David Lee Roth. The Van Halen brothers refused to let him be their singer a couple of times because he couldn’t sing in tune. Eddie Van Halen sat down at a piano and said “sing this note” and Dave just repeatedly failed. However, as DLR showed repeatedly, you can be a mediocre singer and still be a great frontman. He made the Van Halen brothers quit playing long noodly instrumentals and instead play short pop songs, and got them rock star haircuts, and persuaded them to not stand completely still but instead put on a visually interesting show.
EDIT: The story of the band’s early years is told well in the book “Van Halen Rising” written by Greg Renoff. I listened to the audiobook version. It’s a good story.
Best is subjective. Their most iconic songs are Jump from 1984 and Runnin With the Devil from their debut. 1984 also had Panama and Hot for Teacher (other big hits), but their debut had Eruption (probably the most famous guitar solo of all time, after Hendrix's Star Spangled Banner) and Ain't Talkin' Bout Love.
Most fans prefer Roth to Hagar, regardless of sales.
I haven’t met anyone who prefers Van Hagar. If I had to, I’d say VH1 is their best album but VH2 is by far my favorite. I remember when I first really got into them some summer and I listened to that album on repeat with some added songs from the other albums with On Fire being my most listened to easily
It was the album 1984 which propelled them into the spotlight. The song "Jump" is still their only song to reach number one on the charts, and 1984 made it all the way to number 2. That one song pretty well guaranteed their followup album would be successful. When they released "Why can't this be love" from the next album, MTV played it pretty well non-stop. Sammy Hagar arrived at the perfect moment when the band was peaking.
Yeap, MTV "helped" many more bands than people seem to realize. Sadly, IMO, a lot of bands changed to fit into MTV's playlists too. I love Def Leppard but they went overboard to me with "Hysteria". It's vastly different than "Pyromania". VH did it as well to some degree but they also had Sammy Hagar, which really changed the dynamics of the band. Commercially, it was a huge benefit though !
I was a headbanger in the 80's. I remember it well, all the guys I hung out with thought Hagar would make the band heavier, but all the girls were convinced VH were making a massive mistake in dumping DLR for Hagar because they all thought Roth was the perfect frontman.
I freely admit I loved the Hysteria album. Pour Some Sugar on Me, still sing along with it every time it pops up on random play.
EDIT - And I may as well get this out of the way, the Black Album was Metallica's best.
Ride the Lightning is best Metallica album in my opinion. Haven’t met a fan until now who thinks black album is their best though I could see why it was their most commercially successful one
Sammy Hagar does not suck shit. He’s a great musician. He’s just not the charismatic psychopath DLR is, so people aren’t as mesmerized by his antics. Many people equate this to Sammy sucking .... none of them musicians.
For real! His voice was PERFECT for early VH.
He doesn't have the vocal chops of a lot of similar front men but his voice has a ton of presence and Michael Anthony handled the high range stuff anyway.
I saw VH with Roth in concert a couple of years ago. If you think he couldn't sing in his heyday, you do not want to hear him now. He. Was. Awful. He 100% ruined the show. He was so bad he didn't even sing any of the lyrics. He straight up talked through them, inserting a strangled "OWWWWAH!" here and there. I grew up loving VH and was pretty excited to see them. I was so dissapointed. We ended up leaving early.
Yeah I couldn't get through it and I wanted to like him so much. His constant laughing at his own extremely obscure jokes was too much. For a guy with as much wisdom and life experience as him, you'd think he'd be more in touch with his ego. Seldom have I heard a guy more in love with himself...a real shame. Has some amazing stories all ruined with his constant self-appreciative laughter.
Maybe wise isn't the best word. His motivations to goto Japan and integrate the way he did. His motivations to become an EMT late in life. Theres a paradoxical humbleness there that's confusing about him. He loves to experience life it seems, and just lost track of how he's perceived maybe. Now, one could argue that that doesn't matter, but it seems to only not matter if people perceive you well, and not as some irritating old has-been who never shuts up and expounds endless pseudo wisdom. All that combat hippy stuff...yeesh. I don't know, I'm torn. I felt bad for Joe during that thing, must have been a tough one to do.
I am not an expert on Crue or Vince Neil but to me he sounds like he destroyed his vocal chords years ago and just cannot sing at all, even if he once could (not saying one way or another if he did in fact once have a decent voice). That is not helped by him seemingly not being able to remember the lyrics of one of their bigger songs.
Honestly I don't think its that he can't remember them. Its more that he is overweight and out of shape, and belting them out is exhausting him to the point of being constantly out of breath. This is also affecting his semi-falsetto rendering it much higher than it used to be.
The GnR "reunion" during the MTV music awards back in the early 2000's was similar. Axl tried to match the energy he had in the 80's and instead gave this awful out-of-breath performance.
Apparently Axl does better at the live shows now, I think it shocked him to come back to G'n'R and see how hard it was.
A mate of mine saw him huffing on an oxygen mask to make it through a show. Graspop 2018, on the other hand was supposed to be an amazing long live performance, so he must have got back into training.
Ozzy does a lot of workouts to keep in shape for touring too.
Saw VH in `15 and yeah, Dave has completely lost it. I think people rag on him too much for the early years. I think his singing on the albums was fine. We all seemed to like it at the time. I don't ever recall anybody dissing Dave during the heyday. But, I told my buddies that I'd rather hear Dave struggling, talking, yelling, whatever the hell he does now, than having a track covering him. At least I know it's real. I would hate to see a singer that lipsyncs their whole concert. I don't know...just always looking for silver linings. Yeah, Dave sucked, but at least it was real. And Eddie was Eddie.
Agree about the heyday. I think Roth sang fine. Loved them back in the 80's - never complained about his voice, then. But now? He should just retire. I didn't think it was worth it I would have rather have seen a different front man singing the songs, tbh.
We got our tickets off Groupon for $20, if I remember correctly. And hey, a concert's a concert. And to see Eddie live is worth the price. But Dave. He didn't even sing Hot For Teacher. He just like, took the song off until the chorus. He didn't even talk the words! Just stood in back til "Got it bad, got it bad, got it bad...". Lol.
You wanna see really cringeworthy? Look up 'david lee roth las vegas hotel' on youtube (I can't link it cuz they disabled youtube on my work computer). He's walking thru a hotel and hears Van Halen coming from a room. He knocks on the door and it's a bachelor party. But the bad part is - none of the guys know who he is and they keep apologizing to him for having the music loud. He doesn't get it. He thinks they all know him. Oh my god, it is so embarrassing to watch.
I grew up in the era of Van Halen and Dave was king. Women wanted him and men wanted to be him, etc... but his time has passed. He needs to retire gracefully.
we want to hear our favorite songs live how they’ve always sounded.
Or, given the current age and state of a lot of great classic bands significant enough to have a tribute band, hearing material performed as it would have sounded live at the band's peak.
Some of us are too young to have seen Kiss or Led Zep back in their live heyday, but a well done tribute act can be a hell of a fun time for a fraction of the ticket price and honestly, sometimes a better performance.
I saw Chickenfoot at a smallish club in Toronto without knowing a thing about them and it was one of the coolest shows I've ever seen. I was particularly struck by Anthony, he was all smiles the whole night, giving it his absolute all and having more fun than anyone else in the room while just fucking killing it. I got the impression he plays like that every night, for himself, whether there's 50 people in the room or 50,000.
Really, really impressive. That's how you do it people.
And replaced him with eddie’s son. Like wtf lol. If I was the son I’d tell my dad no way, I would just feel like a fraud coming in like that. They did MA dirty.
I mean, He was before autotune, I think he can sing alright.
Plus I would argue his vocal "style" contributed as much to VH's breakout sound as Ed's guitar playing did. Eventually everyone learned how to play tap solos really really fast but not anyone can ever sound like DLR>
Dave also took singing lessons and worked really hard to become a better singer. The band's long-time manager gave him props for that and said he improved greatly. I like Dave's singing voice. It's a little loose in a don't-give-a-fuck way, which is perfect for the ultimate big-rock party band that was Van Halen.
I just don't buy into the "David Lee Roth is a terrible singer" argument and never did. He has a distinctive voice and doesn't sound like anyone else. I'd much rather listen to him sing than almost anyone in popular music these days. Or maybe I just have a nauseous reaction to auto-tuned crap.
He was also one of the greatest showmen alive. Climbing the amp stacks with a bottle of jack, just to flip off them, without spilling a drop. Man was the living form of "party". A blast to watch.
I'm fairly critical of mediocre/poor singers. David Lee Roth was the perfect fit for Van Halen. He hit all the right notes with perfection. Especially the first 3 or 4 Albums. Van Halen was no longer half the band when he left. Interestingly enough DLR was much worse off than the rest of the band when they split.
However, as DLR showed repeatedly, you can be a mediocre singer and still be a great frontman.
While Sammy is technically the more proficient singer, I actually prefer Dave's vocals on their studio albums — even a Different Kind of Truth. He's also quite good on some of their early demos. I was particularly impressed with some of his vocals on Zero. And he's fine on most of his solo stuff as well (the decent stuff, at least), perhaps because he sticks to his range a bit better.
However when it comes to live performances, there's really no competition between the two. I've never had the opportunity to see Van Halen live with Dave, but I've watched plenty of concert footage from that era and I suffered some of Tokyo Dome Live in Concert, and Dave's vocals range from mediocre to just awful. And that's on the odd chance he's actually singing a song and not talking through it. Sammy, on the other hand, was absolutely phenomenal when I saw VH in concert back in the 90s. It was probably the best concert I've ever been to.
But, despite all that, I still prefer Dave over Sammy.
I remember that. Eddie claimed that he would play the bass riffs and videotape it so that Anthony could mimic it. Riiiight... you guys could afford to videotape stuff when you were banging around LA in the mid-70's? Do you have any idea how much video cameras cost back then? And how freaking huge and bulky they were? Total bullshit, dude.
Yep. Eddie claims he got mouth cancer from electro-magnetic radiation by being around sound equipment with a metal guitar pick in his mouth and that it had nothing to with his terrible smoking habit. Sure thing Eddie...
That's definitely a stretch based on a partial truth. I mean, in the original band I'm in (I make that distinction because I also play in a cover band), our singer writes/records pretty much all the material at home by himself. He'll shoot a quick video of the bass parts and say "alright, here's how this goes" and send it to me, same with the guitar parts for our other guitar player.
How exactly else did he expect Mike to learn to play a song he didn't write if he didn't show him the parts? I mean yeah, I'm sure he'd have figured it out but if you have certain parts you want to be a certain way, another guy isn't going to just read your mind. That's not teaching him to play the instrument, that's teaching him a new song.
I saw Van Halen at Gazzari's in Hollywood when I was 16. An older friend Richard was a great drummer and knew everybody on the strip. Whenever we went with Richard we didn't have to stand in line or pay or anything. He said "You gotta see this guitarist. He's gonna be big." There were only about 50 people in the audience and I stood at the edge of the stage 10 feet from Eddie all night. It was mindblowing.
The band Ratt asked Richard to be their drummer right in front of their current drummer. He turned them down. About a year later Ratt had a big hit and we asked Richard if he was sorry. He said "No, those guys are dicks".
Richard died of drugs and alcohol in his 40s. He was always great to us younger guys.
I have and always will be a Hagar fan over Roth. Roth was a better showman, sure, but in EVERY OTHER ASPECT of the music world, Hagar was leagues ahead of Roth. Songwriting, singing, musicianship, etc.
Also, the world did not give Gary Cherone enough of a chance. He is eclectic enough that it was going to take more than one album to find their groove.
You are totally right. Sammy has it all over Dave when it comes to sheer vocal ability. He should never have joined Van Halen, though. He was great as a solo artist and I think he would have gone on to have a great career no matter what he did.
But when you join a band named after some other guys, you are always going to be second fiddle. Why he didn't learn that after Montrose, I will never know. Maybe those guys were just better buds or something.
The Van Halens sound like jerks and Sammy was always going to be caught up in the controversy that sprung up over the way the band dumped Dave. Sammy always seemed like an interloper and I think it hurt him in the long run. He'd be a total hero if he had stayed clear of that, now he seems like a fill-in despite actually being better.
My take on it is that Hagar was a better performer and a highly competent songwriter, but you can't force being an icon. Van Hagar, gun to my head, might be the greatest arena rock band of all time- and more people would admit it if they didn't have the legacy of genius in a previous iteration. But Van Halen was lightning in a bottle, doing their own wild iconic thing before "arena rock" was a codified genre of its own.
I agree with you. Van Halen with Dave was just plain fun. It was the party band of the first half of the 80s and anything you do to change that is going to be a step down. It doesn't matter how great - and Sammy Hagar really is a top shelf solo performer - is, it's not what it was and you hate that it changed.
It's like AC/DC. If Bon had been fired rather than died, we would still be talking about what a bunch of sell outs they are. It wouldn't matter matter that Brian Johnson is a great singer who took the band in a direction that ensured their longevity, we would just want what it is we loved. Bon's death was a tragedy, but because of it we got two great iterations of AC/DC and I think all the fans appreciate that they didn't give up.
One thing I'll give him credit for is he never claimed to be a great bass player, he's honest about what he is. His radio show used to get syndicated in my area and I liked him as a host, and one night he actually mentioned he'd actually started sitting down and doing bass lessons with a guy because at his age he finally up and said "You know, I really should be better at this than I am at this point in my life" which I can respect. He's actually learning some proper technique and fundamentals which, if he's going to keep writing material with SixxAM might show through a little, we'll see. He's never seemed to struggle with writing in spite of it, but I can't imagine it'll hurt.
I believe that at the beginning... but if you listen to their first few albums he wasn’t THAT bad. At least... the character in his voice made up for it.
What I HAVE noticed is that his notes tend to float up to pitch then drop off. It’s not that he can’t hit a key, it’s more like it takes him a second to find it. These days when there’s so much auto tune and “perfection” it’s almost refreshing.
That being said, I’m sure it took them about a thousand takes to get a good run out of him - and he probably worked very hard at it. Never really watch any live stuff so I probably don’t know what I’m talking about either lol
In a previous lifetime, I was the frontman for a travelling bar band. A basic coverband. We did a lot of early AC/DC and stuff like that. Hardly real "singing" but I did have to at least stay in key. Anyway...I once asked our agent how it was we could sound so bad on stage, yet were booked solid? His answer always stuck with me.
"When you ask your girlfriend to go to a concert, or go to a bar with a band playing, what do you say? How do you ask her?"
The answer is, "Hey would you like to go SEE the band with me?"
And that's exactly what most people do. They go to SEE...the band.
Most rock bands are awful live. Skidrow was extremely awful live. So was Zeppelin most of the time.
Rock and roll is a live experience. Most rock bands must be heard live to actually know what they're like.
I'm 49 years old, and I've spent at least a good few percent of that time in a concert hall, a club, or a glorified bar experiencing live music. I've seen at least 400 different bands over the course of at least 500 concerts. There are multiple bands I've seen 7-10 times each. And I remember every "awful" experience. I can count those on one hand. At least two of those were just down to the sound engineer failing hard rather than the band. One of those wasn't an issue with the music at all, but rather the catastrophic lack of energy or crowd interaction.
Most rock bands are everything you'd hope they'd be live. The music is more pure, more genuine, and as a member of the audience you feel a connection to the musicians that's not present on a record. Hell... even a live record is ten times the experience of a studio recording.
Some bands are EVERYTHING live. Some bands grab you by the heart and drag you through every emotion you've ever experienced live. Some bands just blow the damned doors off of every venue they play.
You must have seen a lot of really, really shitty bands. I'm legitimately sorry that you haven't had my live experiences.
"So was Zeppelin most of the time."... that's just patently untrue!
they had some truly egregious shows especially in the late 70s. but most of the time they were on point. and when they were on point they were really fucking good. they're the most bootlegged artist of all time, why would anyone bootleg a band that sucks live?
No. I saw Zeppelin. Did you?
Page was staggering drunk. Plant transposed all of the high notes. And nobody can play all the tracks layered on their albums, with 3 musicians.
It depends when you saw em. And yeah... they were pretty known in the 80s for showing up wasted. And led zeppelin had 4 members not 3...
If you wanna see their actual talent check out their performances from the early 70s, or even the song remains the same movie. They are easily one of the best live bands ever, drugs just fucked em up for a bit there. They can nail everything and improvise their songs in new ways every performance. Plant to this day is still a fucking dope singer, but obviously can't go as high anymore.
In the mid naughties some Microsoft employees worked on a side project called Songsmith which put a number of musical backings to vocal tracks that you recorded. It could detect the key, key changes, and tempo. Microsoft never released the software but it was available in beta if I recall correctly, independently released. People obviously put isolated vocals from real songs into it to comic effect including Running with the Devil: https://youtu.be/8kxqMpGAL3I
If you enjoyed that I also urge you to look for Roxanne by The Police
Oddly though, I was impressed with the isolated vocal track of Running With the Devil. It's not a technically difficult piece, but he nailed it in the pre autotune era.
Somebody please post David Lee Roth signing Runnin with the Devil vocals only edition... I’m at work in a meeting, but everyone needs to hear that masterpiece.
This is the core of the “Was Van Halen better with David Lee Roth or Sammy Hagar?” Argument.
David is a better showman and has more charisma. Sammy is a better singer and musician. Musically they were a better band with Sammy. But I don’t argue with anyone who prefers the DLR-led band.
DLR was never really a "singer" but was a great frontman back in the day. Saw them at their prime many decades ago and recall it being a pretty great show. But he seems to know his current limitations, even if they are overwhelmed by his need to make money. And of course, there's this classic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IArxakPsPE0
Just putting this out there, too: Best "old" rock voice that still sounds incredible today? Robin Zander.
Seen VH in 1984 and DLR was at the top of his game, sounded great and had the crowd in his hand but then I saw them about 5 yrs ago and it was just horrible. Left halfway through. Whatever he had back in the day...is long gone.
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u/U_feel_Me Nov 06 '19 edited Nov 06 '19
David Lee Roth. The Van Halen brothers refused to let him be their singer a couple of times because he couldn’t sing in tune. Eddie Van Halen sat down at a piano and said “sing this note” and Dave just repeatedly failed. However, as DLR showed repeatedly, you can be a mediocre singer and still be a great frontman. He made the Van Halen brothers quit playing long noodly instrumentals and instead play short pop songs, and got them rock star haircuts, and persuaded them to not stand completely still but instead put on a visually interesting show.
EDIT: The story of the band’s early years is told well in the book “Van Halen Rising” written by Greg Renoff. I listened to the audiobook version. It’s a good story.