![\"Eddie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Eddie-Van-Halen-Van-Halen-Guitarist-1980s-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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Credit: Far Out \/ Carl Lender<\/p>\n
Wed 8 July 2026 17:23, UK <\/p>\n
Every band makes mistakes when settling on the right lineup for a group. Everyone\u2019s dreams of stardom might start off with them playing a tennis racket like it\u2019s a guitar, but the minute that they graduate to playing music with their friends, a lot of broken friendships can come about when they have to let go of some musical dead weight. <\/p>\n
And even when bands get more professional, Eddie Van Halen<\/a> realised that working with the wrong musicians can result in some of the worst moments of his career.<\/p>\n Then again, did anyone really need to worry about anything else onstage whenever Van Halen played? Most people weren\u2019t going to listen to a band that was only one guitar player and a rhythm section, but if there was one person who could get away with that, it was probably Eddie, especially considering his tapping licks could have been a sideshow attraction back in the late 1970s.<\/p>\n While Eddie soaked up a lot of attention, David Lee Roth was the real main attraction whenever they played. As much as the band loved to have a good time on the road, Roth presented himself like everyone\u2019s best friend onstage, usually throwing in anything that could draw a response, whether that was swinging around a sword or wearing the most ridiculous outfits he could think of. <\/p>\n When someone that eye-catching is out front, though, it\u2019s no wonder that the rest of the band started to get agitated. It was always about the music for Eddie, and right up until their eventual reunion, he felt that Roth was more concerned with playing up the rockstar angle than trying to make his own music.<\/p>\n That difference in priorities was always simmering beneath the surface. Roth believed that a great rock band had to entertain just as much as it had to play, whereas Eddie was forever chasing the next musical idea, forever trying to squeeze another impossible sound out of his guitar. Neither approach was necessarily wrong, but once both men became convinced that theirs was the only way forward, the cracks that had once made Van Halen so exciting gradually became impossible to paper over.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s where I made the mistake over a year ago\u2013when both Roth and Sammy were just slinging shit at us.\u201d<\/p>\n Eddie Van Halen<\/p>\n After going through their own struggles with Sammy Hagar in the late 1990s, Eddie already considered Roth\u2019s reunion at the MTV Awards one of the biggest misfires of his career, saying<\/a>, \u201c[That was] a total embarrassment; what happened backstage between Roth and I, I won\u2019t get into, but the first thing that went out the window was the friendship.\u201d And since Hagar either quit<\/a> or was fired, depending on which side you ask, it\u2019s not like Eddie was itching to bring in \u2018The Red Rocker\u2019 again.<\/p>\n And since both frontmen decided to have a go at Eddie when he hired Gary Cherone to sing on Van Halen III, he had no problem firing right back at them about how much he regretted the past few years with both of them, saying<\/a>, \u201cThat\u2019s where I made the mistake over a year ago\u2013when both Roth and Sammy were just slinging shit at us. I just had to get on MTV and say, \u2018I\u2019II take a lie detector test. Both these guys are lying. They\u2019re both full of shit.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n But the sad fact is that the band always worked better with either Roth or Hagar behind the microphone. Because while Cherone is a more-than-capable vocalist in his own band, Extreme, he was extremely mismatched with Van Halen, especially in the meat of the album where he sounds like someone trying to someone do an impression of both Roth, Hagar, and a dying cat all at the same time and getting absolutely nowhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n That probably says more about the chemistry of Van Halen than it does about Cherone himself. Plenty of singers could have handled those songs from a technical standpoint, but replacing a frontman in a band with such a distinctive identity was always going to be about more than hitting the right notes.<\/p>\n Although Eddie never lost his touch on guitar, one of the biggest tragedies of Van Halen\u2019s career was not being able to make amends with Hagar towards the end of his life. He never stopped recording throughout his career, so there\u2019s no limit to the endless amount of riffs he had in the vaults that could have been turned into rock and roll classics. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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