Van Halen’s rejuvenated lineup heads to Vancouver on the 5150 Tour, plans to “kick ass all over the place”

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON OCT. 17, 1986

 By Steve Newton

One of the most talked-about personnel changes in ’80s hard rock was Sammy Hagar’s replacing David Lee Roth as lead singer for Van Halen. On one side there were the “Diamond Dave” lovers, who felt that the band could never be the same without their hero’s hammy, do-anything approach to rock.

Then there were those who pointed to the impressive work Hagar did with ’70s metal pioneers Montrose, before his lengthy and successful solo career.

Van Halen’s Vancouver fans will have the opportunity to decide once and for all where the new unit stands when the group plays BC Place next Thursday (October 23).

It was in the spring of last year, after an ugly and much-publicized fight, that Roth and Van Halen split for good. It wasn’t long before Hagar got a phone call from guitarist Eddie Van Halen, asking him to try out.

“I said ‘Let’s talk next week,’ ” recalls Sammy in a press release, “then he called me back an hour later and said, ‘How about tomorrow?’ And I said ‘You guys are in a hurry aren’t you?’ But I came down the next day, and we got it on immediately.”

When Hagar was officially named Van Halen’s new front man, rumours started circulating that the group would be known as “Van Hagar”. But that never happened. They kept their original name, went straight into the studio, and came out with 5150, an album which boasted some of Hagar’s finest singing in years, especially on tracks like “Good Enough”, “Dreams”, and “Love Walks In”.

And the band itself sounded good. But when it came to playing the new songs live at the beginning of their current tour, there were a few mistakes made. Sammy made the best of it.

“We don’t take this whole thing so seriously that if we screw up in a couple of songs, that it’s gonna wreck the whole night. It’s more like, ‘Well we screwed that ending up, but hey, we’re gonna kick ass all over this place.’ ”

“The way I look at it it’s not screwing up,” adds drummer Alex Van Halen, “it’s improvisation. That’s what makes a Van Halen show so interesting.”

And Hagar feels he’s got a pretty good handle on the old Van Halen songs, which in their original form owed a lot to Roth’s trademark hoots and hoolers.

“If we didn’t have a new album out, and I had to sing them all, then I would have a problem. I’d feel like I was working in a nightclub or something.”

“But the old ones that we do do, I don’t have a problem with. As a matter of fact, when we first rehearsed songs like ‘Panama’ and ‘Jump’, I never even had to listen to the records. I’d heard them so much on the radio, I already knew the lyrics.”

And just as Hagar had been listening a lot to Van Halen before actually meeting them, the band had been following his career. In fact, ten years ago, before their first LP, Van Halen used to play Montrose songs like “Rock Candy” and “Make It Last”.

“I’m gonna lay a bombshell on you,” says Alex. “When Van Halen first signed with Warner Brothers in ’77, Sammy was the first choice for lead singer. The powers that be will not cop to this, and I’m not going to point the finger at anybody, but that’s really the way it is.”

To hear the full audio of my interviews with Alex Van Halen and David Lee Roth subscribe to my Patreon page, where you can eavesdrop on over 700 of my one-on-one conversations with rockers since 1982.