During a recent appearance on the Appetite for Distortion podcast, Kenny Wayne Shepherd recalled touring with Van Halen and shared the differences between David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen.
While Shepherd had only positive experiences with Van Halen, he did point out one noticeable difference during the band’s final tour.
“On this last tour, I saw Wolfgang all the time. I saw Alex frequently. I saw Ed every day,” the rocker recalled. “The one guy I never saw, never said hello to me or anything like that was David Lee Roth. So, I can’t speak to him because I never met him.”
“His guys were always trying to be like, if he entered the building, it was like, ‘He’s entered the building! Everybody, clear the room!’” Shepherd added. “There was definitely a difference between my interactions with Eddie and then the way that David Lee Roth seemed to approach things. But I’m not gonna judge that guy because I’d never actually had an interaction with him.”
Shepherd toured with Van Halen twice and got to know Eddie both on and off stage. Talking about his experience of playing with the band in another interview, the rocker compared the two tours he has played in — the ‘Gary Cherone era’ back in 1998 and their last-ever tour in 2015 with David Lee Roth.
“There were a couple of shows that ended up not happening because he had blown his voice out the night before,” he explained during an interview with Ultimate Guitar. “I think back then he was maybe struggling a little bit vocally to keep up with all the material and the nightly grind of playing and singing that stuff every night. But it was a great tour, I had a great time. And Eddie and I, that’s when he and I hit it off as friends and then maintained a friendship. So that was ’97, ’98 or something like that. And we maintained a friendship all the way up until when he passed away.”
“And obviously, we did the 2015 tour,” he added. “The most noticeable difference to me was obviously Mike Anthony wasn’t there. But also, David Lee Roth being there. David Lee Roth… I never saw him. He never said hello to me. Whereas in the ’90s, we saw everybody and hung out with them all the time. Eddie came and found me every single day. He tracked me down and gave me a hug. We’d sit down and talk. I mean spending like real quality time together. Wolfgang, Alex – spoke to all those guys.”
Shepherd’s new album, ‘Dirt on My Diamonds Vol. 2,’ is set to drop on September 20.
