Friday, November 10, 2006

Hold the Presses!


Here's news important enough to interrupt my writing of next week's lesson plans.

David Lee Roth may be coming back to Van Halen. This is good, because they have sucked ass since he left.

I saw that he has been working as a paramedic. If I were injured, and David Lee Roth showed up as a paramedic, I would definitely be looking for Allan Funt and a camera.


Eddie Van Halen's teenage son joins the band
POSTED: 9:28 a.m. EST, November 10, 2006

NEW YORK (Billboard) -- Eddie Van Halen has brought his 15-year-old son, Wolfgang, into Van Halen as the veteran rock band's new bass player, a spokesperson told Billboard.com.

Father and son, along with Eddie's drummer brother Alex, have been rehearsing for a 2007 tour, but it is unknown who will serve as the band's vocalist. (Wolfgang's substitution for original bass player Michael Anthony was first reported by news Web site TMZ.com a week ago.)

Rumors continue to swirl that original singer David Lee Roth, who was replaced by Sammy Hagar in the mid-1980s, will return to the fold, despite years of enmity. Roth, who has recently worked as a radio DJ and a paramedic, told Billboard.com in May that he saw it "absolutely as an inevitability."

No details have been provided about the departure of Anthony, a fan favorite who generally kept out of the internecine warfare in the band.

As for the musical acumen of Wolfgang, Eddie Van Halen enthused to Howard Stern in September, "If I excel at the speed of sound, he excels at the speed of light. This kid is just a natural."

Van Halen is one of nine acts on the ballot for the 2007 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

In 1993 I saw Van Halen with Sammy Hagar. I was in the 2nd row. My former husband and I had the seats on the end. We checked the ticket stubs 5 times. The body guards at the front were instructed to allow "hot girls" get in the front couple rows. . .so even though I had tickets for these seats, I had to share my seat with a big busty blonde in a halter top. My husband at the time go to share his with a very tall brunette with same inflatables. He's only 5'7---when we asked the security guards to escort these women out we were told, no but if you want to, we can escort you out.

At one point, Sammy pretends to drink from a bottle of Jack and lights it on fire. . .but it was only ice tea.

What a scam.

lulu said...

I waited on Sammy Hagar once at Starbucks. He bought an espresso maker and wrote a check for it. I had no clue who he was until I asked for ID and he told me (sheepishly) that he was driving on a ticket. I took one look at the name, and at him, and another look at the name, and you know the punchline already. I looked up at him and said "Wow, you really can't drive 55, can you?"

He didn't laugh.

Johnny Yen said...

That was an opportunity too good to pass up.

Joe said...

(Insert rimshot here)

Good one Lulu.

I had a lengthy and ultimately pointless argument with a coworker the other night (he's 30) over the merits of David Lee Roth vs Sammy Hagar. He tried to tell me Hagar was WAY better than Roth.

For f*cks sake, it was like arguing with someone who tries to tell you Roger Moore made a better James Bond than Sean Connery. It was depressing.

Johnny Yen said...

You know, if there were a Nobel Prize for analogies, you might have just won it with that one, Bubs.

What scares me is that we're all a bunch of closet David Lee Roth-era Van Halen fans.

lulu said...

I am so out of the closet.....There is nothbing wrong with a little VH. Dance The Night Away is one of the best songs ever.


Back when we were young and pretentious Sharon (aka tenS) didn't like my at the time boyfriend's roommate, because he "looked like the kind of guy who might wear a Van Halen tee shirt"

Johnny Yen said...

Yeah, I'm getting in touch with my inner metalhead these days. "Feel Your Love" is my current guilty Van Halen pleasure.

Anonymous said...

So what happens if you're a Sammy fan and also a VH fan? I liked both Roth and Hagar. I was a big Hagar fan before he joined VH and I thought it was a good fit (as far as the sound went).

Hagar rocks and so does Roth...not to mention I'm a medic and I think Roth's latest choice of non-musical vocation is pretty cool. It will be good to have him back. The world is right when Roth is with VH and Hagar is solo.

Johnny Yen said...

I have to say, I agree with you, Rod. I like a lot of Sammy's early stuff-- "Red", "Cruisin' and Boozin'" and stuff he did with Montrose in the seventies. And "I'll Fall in Love Again" is a favorite. Just not a good fit with VH. And I also think it's cool what Dave's doing-- it would just be a little surreal to wake up in an ambulance and find David Lee Roth administering an iv to you.

Joe said...

Nothing wrong with liking some Sammy Hagar.

There was a Mexican restaurant on Broadway, right at Argyle, that we used to go to. For some reason it used to amuse me, when I had some spare change, to play "I Can't Drive 55" and "Dick in the Dirt" over and over when we were in there after a night of drinking.

Just don't say he was a better frontman for Van Halen, that's all.

It's funny, though, I like a lot of that stuff better now than I did back then: Led Zeppelin, KISS, Aerosmith. Back then a lot of those swaggering dinosaur bands just f*cking irritated me. Now they entertain me.

Kaer Trouz said...

DLR is a psychotic nut job who should probably remain far from the general population. Hagar is a cool wine collector. Both suck. That band died years ago and like Jesus, resurrection is totally unnecessary.

Johnny Yen said...

Pallette-- probably right on DLR, but the universe will not be right until he is back with Van Halen, Donald Rumsfield is being traded at a federal pen for packs of cigarettes and my wine rack is full again with my pedestrian wine. At the moment, I think the third one is the most likely.

Bubs-- yeah, isn't it weird how the metal shit we hated, we like now? I even like a little disco these days. I think it's because it's less cultural war and more nostalgia.

Johnny Yen said...

PS Pallette
My landlord's senior in high school daughter was telling us about a comment a friend of hers had written in a friend's yearbook last year:

"Jesus died. Get over it.

lulu said...

I think we like the metal and the disco now because they had a huge place in our lives then, even if the huge place was not liking them.

There is was a cartoon I saw once, and really wish I remember where, about two guys going to a Journey concerts as adults because they had bonded over hating Journey as teenagers.

It did used to be a culture war. In high school you were defined by what music you listened to. Unfortunately, I was big in theater, so the soundtrack to much of my adolescence was "Pippen, the Musical!"