Redferns
Van Halen sang about “Runnin’ with the Devil” back in 1978.
But decades after releasing that classic rocker on their self-titled debut, they were runnin’ with the Prince of Darkness himself, Ozzy Osbourne, when he almost became the lead singer of the band.
After stints by David Lee Roth, Sammy Hagar and Extreme’s Gary Cherone, the group was between frontmen circa 2001 when its namesake brothers, Eddie and Alex Van Halen, were in talks for Osbourne to bring his signature wail to VH.
“When you get a dog, you don’t expect it to be a cat,” Alex told Rolling Stone in his first interview since guitar god Eddie’s death in 2020. “When you get Ozzy, you get Ozzy. Play the music, he’ll sing, and it’s gonna be great.”
Osbourne — who will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for the second time on Saturday, his solo enshrinement coming after his 2006 one with Black Sabbath — confirms that he almost made the “Jump” to Van Halen.
“Yes, we were discussing it,” he wrote in an email to Rolling Stone. “It is something that if it had come to fruition, would have been phenomenal. Eddie and Alex were great friends of mine for a very long time and it’s a regret of mine that we never got it together.”
Blame it on MTV: Just as he was ready to begin working on a Van Halen album, Osbourne and his manager, wife Sharon, met with the network, and their reality show “The Osbournes” was born.
“’The Osbournes’ got in the way of creating new music at that time, unfortunately,” Osbourne wrote.
Another legendary rocker — Chris Cornell — was also once a potential VH frontman after he jammed with the Van Halen brothers. After Eddie stepped out, Alex had a one-on-one session with the Soundgarden singer.
“Chris was in a very fragile part of his life, so to speak,” Alex recalled of Cornell, who died from suicide in 2017. “I got behind the drums, and he started playing bass. We played for 45 minutes.
“This motherf – – ker got so into it he started bleeding,” he continued. “I said, ‘This is the man you want.’ And then he died.”
After Eddie died following a long battle with throat cancer, Alex was planning to continue on Van Halen in a tour reuniting the band with original singer Roth while bringing in Joe Satriani on guitar. But after some early rehearsals, the tour was aborted.
“The thing that broke the camel’s back … was I said, ‘Dave, at some point, we have to have a very overt — not a bowing — but an acknowledgement of Ed in the gig,’” Alex told Rolling Stone.
“And the moment I said we gotta acknowledge Ed, Dave f – – kin’ popped a fuse … The vitriol that came out was unbelievable.”
While the tour came to a bitter end between the bandmates, Alex — whose “Brothers” memoir, out Oct. 22, traces his journey with Eddie through the end of the original Van Halen lineup — is philosophical about it now.
“It’s too bad on one hand, but it’s fine on the other,” he said. “Because now, in retrospect, playing the old songs is not really paying tribute to anybody. That’s just like a jukebox, in my opinion.
“To find a replacement for Ed? It’s just not the same.”