn't do anything else in the band.   Ed did the music.  Roth did the lyrics and a lot of the promotion.  Alex did a lot of the business end of things (early on).  Mike?   Not much else besides the bass live and even Ed did a lot of that in the studio.   Wolfie now does a lot of the music business (if that makes sense:  setlists, organizing recording sessions, arrangements, production) so he's not a replacement for Mike, per se, he's another foil for Ed and Dave in the studio (as well as, some say, a buffer between Ed and Dave).   

All of this is to say, it's a dynamic, like anything else, it just so happens that the "dynamic" is one of the three or four greatest American bands ever.   Ed is not a victim here.

[cramx3]

Eddie only has himself to blame for any wasted potential.

This.  The lack of EVH music is not due to the fans.  We would eat that up if he was continuing to make music IMO.

[TAC]

What's frustrating is that A Different Kind Of Truth was so.........good.

[Bertie_Wooster]

I hated it.

[PetFish]

Sorry, Bertie, but as others have pointed out you're way off.

If you guys haven't read Sammy's "Red" book I highly recommend it.  Yeah, there's a bias of course cuz it's his book, but nothing in there seems out of place regarding the Van Halen brothers and how much of a train wreck Eddie really was and Alex blindly backed him up on everything.

The brothers, and moreso Eddie, are what killed Van Halen.

[TAC]

I hated it.

I didn't really want to like it, but it couldn't be denied. It's 4 or 5 songs too long, but I was shocked how good it really was. And that's the tragedy.

[SoundscapeMN]

it wasn't bad, although it still came across as polished Bar Rock, which sounds like an oxymoron, but somehow it makes sense.

[KevShmev]

It's 4 or 5 songs too long, but I was shocked how good it really was. And that's the tragedy.

Yep. Okay, Tattoo sucks, and a few other songs near the beginning are merely pretty good and wouldn't have missed, but take the 9-10 songs from this that are worthy and that is one helluva great record. I am still shocked at how much I liked it. 

[Kwyjibo]

Tattoo is the only weaker track imo. The rest is really really good. Shame that they didn't follow it up with a successor. 

[Mosh]

It was a very good album. Going back to the vaults was a genius idea. I think I mentioned it before, but the fact that they had all that material to use and still managed to release something like Diver Down (barely 30 min, mostly made up of covers) is just bizarre. There's still plenty of stuff in the vault to work with too if they ever decide to make another album, though I doubt it.

[Bertie_Wooster]

Not when Ed was claiming to have ten albums worth of new music. We already heard the old Van Halen stuff.  He should have played the new stuff he claimed to have.  I love his guitar sound on Balance. He should have given us more of that and not the old fashioned guitar sound we got.

[Stadler]

First, they robbed the vaults on EVERY record they did, including Balance (the last one with Hagar) and VHIII.  So that's just the way they work.

Second, if you listen to the demos from which a few of those songs came (in one case, a demo from 1976-ish) they didn't change the key OR tempo.  In my view, that's pretty damn good, especially with all the criticism of Roth.   He sang it like he did (and in one case, Big River) better than he did in the day.

Third, I'm not sure that in the context of VH that "polished bar rock" is really a diss; that's kind of what they do, isn't it?  I mean the classic VH, not the angry VH of Balance.   

For me, that was the album of the year (Flying Colors was close) and may be the album of the decade for me.  I was on a work trip not long ago, and had about a 30 minute drive that turned into about a 50 minute drive with traffic, and I put that on and was just blown away by the fact that it was as good as I remember it.  And I even like Tattoo at this point (it works, in my opinion, in the context of the record). 

To this day, that part in Blood and Fire, where Dave goes "Told ya I was coming back!  Say ya missed me!  Say it like you MEAN it!" and Eddie rips off that killer solo, is just classic Roth-era VH in my book. 

[KevShmev]

Balance is good, but having gone through a coupe of major VH listening binges in the last 18 months, it hasn't aged that well for me.  Most of the songs are still good, but the album has no personality. 

[King Postwhore]

I tend to play it as much as 5150.  F.U.C.K and OU812 get much less spins for the Sammy era.