Best Van Halen Singer. Rhetorical question.

[coloradodem2005]

Poll question: Best Van Halen Singer. Rhetorical question.

I figured that I would ask the question. Though I think I know what the answere will be.

[Swamp Rat]

1. I second that rhetorical question

[rocktivity]

2. Ginger made Fred look classy, Fred made Ginger look sexy

That's the theory as to why they made such a great team. Van Halen was the same way: Without Eddie Van Halen, David Lee Roth was just another beach bum/gigolo. Without David Lee Roth, Eddie Van Halen was just another nerdy-looking guitar twiddler. David made Eddie look sexy; Eddie made David look classy. David was replaced, but they weren't Van Halen anymore.

:headbang:
rocknation

[Caution]

3. David Lee Roth went to my High School.

[Bluebear]

6. Oh yeah, what area?

[Caution]

8. Swampscott MA

Talked to a teacher about him and the teacher said he was a complete and total idiot :)

[rocktivity]

18. I was astounded when I learned that Dave was from New England

I would have bet my first-born male child that he was from Los Angeles!

:headbang:
rocknation

[Wickerman]

4. Should I care that I have no idea who Gary Cherone is?

how is that for a rhetorical question to answer a rhetorical question?

[Book Lover]

7. No

Sorry about that, Gary, but it's true. You were no good with Van Halen.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

9. He's the lead singer of "Tribe of Judah"

...featuring this tasteless and highly questionable album cover:



http://www.spitfirerecords.com/TribeOfJudah.htm

...and he was the lead singer of Extreme, who scored on MTV with the incredibly annoying "unplugged" hit "Hole Hearted"...



...but to many, including (apparently) the members of Van Halen themselves, he was NEVER the lead singer for Van Halen.

:evilgrin:

[Wickerman]

12. thanks for the info

at times like this I feel so old. I learned so much from your post, truthfully, but care so little. I saw the last show of the last tour of David with VH (first time). By then I felt they had run out of steam and ideas - were mainly interested in going just off-stage to snort coke every 15 minutes. Everything they've delivered in the last 20 years has been worse than acts from the 50's touring state fairs. At least there is nostalgia for that crap.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

21. I hear ya...like the live Hagar version of "Panama"...

...with Sammy's spoken "state fair" monologue in place of the "reach down in between my legs" Roth bit. I guess he could sing the song if the money was right but drew the line at doing Dave's "shtick."

I remember all of the Eddie post-Dave interviews, bemoaning the fact that the final Roth shows were "ripping the kids off with some clown show."

So, I'm watching this 1986 video:



...and marveling to ten minutes worth of Sammy with a can of red spray paint and a pair of shoes some girl tossed on stage. Clown show indeed.

[coloradodem2005]

14. I have heard that III Sides to Every Story was pretty good.

It came out a couple of year after Pornograffitti. I might have to look into that.

[rocktivity]

Extreme made a hard rock band's worst mistake

an acoustic ballad.

Their song More Than Words is the one that did them in. It became a smash hit with the MTV Top 40 teeneybopper crowd, who bought their album and were dismayed to find it full of fist-pumping hard rock. Forced to follow up with another song that could get on commercial radio, Hole Hearted was the result, and they were pretty much never heard from again.

I run a hard rock/heavy metal web site--I was there.

:headbang:
rocknation

[coloradodem2005]

17. I've heard good things about III Sides To Every Story.

That album came out after all of the More than Words/ Hole hearted stuff. Many people who like hard/progressive rock thought it was great, and extremely underrated. It went by unnoticed by the general public for several reasons a couple of which are obvious.

1. Like you said, they made a hard rock band's worst mistake by making "More Than Words" thereby pigeon holing themselves into being balladeers.

2. I think the song "More Than Words" and "Hole Hearted" both came out around early to mid 1991. Just before grunge exploded into the mainstream. III Sides came out in 1992 in a drastically different music scene than was there a year earlier.

3. It was a concept album in the spirit of Dark Side of the Moon, Sgt. Pepper's, Scenes From A Memory, The Wall, etc. These kind of albums did not have very much popularity in the late 80's and were certainly not popular in the 90's.

[Maddy McCall]

5. There was only ONE Van Halen, and it was fronted by David Lee.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

10. From a business standpoint...

VH with Sammy Hagar became "Sammy Hagar with some Dutch/Indonesian guys backing him". Once Ed Leffler(Sammy's manager who instantly became VH's manager...) died, Sammy was gone.

Funny how stuff like that happens. Coincidence, I am quite sure.

[coloradodem2005]

11. I thought that Sammy was with them...

...for one album and a couple of years after Leffler died.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

13. Not as I remember:

As I remember it, the schism took place very quickly after Ed died. They danced around a lot after that, but the fact was, as I understood it, that the upshot was that the brothers(especially Alex...) wanted control back. Sammy did what he does best: dug his heels in and attempted to maintain control. Alex won. Sammy went and distilled tequila.

Alex was always the businesshead. Eddie the dreamy-eyed one.

Such a sweetheart that Eddie. Perhaps too sweet for the music business.

[coloradodem2005]

15. So, it was Alex?

I have always heard Sammy trashing Ed, not Alex. Everything sounded like it was Eddie who kicked Dave out and then kicked Sammy out.

On another note, someon on www.rotharmy.com was pissed saying that all four of them were screwing everybody bringing Sammy back. Eddie takes a lot of the blame for everything that happened after DLR left as well as Sammy taking a lot of it too.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

16. is there a none of the above?

roth is an overrated sexist pig who had a gimmicky delivery

hagar is a rigtwing ass with a stock hair metal band delivery

cherone was in extreme, fer fuck's sake

[LastKnight]

19. they all sucked. van halen was about the guitars. nt

[coloradodem2005]

20. The guitars were way better under Roth than the other two.

When Hagar was in the band, Eddie's playing tamed a lot, in part because he started working with keyboards more and more but when he played guitar, it was limp and tame under Hagar, except for maybe on "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge".

As for Gary, Eddie was all over the place. He was doing so much crazy shit and it didn't have any coheision at all.