As time goes on David Lee Roth seems to be taking more and more credit for Van Halen’s success. Now he was absolutely 1 of the most electrifying front men in his heyday with the band. And he wrote the lyrics for the songs during his time with the band, just like Sammy Hagar did during his years in Van Halen. In Fact this Reddit thread shows some of Dave’s handwritten lyrics to some VH songs. But it seems like Dave’s now claiming credit for some Van Halen stuff that I don’t think he was responsible for...
Dave recently made a surprise appearance at the Stagecoach Music Festival jumping on stage with Teddy Swims to do Van Halen’s Jump.
Shortly after Dave jumped off stage he did an interview with Billboard Magazine, where Diamond Dave claims he wrote Jump, and many other Van Halen songs, for women to dance to.
The story of Dave’s inspiration for the lyrics to Jump are well known. He got the initial inspiration from a story of a man about to jump off a tall downtown LA building. He says he changed the meaning from something dark to something more about love or partying or sex or something cool like that. So yes, he wrote the lyrics, but in this interview it seems to me like he’s taking more credit for the song than he should, since Eddie had to drag the rest of the band kicking and screaming into it and it became their biggest hit, THANKS TO EDDIE!
So here’s my question...since we all know Dave, and other members of the band, weren’t super keen on Eddie getting into his synthesizer phase, and Dave has said in previous interviews how much he DID NOT like Jump when Eddie played it for the band...why is he now taking credit for the song?
And he’s WAY off when he says he wrote Van Halen songs to be 126 bpm. The bpm for Van Halen songs ranges from as low as 63bpm to as high as 205 for Beautiful Girls.
It seems Dave’s ego is trying to own more of the band’s legacy than the rest of the guys...which at one point was also a big part of why Dave wasn’t the lead singer anymore.
Hey Dave, your legacy is already set. No need to start claiming things you didn’t do...
