David Lee Roth is holding up a Van Halen project that many fans have been waiting to see take to the road. As recently reported, the main reason the proposed all-star Van Halen tribute project has yet to move forward, is because of none other than David Lee Roth according to SiriusXM radio personality Eddie Trunk.
Even though the project has been spoken about for some time, no progress has been reported on a tribute concert since April when former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted revealed to The Palm Beach Post that he was approached by Van Halen drummer Alex Van Halen about six months earlier about playing bass for the project.
Newsted did agree to go out to California to jam with Alex and legendary guitarist Joe Satriani and see if it felt right, but he eventually realized that it would be impossible to do justice to Van Halen’s legacy. He stated: “There’s nobody that can top it, so how do you show it honor? I didn’t want it to be viewed as a money grab. And then it kind of just all fizzled.”
Eddie Trunk now has an update on the Van Halen revival project as he stated: “I had a very, very, very reliable source tell me last night at The Black Crowes show that the hold-up on the Van Halen-anything happening is a lot of it falling on David Lee Roth, that David Lee Roth — to no surprise; it shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody — is a difficult guy to wrangle, a difficult guy to get an answer on, a difficult guy to get focused on anything, a difficult guy to get to sign off on anything.”
This is pretty shocking to hear as one would imagine that Roth would want to move forward for the fans.
Eddie would continue that Alex Van Halen has recruited Michael Anthony: “He is all over the map, as you would expect and have seen throughout history, and that the big hold-up in anything happening with Van Halen is not Alex, who wants to do it and is trying; it’s actually Roth who needs to sign off and be involved. Also, contrary to any reports of anything different, Alex and [former Van Halen bassist] Michael Anthony are totally cool and there’s no issue there at all. And the stumbling block is trying to get Alex and Dave on the same page and Dave wanting to do this and how they’re gonna do it. And that’s really one of the big stumbling issues.”
It looks like we still have a long way to go to get what we want to see.
Eddie closed: “What was being talked about was not actually doing a tour. You take something like this on tour and people are gonna think it’s a cashgrab. I’d rather have something, like a memorial-type thing, done at a venue. And there were actually a couple of venues discussed. But do it that way instead of taking it on the road. And make it just a real celebration of the music…
