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 HalenTM" 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.