Roth Reflects On Van Halen Recordings With Gene Simmons was a top 20 story of Feb. 2020: David Lee Roth says that nothing ever came out of the demos Van Halen recorded with KISS icon Gene Simmons and they didn't catch their big break for another two years.
Simmons famously saw the band playing in a Los Angeles area club and took them into the studio and recorded some demos with the band. Roth was asked about it during an interview with the Star Tribuneabout his current tour supporting KISS on the second leg of their End of The Road Farewell Tour.
Roth responded, "Van Halen was like a sea anemone. It's born looking exactly the same way it does as it passes into the hereafter. If you listen to tracks from our club days in 1973, Van Halen, once I joined the band, sounded exactly like we did the first day together at Ed's mom's house as we did on the first record as we did on 'Jump.'
"It took us 5½ years before Warner Bros. finally showed up. About two years before that, Gene came to the Starwood and said: 'Let's try to do some demos.' We flew to Electric Ladyland and made some tapes, but nothing really came out of them. So that was that."
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