This February, Van Halen finally put out their first album with David Lee Roth in nearly thirty years, A Different Kind of Truth.
Reviews were mixed, and quite a few fans weren’t happy that most of the material was rehashed from old songs they did back in the club days. Yet, for the most part the Van Halen die hards were ecstatic to see the mostly original line-up back together, sans bassist Michael Anthony, who was replaced by Eddie’s son Wolfgang. (According to SoundScan, the album has sold 377,000 copies to date.)
But knowing Van Halen’s tumultuous history, there may already be signs that the other shoe is about to drop, and as many could have predicted it sure didn’t take long to happen. It wasn’t that long ago that we posted there on TG that a whole new set of dates were set up for Van Halen’s current tour, which would take them all the way into September. Now the news has hit that all thirty of those dates have been postponed with no explanation.
The tour was originally planned to run until late June, and as of this writing, those dates are still scheduled to go on, including their long awaited return to their hometown of L.A. on June 1.
Van Halen has always hated the press, so it’s doubtful any official word will come out any time soon as to what the problem is here. Live Nation, who are sponsoring the tour, and the band’s reps wouldn’t comment to Rolling Stone, but a source close to the tour told Stone that as many could have predicted, “The band is arguing like mad. They are fighting.”
A source at one of the cancelled venues, the Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut said the show has been “selling pretty good – I don’t know why they would say it’s being cancelled.” And again, we’ve seen this happen plenty of times before the album and tour finally happened. Things would be announced, then abruptly cancelled at the last second with no comment from anyone.
Right as this story was being finalized, there was a response from “sources close to the band” on TMZ claiming their current touring schedule was “too much, too fast,” they were “losing their focus,” and “they’re simply burned out. They want to make sure their concerts are not a routine…they want every performance to be special.”
Ad for Dave and Ed fighting like cats and dogs again? “It’s total B.S.,” which is the latest spin from Ed, that the fights between him and Dave were all blown out of proportion by the media, which must be the reason it took well over a decade for a reunion and a new album to happen.
Not to mention a tour that started back in February isn’t that grueling of a schedule considering many metal / hard rock bands tour hard. For example, the Metallica Black album tour went well over two years, and Iron Maiden broke a record for Powerslave – hitting 13 months. Remember, the standard Van Halen tours back in the day went about six months, and they usually didn’t visit Europe.
