The entire legacy of Van Halen has always been defined by which singer you’re listening to.  While Gary Cherone was always going to be a placeholder in the band between David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar, both of the main vocalists of the group couldn’t have been more different when trying to work on some of their latest ideas for the band when they made a record. Each of them had a specific idea of what they wanted Van Halen to be, but ‘The Red Rocker’ knew when some of the records in the band’s catalogue should have never been put out to begin with. Granted, it’s hard to take Hagar at his word when it comes to the worst Van Halen albums sometimes. He was the first to say that he didn’t care for the band before he joined, aside from Eddie’s licks, and even when he had the idea of coming and jamming with the guys, he made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t going to be singing any of ‘Diamond Dave’s material. He didn’t like the Vegas show schtick that much, but the band were always going to listen to what the fans wanted. So while Hagar did manage to endear himself to the fans for the better part of a decade, getting fired over a phone call wasn’t what he was looking for after tensions reached a height. He knew that he and Eddie could talk things out, but the hardcore fans were always going to be looking for the moment when Roth would eventually come back. And while Roth did blow his chances of a reunion within a few seconds at the MTV Awards, that seemed to be enough water under the bridge by the time that Hagar left his reunion tour absolutely seething at Eddie. The band might have pulled the dick move of firing Michael Anthony and branding themselves as a completely new group without Hagar, but it’s not like Hagar was too broken up when he heard what they did. A Different Kind of Truth was the definition of a band spinning their wheels in his mind, and while Eddie was happy enough to end his career on his own terms, putting out a live record was the bottom of the barrel as far as Hagar was concerned. They could do whatever they wanted with their legacy, but Hagar felt that there was no reason to give fans a shoddy version of what they had already heard, saying, “They’ve got some pretty rough vocals. I’m trying to tread lightly on the whole thing. Every time they do something, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, can these guys do anything worse to their reputation and to the level of the music of the band? Standing back, I’m just going, ‘What the (expletive) are these guys thinking?’” That’s fairly brutal just reading it, but it’s not like Hagar didn’t know what he was talking about to a certain degree. His version of Van Halen was always going to earn their stripes by playing as best as they could on the road, and since Live Right Here Right Now was still one of the best live records of any band from their generation, it was going to be hard for Roth to keep up in any capacity whenever they performed. You can’t blame ‘Diamond Dave’ for not sounding the same way that he did when he was first cutting the debut record, but it’s clear that he wasn’t in any shape to sing like he used to when he went onstage. Eddie had talked about wanting to keep the album totally live whenever they put it out, but that also meant getting more than a few songs throughout the night where Roth was struggling to reach those high notes. That was already a problem with A Different Kind of Truth in general, but by this point, it wasn’t like anyone cared about what Roth’s pitch sounded like. Everyone understood that they were coming to see Eddie, and even if the album did have a few blemishes, the fact that Eddie could still play the guitar like it was second nature was everything that the fans were hoping to hear when they bought a ticket. ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE The post The 2015 Van Halen album Sammy Hagar wanted to delete: “Some pretty rough vocals” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.