You couldn’t script a better band for the Sunset Strip than Van Halen. As opposed to the millions of hair acts that came up in their wake a few years after their debut, Eddie Van Halen’s fantastic tapping riffs and David Lee Roth’s dynamic stage presence were a match made in heaven, reminding every metalhead in the world that the genre was about having fun rather than just being dark and scary. The good times didn’t last. Roth eventually struck out on his own with a slight jab at his old bandmates on his solo debut.
Given the group’s direction, it’s easy to see where some of the tension was coming from. Roth was more into the straight-ahead rock and roll they had built their foundation on. So now that Eddie had a new toy in the synthesizer. He didn’t exactly thrill to see the maestro’s trademark guitar licks on half their material.
Although things were split down the middle throughout albums like Women and Children First and Fair Warning, 1984 left nothing to the imagination anymore.If fans weren’t on board before, they should have been from the moment the record started. They feature a short instrumental track of nothing but glitchy keyboard effects before exploding into the song ‘Jump’.
Then again, Roth was already testing the waters for what a solo career would look like when he released the Crazy From the Heat EP. Eddie has been happy to see the frontman get his ideas out of his system and lay off him. But it doesn’t bode well when an artist’s solo single starts doing just as well as the main outfit.
By the time the band got off the road, Eddie and Alex had had enough of Roth’s antics. They eventually decided to part ways with Roth and hire Sammy Hagar. This could have been one of the few splits that came down purely to artistic differences. But Roth held a press conference shortly afterward where he laid out all their dirty laundry.
Roth started off being complementary to the band. But he wasn’t happy to see the Van Halen brothers dragging his ass through the mud. He said, “We cried, we hugged, and we split. Two weeks later, I’m reading in Rolling Stone about what an asshole I am and how poor little Eddie was forced to spend the last 12 years of his life living a lie. It was like The National Enquirer or something.”
It may have just seemed like a good title at the time, but Roth said that his debut Eat Em and Smile was a lot more pointed than you would think, explaining, “I don’t think you have to make a choice but Van Halen demands, for some bizarre reason, to make a choice. ‘You either have to like us and hate him and vice versa’. Well, I’ll rise to the challenge. If we have to have a comparison, I eat you for breakfast. I’ll eat you and smile.”
Then again, the only people who won in this battle were the fans, who ended up getting a new Van Halen with Hagar on 5150 and Roth getting another guitar virtuoso by his side with Steve Vai. The band wasn’t willing to forgive Roth’s few jabs, from tearing up signs supporting their former singer in front of the crowd to titling their next album, OU812, which might be one of the cheapest dad jokes they could have made.
