Guitarist/vocalist Rich Ward (STUCK MOJO, FOZZY) has weighed in on VAN HALEN’s new comeback album, A Different Kind Of Truth:
“Okay, so I’ve decided to be a first day purchaser of the new Van Halen. I’ve heard four sample clips, and although I’m not blown away so far, IT’S VAN HALEN. If it wasn’t for Eddie, I may not even be playing guitar today, so what’s a few bucks, right? Maybe, just maybe, it will be the record I’m hoping it will be.”
Today (February 7th) sees the official release of A Different Kind Of Truth – Van Halen’s first original studio album with singer David Lee Roth since the band’s classic multi-platinum album 1984.
Audio samples from the entire album can be found at this location (click view in iTunes).
The Deluxe Edition of A Different Kind Of Truth will contain a bonus DVD which will feature the following: Bonus DVD disc containing four brand new acoustic performance videos titled The Downtown Sessions. Tracks include: ‘Panama’, ‘You And Your Blues’, ‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘Beautiful Girls’.
A Different Kind Of Truth was produced by John Shanks (BON JOVI), Ross Hagarth (DEVILDRIVER) and the band. The album includes the following tracklisting:
‘Tattoo’
‘She’s The Woman’
‘You And Your Blues’
‘China Town’
‘Blood And Fire’
‘Bullethead’
‘As Is’
‘Honeybabysweetiedoll’
‘The Trouble With Never’
‘Outta Space’
‘Stay Frosty’
‘Big River’
‘Beats Workin”
Check out BraveWords.com’s review of the album at this location.
Van Halen’s video for ‘Tattoo’ can be viewed below:
VAN HALEN played an hour-long secret show on Wednesday night (February 1) at Henson Studios in Hollywood, California. The audience of about 250 attendees saw the band perform three songs from its new album, “A Different Kind Of Truth”, including “She’s The Woman”, “The Trouble With Never” and first single “Tattoo”, as well as a brace of classics like “You Really Got Me”, “Runnin’ With The Devil”, “Unchained” and “Dance The Night Away”. The show served as a launch party for the record, as well as a warm-up for the band’s tour, which kicks off on February 18 in Louisville, Kentucky.
The unofficial VAN HALEN web site Van Halen News Desk is now streaming audio of three songs from last week’s show. Check out “You Really Got Me”, “Runnin’ With The Devil” and “Unchained”HERE.
The encore of “Jump” featured an eight-person drum line and a dozen Vegas showgirls that led the crowd out at the end of the song.
“A Different Kind Of Truth” is VAN HALEN‘s first album with original singer David Lee Roth in 28 years.
Roth told the Los Angeles Times that the band has gone back into its archives to find previously unreleased material upon which to build the record, saying, “It’s material that Eddie [Van Halen, guitar] and I generated, literally, in 1975, 1976 and 1977.”
Guardian.co.uk recently conducted an interview with VAN HALEN singer David Lee Roth. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.
On whether it was ever hard work appearing to be having that much fun all the time:
Roth: “I was a surgical tech right out of high school, I sold clothes; I shovelled shit at a horse stable for years. I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Rich is better. Totally better.”
“The job we have is a privilege. The Van Halens [Eddie and his brother Alex, the drummer] and I have had steady jobs since we were 12 years old. Mine was working before and after school at a horse stable. For them it was paper routes. Mr. Van Halen was classic European: you’re making your money for the rent. I was lucky I didn’t have to do that … Even at your worst moments, there’s a whole lot of Shakespeare going on. How can you not appreciate it? At your lonesomest, most catastrophic, it’s still pretty cinematic. I think the smiles were genuine. Don’t mistake them for simplistic grins — there’s a lot of pirate smiling.”
On how he and his bandmates spawned a legion of imitators in the L.A. hair metal scene — MÖTLEY CRÜE, POISON, CINDERELLA, WARRANT and the like — who tried to set up camp on Van Halen Island:
Roth: “I don’t know who coined the phrase imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I think David Mamet coined the phrase imitation is the sincerest form of stealing. Probably a litigating attorney coined it first. OK, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then there are a whole lot of dogs out there … At worst I feel like I’m driving past a traffic accident and I’m relieved no one was killed.”
On where VAN HALEN took its inspirations from:
Roth: “I can point for you and go: right there we’re imitating Eric Clapton; right there I’m imitating vocally David Bowie; right there is Bruce Springsteen, but this is how you create a signature sound. If you’re lucky to have it, there’s no way around it. I actively imitated everything from the Nicholas Brothers tap dancing to Mick Jagger going ‘Oooh yeah!’ But because of whatever it never sounds like anything to you but David Lee. And when Edward plays you might never have heard the material before but you instantly recognise it as fast as, say, Jimi‘s guitar.”
On how VAN HALEN was never just a metal band, even though they revolutionized the genre:
Roth: “Metal is a bit specific. The neighbourhoods we grew up, learning, acquiring musical knowledge, were very separate neighbourhoods, unlike, for example, New York City where Mr. Chin lives next to Mr. Steinberg who owes rent to Mr. Patel and they all speak Serbo-Croatian. It’s just the school system. Here [in California], the Venice Beach surf neighbourhood is very different than San Bernadino Hell’s Angels. Below south of the harbour freeway: ‘Que pasa? What are you looking at?’ And that all works into VAN HALEN. You can hear it — it’s loudly diverse, but you can’t feel the seams. It’s like if you go to a car show and you Stevie Wonder it: you can’t feel where the Chevy turned into a Mercedes door frame which turned into — that’s a De Soto grill! ‘That’s my girlfriend loco! What are you doing?’ All those different neighbourhoods add up into the sound, and to say it’s one kind of sound — no! It’s so much of a hybrid that you have to give it its own name.”
On whether knowing they need each other make the tensions between him and the other members of VAN HALEN all the worse:
Roth: “Jesus, let’s go back to the 1600s again. People didn’t understand psychology, right? You showed them emotional content and made somebody cry and they thought it was demons. One of the best reviews you can get in my estimation is from the villagers if they killed all the actors and buried them at the cross so their ghosts couldn’t haunt the village — because everyone left the play crying and laughing and they couldn’t understand why. Today we give them an Oscar for that kind of emotional ride. Being human has caused so much of that. Let’s really back into some theory here. What is art? Simple, I think — something that forces and compels you to think, and that can be a mint condition copy of ‘Raging Bull’ or it can be the Kardashians. The same questions will be asked and you will be forced to confront yourself, and you will be forced to triangulate where you stand on everything from racist politics to haircuts. And are they really different? Do you follow? You’re going to ask the same questions and that … shit … is … art. And it has caused you to question more than that goddam soup can Warhol sold us. Or tried to. Bring that one up. You follow? You are compelled into argument. Consequently, arguing about our band and our rock’n’roll – you can do that certainly for longer than actually listening to it. VAN HALEN music is whisky in a paper cup! Short doses and not every night, PLEASE!”
Darryl Sterdan of the QMI Agency spoke to VAN HALEN singer David Lee Roth ahead of the February 7 release of the band’s much-anticipated new album, “A Different Kind Of Truth”.
Regarding VAN HALEN‘s decision to get KOOL AND THE GANG to support them on their upcoming North American tour, Roth said, “We picked KOOL AND THE GANG to open for us because KOOL AND THE GANG and VAN HALEN are the sounds of an entire continent at recreation. We’ve come to represent that — although you’re more likely to hear KOOL AND THE GANG at a bar mitzvah than me, even though I’m a brother. You go to a Hasidic Jewish bar mitzvah and they’ll play ‘Ladies’ Night’ by KOOL. Me, they’ll let in — ‘But he doesn’t sing; he runs with the devil!'”
On the topic of VAN HALEN being considered eternally unhip, Roth said, “We were never cool. Even when we were happening, even when we were the flavor of the week the first time, we weren’t cool. John Travolta and ‘Saturday Night Fever’ were cool. And across the street, the SEX PISTOLS and THE CLASH were cool. We were just kind of an island. I don’t know that VAN HALEN ever really fit in. And it was not a conscious act. Many times we’re trying to imitate other people; it just comes out looking and sounding like us. And today we’re still not cool. We’re somewhere between KATY PERRY and MUSE. Somewhere between KINGS OF LEON and MAROON 5. Welcome to our island. Abandon all hope.”
Roth also made it clear that he and his bandmates aren’t taking their reunion for ganted. “Everybody values their privilege,” he said. “And it is indeed a privilege and a gift to be able to have this job as opposed to a lot of the jobs the state offers. Everybody has had at least one or two medical near- misses or at least one or two dental tragedies. Sometimes that’s all it takes — you get your teeth knocked out a couple of times and you start to realize you’re mortal. That illumination alone can rebind a band.”
The singer acknowledged that much of VAN HALEN‘s new album is made up of material pulled from the band’s archives, explaining, “I retooled all of the verses and melodies. I retooled all of the lyrics. So there is a body of new that meets halfway there, that I think makes very colourful sense. The idea that it was in a vault — well, are you talking about a head of lettuce or fine wine, sir?”
Unofficial VAN HALEN web site VHLinks.com has uploaded VAN HALEN singer David Lee Roth‘s handwritten lyrics and graphics for “Tattoo”, the first single off the band’s forthcoming album, “A Different Kind Of Truth”. Check out the image below.
According to Billboard.com, “Tattoo” blasted onto the Rock Songs chart at No. 16. The song arrived with 4.6 million first-week audience impressions on 78 stations, according to Nielsen BDS.
The Live Nation store is taking pre-orders for vinyl tour collector’s edition of “A Different Kind Of Truth”. The double gatefold vinyl album includes all 13 songs on two LPs plus custom artwork. This edition also comes with the Deluxe MP3 Edition of the album which will be delivered on the release date for pre-order customers. The deluxe MP3 also includes “The Downtown Sessions”, four acoustic video performances on Quicktime .mov files — “Panama”, “You And Your Blues (intro)”, “You And Your Blues” and “Beautiful Girls”.
The exclusive vinyl album is only available in the U.S. and Canada and will ship on or around February 24, depending on the manufacturing schedule.
VAN HALEN released “Tattoo” on January 10. The song itself said to be is a rewrite of a very old VAN HALEN track “Down In Flames”, which the band used to play in its late Seventies club days but never recorded for any of its albums. The new version has a slightly different arrangement and fresh lyrics from singer David Lee Roth.
According to The Pulse Of Radio, at least two other songs on the new record, “She’s The Woman” and “Bullethead”, date back to the band’s early days as well. “She’s The Woman” appeared on a 1976 VAN HALEN demo produced by KISS bassist Gene Simmons, and was performed by the group last week during its show at the tiny Cafe Wha? in New York City.
Guitarist Eddie Van Halen has said in numerous interviews over the years that he has “10 albums” worth of unreleased material in his archives from throughout the band’s career.
Ironically, it was former singer Sammy Hagar who hinted that VAN HALEN might be digging into the vaults on the new album. Hagar recently told Rolling Stone, “I heard this record is old outtakes from the old days. I mean, stuff from before I even joined the band . . . Because from what I heard, they aren’t working with new material. Ed and Dave didn’t actually write new songs.”
VAN HALEN will kick off a North American tour on February 18 in Louisville, Kentucky. KOOL AND THE GANG will open for VAN HALEN on selected tour stops.
“A Different Kind Of Truth”, will arrive on February 7 via Interscope. Source: Blabbermouth.net
VAN HALEN played its first live show since 2008 yesterday (Thursday, January 5) at the tiny Cafe Wha? nightclub in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. The show at the 250-person venue was the band’s first since it ended its hugely successful 2007/2008 reunion trek with original singer David Lee Roth. The gig also served to officially kick off the promotional campaign for the new VAN HALEN album, “A Different Kind Of Truth”, which will be released on February 7 via Interscope. The CD’s first single and video, “Tatoo”, will arrive on January 10. VAN HALEN‘s setlist for the Cafe Wha? concert was as follows:
01. You Really Got Me
02. Runnin’ With The Devil
03. Somebody Get Me A Doctor
04. Everybody Wants Some
05. She’s The Woman
06. Dance The Night Away
07. Panama
08. Hot For Teacher
09. Ice Cream Man
10. Ain’t Talkin Bout Love
11. Jump
12. Beautiful Girls
13. Unchained VAN HALEN will launch its tour at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Kentucky on February 18. Additional stops are scheduled in Detroit at the Palace Of Auburn Hills (February 20); Chicago’s United Center (February 24); New York City’s Madison Square Garden on February 28 and March 1; Philadelphia at the Wells Fargo Center on March 5, Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on April 27; Denver’s Pepsi Center on May 24; Los Angeles at the Staples Center on June 1; Oakland at the Oracle Arena on June 3; San Jose at HP Pavilion on June 5; and in New Orleans at the New Orleans Arena on June 26.
VAN HALEN tour dates:
Feb. 18 – Louisville, KY @ KFC Yum! Center
Feb. 20 – Auburn Hills, MI – The Palace Of Auburn Hills
Feb. 22 – Indianapolis, IN – Bankers Life Fieldhouse
Feb. 24 – Chicago, IL – United Center
Feb. 28 – New York, NY – Madison Square Garden
Mar. 01 – New York, NY – Madison Square Garden
Mar. 03 – Uncasville, CT – Mohegan Arena
Mar. 05 – Philadelphia, PA – Wells Fargo Center
Mar. 09 – Buffalo, NY – First Niagara Center
Mar. 11 – Boston, MA – TD Garden
Mar. 15 – Montreal, QCBell Centre
Mar. 17 – Toronto, ON – Air Canada Centre
Mar. 21 – Ottawa, ON – Scotiabank Place
Mar. 24 – Atlantic City, NJ – Atlantic City Boardwalk Hall
Mar. 28 – Washington, DC – Verizon Center
Mar. 30 – Pittsburgh, PA – Consol Energy Center
Apr. 01 – Rosemont, IL – Allstate Arena
Apr. 10 – Sunrise, FL – BankAtlantic Center
Apr. 12 – Tampa, FL – Tampa Bay Times Forum
Apr. 14 – Orlando, FL – Amway Center
Apr. 16 – Jacksonville, FL – Jacksonville Veterans Mem. Arena
Apr. 19 – Atlanta, GA – Philips Arena
Apr. 21 – Greensboro, NC – Greensboro Coliseum Complex
Apr. 25 – Charlotte, NC – Time Warner Cable Arena
Apr. 27 – Nashville, TN – Bridgestone Arena
May 01 – Tulsa, OK – BOK Center
May 05 – Tacoma, WA – Tacoma Dome
May 07 – Vancouver, BC – Rogers Arena
May 09 – Calgary, AB – Scotiabank Saddledome
May 11 – Edmonton, AB – Rexall Place
May 17 – Winnipeg, MB – MTS Centre
May 19 – Saint Paul, MN – Xcel Energy Center
May 22 – Kansas City, MO – Sprint Center
May 24 – Denver, CO – Pepsi Center
May 27 – Las Vegas, NV – MGM Grand Garden Arena
Jun. 01 – Los Angeles, CA – Staples Center
Jun. 03 – Oakland, CA – Oracle Arena
Jun. 05 – San Jose, CA – HP Pavilion At San Jose
Jun. 12 – Anaheim, CA – Honda Center
Jun. 14 – San Diego, CA – Viejas Arena
Jun. 16 – Phoenix, AZ – US Airways Center
Jun. 20 – Dallas, TX – American Airlines Center
Jun. 22 – San Antonio, TX – AT&T Center
Jun. 24 – Houston, TX – Toyota Center
Jun. 26 – New Orleans, LA – New Orleans Arena
Support on select dates will come from KOOL & THE GANG.
VIP packages will be handled by VIPNation.com.
An image featuring a train and the VAN HALEN logo, along with the February 7 date, was posted online and then flashed on the Times Square electronic billboard on New Year’s Eve (December 31). There is speculation that the image could be the album’s cover art.
The set will be the group’s first all-new collection since “Van Halen 3” was issued 13 years ago, and its first with Roth since 1984. Source: Blabbermouth.net
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