Eddie Van Halen has revealed that the group’s newly-released album, “Tokyo Dome Live In Concert”, wasn’t the band’s original plan for the follow-up to 2012’s “A Different Kind Of Truth.”
“We were trying to figure out what to do since we didn’t have time to put a studio record together,” the guitarist tells the Washington Times. “My son Wolfgang is working on his own project. Dave is off doing his thing. What I originally wanted to do was remix the original 25 song demos. That would have been really cool. But the tapes are lost. They are gone. So that was out the window.”
The demos Eddie refers to were recorded for Warner Brothers Records in 1977 – prior to the release of their groundbreaking self-titled debut in February of 1978.
Material from those sessions has been re-recorded for inclusion on a number of Van Halen albums over the years, including the group’s reunion record with original frontman David Lee Roth, “A Different Kind Of Truth.”
“Then we started digging through bootlegs from the club days,” Eddie continues. “We tried our best to make those sound good, but ultimately it wasn’t good enough to put out.
“The quality of the recording was so bad that we tried to enhance them and make them better. Once we made them better, you lost that fly-on-the-wall aspect of it. It just didn’t jive. So we decided, “How about a live record?”
Van Halen will launch a North American tour in support of “Tokyo Dome Live In Concert” in Seattle on July 5.
See also:
VIDEO: Van Halen perform Unchained on Jimmy Kimmel Live
VIDEO: Van Halen perform Jump on the Ellen DeGeneres Show
FIRST PHOTOS: Van Halen perform on Ellen DeGeneres Show
VIDEO: Van Halen perform classics on Jimmy Kimmel Live
VIDEO: Van Halen – David Lee Roth injured during Jimmy Kimmel performance
Search Van Halen at hennemusic
