VAN HALEN's LOST ALBUM Following Van Halen III

The lost Van Halen album with Extreme frontman Gary Cherone

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While I’ve talked about a lot of songs and records on my channel, it’s not very often I talk about "what if" stories: In this case were talking about Van Halen's second unreleased album with Gary Cherone. This album, has been shrouded in mystery and speculation, and it represents a fascinating chapter in the band's storied history. Despite the commercial and critical disappointment of Van Halen III, their first album with Cherone, the band intended on working on a follow-up album with the frontman. the only problem was that the wheels eventually came off the whole thing. Today, we'll explore the background, the music, and the legacy of this record.

Gary Cherone joined Van Halen during a turbulent time. The band parted ways with frontman Sammy Hagar by 1996., Sammy claimed he was fired, while the Van Halen brothers claim he left on his own. Eddie claimed the split was due to Hagar not wanting to tour and disputes over appearing on the soundtrack for the 1996 film Twister. Sammy was about to have a baby with his wife, while the Van Halen brothers were dealing with medical issues, Eddie needed hip surgery while his brother was dealing with neck problems. Sammy thought the band should take some time off, The Van Halen brothers should address their medical issues and regroup to work on their next album.

But Van Halen soon got a lucrative offer to record music for the soundtrack of the upcoming 1996 summer movie Twister. The offer esulted in the number 1 hit song Humans Being but it proved to be the final song to feature Hagar for this era of the band.. By June of 96 Hagar left the group. Apparently another source of contention a The compilation record The Best of Both Worlds, which featured tracks from the David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar era of the band. Here’s what Sammy told Loudwire.

According to Eddie in 1998, Sammy didn’t want to be compared to David Lee Roth with Eddie telling the knight rider news service that some of the band’s fans thought their 1995 record balance was there first record adding “We have 12 and 14 year old fans who don’t know the history of the band. We actually did it for the fans as opposed to what he says for the money. He himself has two greatest hits out adding in the same interview that Hagar was asked to be a team player and refused.

The group recorded two new songs with David Lee Roth for their Best Of-Volume 1 compilation - Can’t Get This Stuff No More and Me Wise Magic. Excitement grew about a possible reunion with Roth with the band making an appearance with the frontman at the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards. MTV even started running welcome back spots, but Eddie later remarked the band was never planning on reuniting with David Lee Roth for a tour or new album and the press blew it out of proportion.

Behind the scenes, things were ugly between Dave and Eddie. The band talked in the press about the band focusing on eddie van halen’s hip surgery, while David th reportedly said “Tonight is expletive about me, not Eddie’s hip. All while this was happening Gary Cherone claimed he was already in the band. indicating that Roth may have been used to drum up interest in the band’s Best of -Volume 1 release. Cherone told Rolling Stone in 2012 s. I remember one morning getting up to go to the studio and no one told me all this press was interviewing the Van Halen guys because of the VMAs and all this stuff. They told me, “Gary, no one knows you’re in the band.” I remember bumping into a photographer from Japan and he knew me from Extreme. He goes, “What are you doing here?” I go, “Nothing.”

So how did Cherone end up in Van Halen to begin with. His band Extreme, who were best known for the song More Than Words had disbanded earlier in the year. In the summer of 1996 Cherone received a surprising call from his manager Ray Daniels to audition for Van Halen. It turned out he shared the same manager as Van Halen.

Cherone was shocked by the offer, but thought nothing would come of it, except for a good story to tell to people. He recalled to rolling stone landing in LA remembering “I got off the plane in the afternoon and I remember Mike Anthony came out," he recalled. "I’d

[OpenRoader]

I totally respect what Wolfgang is doing, but I wish he would let someone handle the glut of tapes in the 5150 archives so that some of this stuff can see the light of day before the original fans of =vh= are gone. RIP Eddie, I miss you ever day

[weeklyfascination]

I saw Van Halen on the Van Halen III tour in Yokohama. Great show!

[deejay]

The Cherone era of VH was dead on arrival. There was no way that VH was going to tease a possible reunion with Roth, only to pull the plug and continue on with Gary.

[theeducatedfool]

Gary Cherone deserved so much better, his best with Extreme is like if you combined Roth’s charisma and Hagar’s range.

[bobbymendoza]

This literally has made my morning, after a few months of me leaving you comments you really followed thru, lost media is a huge fanbase so thank you for covering this for Lost Media fans like myself and also a huge Van Halen fan all three versions of VH too

[michaelmarotta]

I loved VH3 when it came out and still do to this day. I remember following the VH website almost every day back in ‘99 watching for progress on the second album. Then they just gave up. I was devastated at the time and I still wish I could hear those demo songs or whatever they recorded. (Wolfie, please release those songs) Anyone that saw the VH3 tour knows the band was on fire. Cherone was amazing since he could sing all 3 eras of the band and the energy he had on stage matched DLR when he was younger. I still remember that concert, it was so loud, I couldn’t hear for days afterwards.

People say the album was a failure, etc, but what is never mentioned is that when Hagar was fired, he took a lot of fans with him. Then throw in the supposed Roth reunion deal and that isolated a lot of the DLR VH fans as well. So at the time VH was really an entirely new band looking to re-create another fan base with a third singer. However, the music scenehad changed by 1998. Old rock bands were considered dinosaurs at the time. They were competing with Marilyn Mason and rap metal bands like Limp Bizkit not to mention the pop side of the business; Backstreet Boys and NSYNC. Plus, people also forget that Hagar released Marching to Mars and Roth released a greatest hits album and a book and made a solo comeback with the DLR band album, so fans had choices and limited money. Do I buy Hagar’s album, Roth’s album/book or this VH album with some new singer? And ultimately I think fans sided with Hagar and Roth since they looked like the victims at the time. EVH looked like a bully for “firing” singers and saying Roth better be wearing a cup if he spoke to him like that again.

Also, most people dismiss the serious health decline of EVH at this time. He would end up with mouth cancer shortly after Cherone “left” the band. I honestly believe all this contributed to the decline of VH with Cherone. Cherone even said he remained friends and lived in EVHs guest house after he left VH. So that tells you it wasn’t hatred or anger towards each other, rather I think they just ran out of energy to build a band from the ground up for a third time. That coupled with poor choices surrounding the project. One example would be the VH3 album cover. I read that AVH chose the album cover, that alone turned off people from buying the album. Another example would be the producer, Mike Post, bad choice to produce a VH album. What happened to the brown sound EVH guitar on the album or the vocal harmonies that VH was known for? It’s all clean sound guitar and missing vocal harmonies. Again, more extremely poor decisions. To me, EVH wanted to have fun and do an album without a lead singer or some record company executives telling him what to do or what they want to hear. So what we as VH fans ended up with is a pure from-the-soul EVH solo album with some virtually unknown singer. I embraced it, others didn’t, but I still say that Without You, Once, Fire In the Hole and From Afar are some of the best VH songs around.

[jakexou]

I'm only 3:30 into this video, but so far the author missed a big thing that also was bruing in the band at the time of Hagar's moving on... they were in the process of screwing over Mikey big time (cutting him out of all royalties) and it got worse and worse for him over the next few years until Wolfie was brought in. The VH brothers didn't even have the decency to let him know he was replaced. I love VH and it's history don't get me wrong, but the VH brothers were a pair of pricks for years don't get that wrong.

[wicky]

Check out Extreme at The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert. Gary's performance is amazing!!

[UFU]

I've never seen a band with so much talent... So much Fame... Could do anything they want... But could not keep it together and truthfully wasted a lot of years of what could have been great music and some great tours....

[svenllr]

Between Dave, Sammy, and Gary, I see a pattern of "Eddie's band" where he made poor decisions that led to Van Halen's demise. It's a sad ending chapter to one of the greatest rock-n-roll bands with one of the greatest - if not the greatest - guitarists of all time.

[KevinLopez-wvwv]

Idk where I saw it but I do remember seeing that initially when VH reunited with Hagar in 2004 it was supposed to be a new album with Hagar but since Eddie was at his lowest at this point and he was a full blown addict they didn’t make it far due to conflict in the band so they put the 3 new songs that they recorded and stuck it to a greatest hits record

[stubkar]

Eddie had such capacity for wilful ignorance, despite his brilliance.
~Hagar and Montrose deserved greatest hits albums _because they were defunct_ .

[bandsivefilmedlive]

Didn't know alot of this! Thankyou for making it!

[karlshuler]

Sadly this was like Motley Crue and Jon Carobi. Both singers were never given a chance to succeed.

[BillSeipel]

There needs to be a definitive timeline of '95 to 2000 IMO. The Stern interview for VHIII has Alex stating they'd had "3 or 4" singers out to 5150. We know Sass Jordan spent time there in early '96. As did Mitch Malloy. Stranger still is that Malloy claims to have seen the VMA's and drafted a resignation letter. Which is odd considering Gary's statement that at VMA time, he was "..already in the band..".
Like I said: We need a definitive timeline.

[MarcNowacki]

Cherone sounded awesome live with VH. He definitely was a victim of circumstance. Had there been no issues he probably would’ve been there longer with more albums.

[zacharycunningham]

Though VHIII didn’t do it for me, it did make me appreciate Cherone as a vocalist. Dude has pipes for days!

[BigBass-xfyi]

Wouldnt mind hearing this material. At this point, “anything VH” would be a treat. Considering modern rock is “ok” at best.

[mikal]

I hope Wolf allows the album to be released, even if it is "demo form". They could make it sound good enough for release.

[Meatball]

13:44 “…with Eddie “axl rose owes me an interview” Trunk.”
Fantastic quote