Recently talking with Mitch Lafon and Jeremy White, bassist Michael Anthony discussed the difference between Van Halen’s singers, Sammy Hagar and David Lee Roth.
Here’s what the bassist said:
”A long time now. When he first came in as a solo artist, played on a few shows that Van Halen had done. There were some outdoor shows that we did where he was an opening act or whatever. And I never knew him, though. I mean, I knew his music like everybody does.
”All the bands, they know each other. I know Eddie had met him, also, but I never actually met him until he walked into ‘5150.’ After he and Eddie jammed, and he decided to come in and see what this Van Halen thing was all about. I don’t even think Sammy had any intention of joining the band at that point. I think he just wanted to come to the studio, see if the party, drugs and drinking rumors were true. [laughs]
He added:
[…] ”When ”Jump”, which was our only big single from the early days of Van Halen, Roth didn’t even want that song on the album, because he’s all, ‘Eddie, you’re a guitar god, man, you’re not supposed to be playing keyboards.’ And Eddie, he grew up classically trained. Piano, in addition to picking up guitar.”When Sammy joined the band, I think it was just a natural progression of the band. We just continued writing and Sammy brought in this whole knowledge of being a guitar player himself, he understood structure of music and stuff like that. From that standpoint, where David would always write the lyrics and go, ‘Yeah, man, play that hard or whatever,’ Sammy’s like, ‘Hey, you got this chord here, what if we play this chord or whatever, make this change.
”He brought a whole new element, and it just kind of changed the dynamic of the band. We weren’t going to continue doing what we didn’t want to continue doing, what we were doing with Dave. Because that was with Dave. It’s the natural evolution within the way the band was evolving.”
9 comments
The album 5150 was and still amazing to listen to.
Dave was relevant at the time and so is Sammy up to date.
However my preference lays with Sammy hagar, especially live as Dave was just too much talking the same old talk
Except if I sit down and make a list of my favorite VH songs the top 20 are all DLR era. I love all of VH (I don’t hate VH3) but the original Era is top 10 to me.
That’s your age dude, but like me, probably somewhat younger, Hagar had the better sound and the band stayed popular for 11 more years!. I liked a lot of songs with DLR, but Mr. fancy pants wanted to go solo, so be it!…
Sammy Haggar turned VH into a pop band. I remember going to see VH in concert with DLR and my ears were buzzing for hours after the show was over. Van Halen was a true rock band with DLR.
Wrong, Eddie had the music written, Sammy just wrote the lyrics ( just like David did) so stop blaming Sammy for the direction of the music.
You got that right!….
I was a huge VH fan and saw them live countless times from their first album to the US festival. At first news of Sammy joining the band I was disappointed but was also interested to see what they would do. Would this new stage ruin one of my favorite bands or would they break new ground? And they didn’t disappoint. The subsequent albums continued to explore and deliver amazing results musically. Live, Sammy more than delivered showing his skills vocally and on guitar. He took the original VH songs and made them sound even better. We were in such amazement of Eddie we really gave Dave a pass on his limited vocal range which reflected in their depth of song quality in each album. Yes a showman but still limited vocal range and no real instrument skills confined and stifled their growth. While each album had a few amazing songs, anchored by the virtuoso guitar skills of Eddie, there were several songs on each album that fell short. Often they leaned on remakes of other groups songs just to fit Daves skill level to complete albums. These at first added a funny or cute element but often questions arose as to why when they have such a legendary guitarist? This is not uncommon for bands however when you have Eddie if your singer song writer could have added a little more to the offering these albums would have topped charts. Sammy, to this day, continues to show his skills and prowess playing not only his own hit music but the VH and Led Zeppelin hits as well. His vocals still sound amazing and the shows are fantastic. There will always be those that just have up because they lived the original and never really gave Sammy a chance. But true fans really know they got better. And if you want to still enjoy this bands great music live go see Sammy and the Circle.
Van Halen changed the look and sound of Hard Rock. Every singer/frontman I ever met, whether amateur or pro, was influenced by David Lee Roth and wanted to be him or like him. I never ever met anyone who wanted to be Sammy Hagar. Not saying Sammy is bad, he’s a good singer, sure maybe held on to his voice longer, but Van Halen at their best, and most influential was with Dave. And that’s a fact.
Sammy was obviously a more talented singer. Diamond Dave was more of a theater type singer and all he really did was yelp n dhit