Billy Corgan recently recalled how annoyed Eddie Van Halen would get with David Lee Roth’s on-stage soliloquies and noted how the guitarist told him he eventually learned to leave Roth to it and chill out backstage when they happened.
There were many factors to Van Halen’s success, the tightness of Alex Van Halen and Michael Anthony’s rhythm section, their individual qualities as musicians, David Lee Roth’s charisma, as well as how well it all worked as a whole.
However, it is also no secret that some relationships within Van Halen became strained toward the end of the band’s initial run, and some of the qualities that made the band’s individual members so well loved turned into nuisances for their bandmates.
Billy Corgan recalls Eddie Van Halen’s thoughts on David Lee Roth
This seems to have been the case with Roth’s on-stage interludes, which got so long that they started annoying the late guitar hero, as Billy Corgan noted during a recent interview with John 5 on the former’s podcast.
Billy Corgan recalled seeing Van Halen perform in 1984 during an interview with John 5, describing it as the band’s “last flash” of youthful energy before tensions grew. Watching from the balcony at the Rosemont Horizon, Corgan noticed Eddie Van Halen leaving the stage during David Lee Roth’s long monologues, visibly frustrated.
Corgan said, “This is the beauty of seeing them in ’84. It was like that last flash — obviously, they did more touring later — but that last flash, prime of youth, the relationships were still somewhat intact… I saw [Eddie] from the side [of the stage]. I was up in the balcony at what was called the Rosemont Horizon [now Allstate Arena] back in the day.”
“I could see from the side of the stage down, obviously seeing the band, but then I could see Eddie’s little guitar world [from] behind. When Ed would leave the stage, to go have a smoke and talk to his tech, I could see into his little tech world. And Roth was doing these five-minute, seven-minute soliloquies, jokes, whatever he was into at the time, and Eddie would just sit [there]. I could see him shaking his head, getting pissed off.”
Years later, Eddie told Corgan he often walked offstage because he was tired of Roth’s extended talking and just wanted to play guitar. Despite the short nine-song set, Corgan said the band’s performance was incredible when they did play.
“And when I met Eddie for the first time, and interviewed him for Guitar World, I asked him about that. He was like, ‘Man, I just got so sick of him just talking, and I would get so mad, because I just wanted to play. So, I just learned to just leave the stage, let him have his shtick, and then when it was done, I’d come out.’ So they only played, like, nine songs. It was very short, but God, when they played, holy moly.”
