This February, snow warnings in hell were issued when Van Halen finally released a new album with David Lee Roth on vocals, their first with the singer since the 1984 album.
They also went out on a U.S. tour, and even made a recent appearance at their home town of L.A. at the Staples Center arena.
An even bigger surprise was a whole other leg of the tour was booked beyond the initial planned dates, but then all of those shows were abruptly cancelled.
When an explanation didn’t come right away, speculation hit the ‘Net that the boys were fighting like cats and dogs again.
This is certainly not an unreasonable assumption as the Van Halen brothers and Roth have so much unresolved baggage since practically day one, and trying to keep the band together, record a new album, and get them on tour without killing each other is akin playing pickup sticks with your buttcheeks.
As a source told Rolling Stone, “The band is arguing like mad. They are fighting.” Another source at one of the cancelled venues, the Mohegan Sun Area, was more confused than anything, telling Stone the show was “selling pretty good – I don’t know why they would say it’s being cancelled.”
Then finally the band stated it was “total B.S.,” and the current party line from everyone is they “bit off more than they could chew,” and the band needs a rest before they go at it again.
The tour will come to a close in New Orleans on June 26, and again, as Ed told USA Today, “This record took a lot out of us. And we went on tour earlier than we wanted to so we could play Madison Square Garden [before a renovation], and that threw the schedule out of whack.”
Roth also said, “The band is winning, but our schedule has been sidelined for unnecessary roughness.”
A report in Rolling Stone also tells us the band is supposed to play Japan in November, with Ed also promising “something special” that should, “tentatively,” as Stone reminds us, arrive next year.
