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An unchained David Lee Roth has set his sights on Wolfgang Van Halen, criticizing his former bandmate for his nepo baby status, among other perceived slights, in a surreal verbal tirade uploaded to YouTube this week.
Roth fronted Van Halen from 1974 to 1985 and again from 2007 to 2020, playing alongside Wolfgang, bassist and son of the late Eddie Van Halen, during part of his second stint in the legendary rock group. On Wednesday’s episode of his intermittent podcast project The Roth ShowRoth mockingly recalled their time working together, portraying Wolfgang as an insecure and vengeful presence in the band.
The five-minute, 32-second episode, titled “This Fuckin’ Kid,” begins with a bizarre parody interview in which Roth interviews “Jesus Christ.”
“Brother, I want people to know that I got this job thanks to my talent,” says the supposed Jesus, his voice artificially raised. “I would have this job anyway, even if my dad wasn’t God. I just want people to know that I got this job because of my talent.”
The thinly veiled attack on “Wolfie,” as Roth later calls him, soon turns into an all-out attack. “This damn kid!” Roth explodes. “He complains the whole tour like I’m not paying enough attention to him on stage… I’m giving him my best, everything I’ve got, in front of twenty, thirty thousand people at a pace, and he complains with all his might. world. Around me, the business manager, the security guy, the laundry lady, ‘Dave’s not paying enough attention to me.’”
Continuing the monologue, the singer calls Wolfgang a “schlemiel” (or “fool” in Yiddish) for later trying to throw “two great ladies” out of a concert to which Roth had invited them as guests. The apparent act of revenge was hindered by the fact that the women were not fans but rather employees of the tour’s accounting firm, according to Roth, “who carried the paychecks for the 82-person tour crew.”
Wolfgang repeated the trick at a Los Angeles show soon after, Roth alleges. “Wolfie Van Halen is going to teach me a lesson by dumping the one she thinks is my girlfriend,” he spits. “Guess what? Not only is she back as an accountant, and not only is she carrying the paychecks for 82 of us on the road crew, but she’s also carrying cash bonuses for everyone present.”
Representatives for Roth and Wolfgang did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.
Roth’s rant comes just days after he criticized Sammy Hagar, his replacement as Van Halen’s frontman, in a similar rant. The 69-year-old stated on a January 19 episode The Roth Show Titled “The Ballad of Popsicle Sam”, Hagar had been “sexually probed” by aliens. “Does it require a device? Is it a beam? We do not know. “We may never know,” Roth added. She (she Hagar she claimed in 2011 to have been the victim of an alien abduction when she was a child).
Roth and Hagar have feuded publicly for years, with the latter telling Jackass’ Steve-O last year that Roth was a “chest-beating son of a bitch” with no career outside of Van Halen. Although the couple appeared to reach some sort of temporary truce last November, with Roth accepting Following an informal invitation from Hagar to tour together, their rivalry flared up again after Hagar rescinded the overture.
“No way,” Hagar wrote on Instagram. “I know it’s better not to have him on tour again. “I’ve been there and done that.”
Wolfgang, on the other hand, has been taciturn regarding Roth. The furthest the bassist has gone in criticizing his former colleague was to delicately suggest that Rolling Stone that Roth was the reason a proposed Eddie Van Halen tribute concert never got off the ground.
“There are some people who make it very difficult to do anything when it comes to Van Halen,” he said in the 2022 interview.
This has been a great week for Van Halen beyond their former leader expressing his acrimony. Wolfgang, who left Van Halen in 2015 and now fronts his own one-man project, Mammoth WVHjuice Jimmy Kimmel live! on Wednesday night. And last but not least: Friday would have been Eddie Van Halen’s 69th birthday.