David Lee Roth has responded to his former bandmate Alex Van Halen with a new video.
Recently, Alex has made comments about Roth in interviews. In reply, Roth shared a video of himself dancing to ‘Dance The Night Away,’ a upbeat Van Halen song. This is the first dancing video he has released in five months.
The video appeared after Alex discussed Roth’s departure from Van Halen. He said, “Me, Ed, and Dave were very subversive in the way we looked at music and the political system and the way we looked at people in general…The band was dysfunctional. It was completely running on three wheels, if you will. I think Ed was quoted as saying ‘but we always played well,’ and that was ultimately what kept it together until it was no longer together. It was a very sad moment when that whole thing fell apart.”
Alex also covered this in his memoir, ‘Brothers,’ where he explained the complicated relationship between Roth and the Van Halen brothers. He revealed that Roth left the band after the success of ‘Jump’ because he “couldn’t handle the fact that Eddie was getting more attention than he was.” Alex noted that Roth kept asking Eddie to play fewer guitar solos and believed he would become a movie star.
As a result, the version of the band Alex calls ‘the real Van Halen’ broke apart, even as their album reached No. 1 on Billboard’s chart. Alex described this as “the most disappointing thing I’d experienced in my life, the thing that seemed the most wasteful and unjust.”
Although Roth has not publicly commented on Alex’s statements, his video can be seen as a response.
