When Van Halen released one of their best-selling albums "1984" in 1984, they already were one of the biggest Hard Rock bands in the world. That record made them become even bigger with hits like "Jump", "Panama" and "Hot For Teacher". However, in the following year the band's vocalist David Lee Roth decided to leave his bandmates and pursue a solo career. As told by the band's co-founder and drummer Alex Van Halen in his new book called "Brothers", Roth decided to leave the band because he wasn't happy with all the attention Eddie was getting. Roth even asked Eddie to not play many guitar solos during the shows. Alex said Roth left VH because Eddie was getting more attention “He couldn’t handle the fact that Eddie was getting more attention than he was. He kept asking Eddie to play fewer guitar solos. Dave was convinced he was going to be a movie star.” Alex said that it was “the most disappointing thing I’d experienced in my life, the thing that seemed the most wasteful and unjust.” Alex Van Halen said Roth ruined Eddie’s tribute tour [embed width="600" height="400"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VREI1t4BN4o&feature=youtu.be[/embed] In an interview with Rolling Stone, Roth simply didn’t want to pay tribute to Eddie at the concerts at all. As a result, they had a disagreement, and the entire project was scrapped that day. When asked by the magazine about the situation, Roth declined to comment. Alex said their rehearsal began with two Roth band members serving as “seat fillers” and the idea would be to eventually bring in Joe Satriani and maybe the classic bassist Michael Anthony. After a conversation with Queen’s Brian May, about how the band works without Freddie Mercury but also paying tribute to him, Alex went to explain to Roth how they would pay tribute to Alex during the shows. In those early rehearsals, the drummer was feeling numbness, peripheral neuropathy, especially in his feet and he said he felt like it was an “omen from above”, which was warning him that the reunion shouldn’t happen. “The thing that broke the camel’s back, and I can be honest about this now was I said, ‘Dave, at some point, we have to have a very overt — not a bowing — but an acknowledgment of Ed in the gig. If you look at how Queen does it, they show old footage.’ And the moment I said we gotta acknowledge Ed, Dave fuckin’ popped a fuse.… The vitriol that came out was unbelievable.” According to Alex, Roth found the idea very offensive, for reasons he can’t comprehend.
