Hear David Lee Roth’s Van Halen Tribute Song ‘Nothing Could Have Stopped Us Then Anyway’
David Lee Roth has shared a previously-unheard solo recording from 2007, “Nothing Could Have Stopped Us Back Then Anyway,” where he looks back nostalgically on his days in Van Halen.
“We laughed, we cried, we threw the television off that balcony,” he sings. “That memory means so much to me…Remember when you safety pinned the tablecloth to my pants/And I stood up to the sound of dancing and the sound of our romance beginning.”
The song was recorded in 2007 with guitarist John 5 and original David Lee Roth Band drummer Gregg Bissonette for an album that never came out. “Being a Van Halen fan and a David Lee Roth fan, It’s unbelievable because it’s about Dave singing about Van Halen and what it was really like,” John 5 told Alabama’s AL.com. “Really something special.”
The song was recorded the same year that Roth finally mended fences with Van Halen after 23 years of estrangement and joined the group for a tour, which likely explains why the project was shelved. The reunion led to the 2012 LP A Different Kind of Truth, and the group toured through 2015, but a recent Rolling Stone article by Blair R. Fischer revealed that Roth and Eddie Van Halen kept a great distance from each other offstage.
“Roth is out of his mind,” Van Halen told Fischer in a series of e-mails and private conversations during the final years of his life. The guitarist said that Roth only liked “dance music” and that he “hates bands like AC/DC.” He also said that Roth called the band’s fans “culturally illiterate.”
Roth responded to the article in a statement to the Van Halen News Desk. “I’ve always loved AC/DC,” he wrote. “I’ve never said that anyone’s audience was culturally illiterate. I said that Ed was culturally illiterate.”
Rumors have been swirling for months about a Van Halen tribute concert, or even a tour with Joe Satriani playing alongside Alex Van Halen and others, but Wolfgang Van Halen revealed in a recent interview with Rolling Stone that it doesn’t seem to be happening any time soon. “I don’t like to speak negatively about people, but there are some people that make it very difficult to do anything when it comes to Van Halen,” he said, stopping just short of naming Roth as one such person. “Do your own research on the History of Van Halen, and come to your own conclusions.”
