EVH is an A$$

Eddie Van Halen gave an interview to Billboard recently.
He bashed about David Lee Roth (no surprise there). But he also took some hard shots at former band bassist Mike Anthony.

This is a new low for EVH. What a cocksucker.

This prompted an immediate reaction from Sammy Hagar, who I have a new-found respect for.
Sammy Hagar Slams Eddie Van Halen: 'You're a Liar' | Rolling Stone

 

This is not breaking news. Eddie and Roth were essentially made for each other.

I don't care much for Hagar's music, but he's clearly the most likeable member of Van Halen, past or present (probably because unlike the other guys, he didn't become world-famous until he was in his late 30s).

Trivia: Sammy Hagar is older than Robert Plant.

 

What's the point of shelling out oodles of dollars to see senior citizens gripe at each other? I get that for free every time I visit my folks.

 

Interesting quote from the original interview:

Ah, the Seventies....

 

I will never forgive Eddie Van Halen for stealing Valerie Bertinelli away from me.

 

He probably had a better drug supply than you.

 

When Van Halen first hit it big in 1978-79, I was working with a guy who played bass in local bar bands.

Our whole gang who worked in the gas station at the time started to hang out with this guy and his 3 band mates who rented a huge old drafty farmhouse in a hooterville burg 10 miles out in the boondocks where they could set up all their band gear in the barn, jam all night, and lie around all day drinking beer, getting high, listening to music and arguing about music (Between the four guys in the band they had to own a couple thousand albums). There were always chicks hanging around.

From the outside the place looked like the Haney Farm from Green Acres, but inside the place looked like Mission Control of NASA. The barn was set up with a sound system and mixing board. Inside the house there were 3 or 4 full fledged stereo setups with turntables, tape decks, speakers everywhere, including out on the wraparound porch. They had a master mixing board where they could patch it all together. On party nights they could rock half the county.

Needless to say this sounded like a fun place for all of us to hang out too. In the summer it was not uncommon to crash out on sleeping bags in the barn. There were times there had to be 20 people crashing out there. We called the place "the Raunchy Ranch."

He hated Michael Anthony with a fierce screeching white hatred and just went on and on and on about how much he sucked. We worked together, became fairly good friends, then moved on to other gigs. I hadn't heard from him in 30 years or more.

A couple of months ago I was screwing around on Facebook and I was reading some discussion about our old high school (we had not been friends in HS; he was a year behind my class) and out of the blue he comments on something and I notice his name.

I put in a friend request and sure enough it's the same guy. At some point I sent him an IM and then asked if his old bar band was planning for a reunion tour and reminded him of the olden days at the Raunchy Ranch.

I reminded him of his blazing white hatred of Michael Anthony. "That asshole sucked then and he sucks now," he said.

"Who knew you were a visionary?'" I said. "It only took Eddie 30 years to fire his ass and give the bass job to his kid?"

 

I don't think anyone thinks Michael Anthony is a great musical talent, but there doesn't seem to be much upside to shitting on him 30 years after the fact.

A lot of people blamed David Lee Roth's ego for Van Halen breaking up, but in retrospect it's always been mostly Eddie who was the problem. DLR just wanted to play guitar-driven party rock, and Eddie wanted to take things in a keyboards & synth direction. They so did with a lot of success on 1984 and 5150, but it's not a genre that had much staying power. Eddie won out, in no small part because his last name was on the band and his brother was the drummer.

Eddie's a phenomenal musician, among a handful of the most talented rock musicians ever, but he's a pretty wretched human being by all accounts.

 

The Raunchy Ranch was an awesome joint. You could be sitting on the porch drinking beer while Black Sabbath, ABBA, Bob Marley and Kenny Rogers would all be blasting out of speakers while the band was rehearsing Sex Pistols songs in the barn.