 ron | Exclusive: Sammy Hagar and Gary Cherone on the new Van Halen record Last month, after Van Halen dropped A Different Kind of Truth (Interscope) — the rock legends’ first album of all new material with original singer David Lee Roth in almost three decades–fans and detractors alike took to the Internet to vote yea or nay on the comeback gigs. But it wasn’t just fans checking out the new stuff: the group’s two former singers, longtime Roth adversary Sammy Hagar and Boston native Gary Cherone, also weighed in. I tracked them down for their takes on Truth, weeks before Van Halen were due to hit the TD Garden without them. “He’s gotten sillier,” a jovial Hagar said of Roth over the phone just before Chickenfoot played The Tonight Show last week. “This new stuff, I’m just watching some of the YouTube things, and I saw the video and I’m just goin’, ‘Geez . . . okay, I dunno.’ I guess whenever you’re young, in your 20s, it’s the hottest time of your career. You’re physically strong, you got it all together, and you want it bad, and you become something that works, and it helps you get to where you want to be — and that’s all good. But when you’re 50, 60 years old and you still try to be that person, it’s impossible.” Roth was long the archetype for the sun-bleached, spandex-clad California beach boy frontman, strutting about like a new wave Mick Jagger throughout the ’80s, doing high-flying splits off Alex Van Halen’s drum riser, and influencing a stream of second-rate imitators. These days, he’s taken to a more vaudeville-style act, complete with a headset and a slide area onstage to shimmy on centered between guitarist Eddie Van Halen and his bass-playing son, Wolfgang. “The stuff that I’ve seen, the band is on fire,” Cherone says while driving through Boston on his way to watch the Celtics game last week. “When [Eddie's] on, he makes it looks effortless. There’s a reason he inspired the next generation of rockers. I’m not a big fan of [Roth's] headpiece. I’ll give him a nod for trying something new; it looks a little awkward. It’s like, you don’t reinvent the wheel. You know what it reminds me of? It’s a little ‘master of ceremonies.’ I did a little theater, and it’s a little theater for me. Again, he’s a showman, he’s reinventing himself. He’s doing a sort of James Brown soul dancing which is good, I get it, and he can do whatever he wants — he doesn’t have to prove anything to anybody.” Coming out of Extreme in 1996, Cherone had the unenviable task of joining the Van Halen soap opera after Hagar had been fired or quit (depending on whom you ask) after 11 years, and in the middle of a much-hyped Roth return for a two-song greatest hits contribution. To many fans, Cherone’s three-year stint remains a footnote. But Cherone himself appears to have perspective on that episode in his career as well as on the new disc. “This record, for me, it’s the best thing since Fair Warning,” he says. “[First single] ‘Tattoo’ is the only misstep. You wait 28 years to hear Van Halen, and in the context of the record, it’s not the best song by far. Off the top of my head, I’m thinkin’ of ‘China Town,’ if that was the first thing you heard, or ‘As Is,’ or ‘Honeybabysweetiedoll.’ Any of those three? People would’ve been like, ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ ” Hagar claims not to have heard the entire album. “I don’t listen to much new music unless I hear a new song on the radio, and the last bands that did that to me were the Black Keys and Kings of Leon. When I heard ‘Tattoo,’ that single — and I saw the video because everybody kept sending it to me like, ‘My god, have you seen this?’ . . . ‘Oh my god, you must be laughing your ass off!’– it wasn’t a song that made me run out and buy their record. And so I haven’t heard it. I haven’t downloaded it, I haven’t done anything. I heard another one that was kinda goofy too, and then I heard, on the radio, ‘She’s the Woman,’ and I thought that was kinda cool. That one sounds like what I would expect from Van Halen, a little closer to it. The other stuff didn’t sound like what I was expecting, that’s for sure.” Then there is the matter of today’s Van Halen playing only songs from the Roth catalog while on tour. Hagar says that it must be hard for Eddie and Alex to have to ignore a gaping section of their career. “The difference between Dave and I in that band, besides all the other million things, is that he can’t sing any of the Van Hagar-era songs. Maybe he could do ‘Finish What Ya Started,’ possibly — so that makes it kind of weird for [Alex and Eddie] I think to take 11 years out of that thing.” Another sticking point for Hagar has been that about half the material on A Different Kind of Truth comes from old demos, several from before the first Van Halen record was released in 1978. But Cherone, who in addition to fronting Hurtsmile and a reignited Extreme — ready to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Pornograffiti with a tour of Japan and Russia, and possibly the States, later this year — looks at it differently. “The starting point [for A Different Kind of Truth] was the old demos,” Cherone says, “but to me, a riff’s a riff. Eddie’s added new things to it — this stuff is on fire. Of course you miss [ousted bassist Michael Anthony]; he was one of the four food groups. But Wolfie’s no slouch. Alex is a machine, and Eddie is playing better than he’s ever played. I love the record. It’s kind of inspiring, it’s like the king just took back his crown.” Meanwhile, the Hagar-led Chickenfoot are preparing to embark on a spring tour, with a date in Los Angeles bookended by a pair of Van Halen shows, something that initially had him pissed at the promoters. “First I said, ‘What the fuck are you doing putting us the same time as Van Halen?’ ” Hagar says now. “It’s just gonna cause a needless competition between the fans, and I don’t like that. I want the fans to feel like they can love Van Halen and that they can love Chickenfoot totally the same. I don’t have any way of competing with those guys; you can’t compete with Van Halen. I’m part of that legacy, how could I go out and compete with something I’m part of? I don’t look at us like that, but I know some people do. You want to go see Van Halen one night and see us the next and compare us, you want to do that? Roll up your sleeves and come on. I welcome it, because I think this band is smokin’.” By comparison, Cherone, wants a competition, but not with Van Halen. He wants to roll with Chickenfoot, and he’s called out Hagar to take Extreme on the road with them this year for a tour that would make perfect sense. “I love Gary,” says Hagar. “He’s a nice guy. I like Extreme. It would probably be a good package. . . . I could see it working.” The only question is whether Roth and the Van Halens would be hitting up YouTube to see those tour highlights. VAN HALEN + KOOL AND THE GANG | TD GARDEN, 100 Legends Way, Boston | March 11 @ 7:30 pm | $47-$147 |
 evhua | ” I don’t have any way of competing with those guys; you can’t compete with Van Halen. ” Bravo Sammy ! |
 sickman | |
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