Could Van Halen, at least a reincarnation of it reunite? Rumors were speculating earlier this year over such a thing which would have seen Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth and drummer Alex Van Halen team up with long-time Metallica member Jason Newsted and legendary rock guitarist Joe Satriani, with Michael Anthony also involved. However, as of right now nothing has come out of that besides initial discussions and Newsted saying it “would be impossible to do justice to Van Halen’s legacy.”
In an update to this, on a recent FOX News appearance, Roth was asked if he was going to be going on tour anytime soon and stated how he was only in “the middle of his first retirement”.
“There’s always a tomorrow for a singer, not so much for a trombone player these days.” He added: “How many times did Rocky retire? Seven. I think No. 3 was my favorite? How many times did Rambo have to come out of retirement in order to make the sequel?”
Continuing, the beloved Van Halen singer said: “Ya, I wrote the songs … I was the one who named the band.” He added: “I’m only in the middle of my first retirement.”
In other news regarding Van Halen and David Lee Roth, former Guns N’ Roses member Matt Sorum stated how auditioning for Roth’s solo band was the ‘craziest’ audition he’s ever taken part of. Sorum would make the following comments on the Live From My Drum Room podcast. Credit to Ultimate Classic Rock for the below.
“We all got called by Steve Vai. And we were, like, ‘Steve Vai? It’s that guy from [Frank] Zappa.’ So when I walked in… It was very clinical. We were playing crazy time signatures. It was a very Zappa school. ai proceeded to run the audition, and as Sorum recalled, the guitarist didn’t hold back. “He was running me through the mill,” Sorum admitted. “Like, ‘Give me a 7/4.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay, Genesis, ‘The Cinema Show’.’ I got that. Okay.’ And then he said something, like, ‘Play 26 over 8.’ And I was kind of cocky, and I looked up and I went, ‘Why?’”
He concluded: “At one point, the drummer tried to steer things in a different direction. “I saw Billy Sheehan sitting on the couch. I go, ‘God, I’d love to jam. Can we jam?’ We didn’t jam. I played by myself. And it was probably the craziest audition I ever did. I never had a situation where I had to stand there and Steve Vai was reciting all these notes and running me through this whole school of [drumming].”
