It has recently been heavily rumored that a Van Halen tribute tour could be in the works. This first came to be during an interview with the Palm Spring Post that Metallica legend Jason Newsted was invited to jam with Alex Van Halen, David Lee Roth, and guitar legend Joe Satriani. This would have led to a tribute tour, which Newsted turned down because he felt it wouldn’t live up to the legacy of Van Halen.
Now, it’s being revealed that Van Halen legend Wolfgang Van Halen did not know about the alleged tribute tour and the group is almost certainly in permanent retirement. One user Dave’s Dreidel posted on the VHLinks.com forum the following: “My understanding is that Wolf did not know about it until recently and that VH is now Al and DLR and in almost certain permanent retirement.”
Continuing the user wrote: “This was a nice distraction from talking about the war in Ukraine and other topics, but I believe that when the final history of Van Halen is done, the thought of touring without Ed will just be a footnote that never materialized.”
In addition, during a new interview with the 98.7 The Gater radio station in West Palm Beach, Florida, Newsted is blasting the outlet that reported the original story. Credit to Blabbermouth for the following.
“I don’t do very many interviews anymore, and I agreed to do that to promote the show for the kids. We do benefit shows to put paintbrushes and guitars in kids’ hands. That’s what I’m doing now. The Metallica ‘Black Album’ did so well and it still does to this moment, [and] because of that I’m able to do what I want with whatever projects I have going. The Chophouse Band is the longest-running project. The things that we do five to six times a year — we do benefits, period, for art programs for kids. That’s it — music classes and art programs. That’s why I agreed to do that interview, was to forward the information about the Goldner Conservatory at the Maltz [Jupiter] Theatre that’s gonna have classes for kids and do exactly what I said. So if I go to talk about that, and I mentioned two little things over here about the calls that I’ve received in the past 20 years from whoever it is — Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, whatever; man, whatever — I was just listing a list of the calls that I received over time that never went anywhere.”
Continuing Newsted would also say: ” I only said yes to a couple of the 30 that I received, and I mentioned a couple of them that impressed me. People that if I wouldn’t have their records, I wouldn’t play the way I do, they called me on my home phone and said, ‘You wanna come and jam with us?’ Dude, I’m off the ground; I’m levitating. I’m, like, ‘Why would Aerosmith call me?’ That’s a big frickin’ deal to a kid. Just a kid from a farm in Michigan, dude, and a guy from Aerosmith calls and asks me to play bass? However many years later when you stole that album from your brother’s collection. It’s frickin’ huge. That’s all I was doing. I talked about two seconds about that, and that’s what they chose to go for. They didn’t talk about the Conservatory, the kids’ classes, the things that we’re doing, The Chophouse Band, why we do that we do.”
