“Eddie would have taken over”: why Gene Simmons rejected Eddie Van Halen’s request to join Kiss
Back in the ‘80s, tensions between David Lee Roth and the rest of Van Halen were steadily rising. In 1982, Eddie Van Halen was even prepared to jump ship and abandon Van Halen altogether, begging Gene Simmons to let him join Kiss. However, Simmons rejected the guitar legend’s proposal.
We know what you’re thinking – who would say no to Eddie Van Halen? While the rejection might seem like a slight on Eddie’s talent, it was actually an admission that the Eddie’s guitar playing was a little too bold for Kiss to contain. “There wouldn’t be room for Eddie in Kiss,” he admits in an interview with MusicRadar.
READ MORE: “I said, ‘Eddie, you can’t go up on stage. This thing’s out of tune.’ He goes, ‘I’ll show you’”: Gene Simmons recalls a backstage moment with Eddie Van Halen
Eddie proposed the idea of joining Kiss in 1982, following the release of Van Halen’s Diver Down record. At the time, Eddie was unsure whether he could continue working with frontman Roth. Aware that Kiss were on the hunt for a new guitarist to replace Ace Frehley, he approached Simmons and asked to join the band.
“Eddie told me, ‘Roth is driving me nuts – I can’t take it!’” Simmons recalls. “He said: ‘I gotta leave. I know you’re looking for a lead guitar player. Do you want me in the band?’”
Despite Eddie’s desperation, Simmons was firm. He gave the Van Halen guitarist some vital advice: “I said, ‘Eddie, a band is worse than a marriage. You’re going to have ups and downs and stuff. But with Van Halen, everything begins and ends with you – it’s all about the guitar. Those riffs, that’s the backbone of what it is. That’s the sound.”
Simmons went on to note that those “backbone” riffs were “not necessarily the point of view of Kiss”. As he puts it, Eddie joining Kiss would have been like “putting Jeff Beck or Jimi Hendrix in AC/DC”.
“Hendrix would suck up all the oxygen,” he explains. “He needed just one bass player and a drummer so he’d got that room without a rhythm guitar player there. Eddie was like Hendrix in that sense. He needed a lot of room.”
While Van Halen had been created with Eddie Van Halen’s riffs in mind, Kiss didn’t have enough space for such gargantuan solos. “With Van Halen, it [allowed] a lot of room for the guitar player to take up,” Simmons notes. “There just wasn’t that room unless we wanted to gut what Kiss was all about. Eddie would have taken over.”
Although we’d love to have seen Eddie Van Halen storming the stage in Kiss makeup, Simmons’ rejection forced Eddie to persevere with Van Halen. And it’s good he did, because the band’s next album, 1984, featured some of Van Halen’s most iconic cuts, including Jump and Panama.
“Morally, I think I did the right thing,” Simmons concludes. “[I told] Eddie, ‘You’ve got to stick it out. No matter what the problems are in the band, you’ve got to hang in there.’”
“It’s never easy! You take a look at Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who had their ups and downs, or John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who were childhood friends. But you don’t let the band break up, even if it means switching lead singers. And in the end, that’s exactly what Eddie did.”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
