BYH Just Had a Hot Flash

I think it's premature to assume Van Halen is going to make bad music. I prefer Hagar over Roth but when they go on tour, I will go check them out. Heck, I grew up on this band.

 

Here's what we have to look forward to with the new VH. Either Eddie continues stumbling down the self-indulgent path he took on Van Halen III, which was mostly unlistenable despite the best efforts of Gary Cherone, or we get 56-yr-old DLR singing about getting laid. Either way, it's going to suck.

 

Um ... didn't David Lee Roth return to do "Can't Get This Stuff No More" and "Me Wise Magic" in the '90s for the compilation album?

After hearing "Me Wise Magic," I was hoping Roth and the rest of the band would play nice and work together again. Ah well ...

 

Damn, my bad. I was thinking entire albums, but yeah, he did those two songs in 1996 before he started driving Eddie crazy again (or before Eddie went crazy again, one or the other).

 

So they were pistols at five paces 15 years ago. What has changed for them to suddenly tolerate one another? Is one or more of them need a few million to pay back taxes or something?

 

I assume Eddie is broke and/or he's setting up a payday for his kid.

 

Well, yes.

And this, too: Roth is much more desperate than Hagar and can therefore be bossed around and bullied by Eddie. There's no bullying Hagar, who was a success before VH and has been a success--TWICE--since leaving VH. Sure, VH gave Hagar a profile he never had as a solo artist, but Hagar went back to the top 20 as a solo artist after the first breakup and Chickenfoot hit the top 5 and did an arena tour off a DEBUT album. And he's probably made more money with the Cabo tequila and restaurant than he ever did as a musician.

Roth? The peaks for his solo albums went like this: 4-6-18-78-172. He was finished by the mid-90s. He failed spectacularly as a morning radio DJ and is reduced to doing some lounge-act shows in Vegas and re-recording VH hits as a bluegrass artist. He sunk so far that the guy who loved the limelight more than any singer of his era ended up serving as an EMT in NYC.

Without VH, Roth is absolutely nothing. Eddie can threaten to fire Roth and pull the plug on the reunion and have Roth groveling at his feet. Hagar? He's already told Eddie to fuck off--twice.