* CareerResurrection: Many fans had written Van Halen off by the start of UsefulNotes/TheNewTens. After a messy divorce with Sammy Hagar, an album with Gary Cherone which flopped, Michael Anthony's forced departure from the band and Eddie's bouts with alcoholism and cancer. But once Eddie came out of rehab, the band mended fences with Roth and hit the studio to record ''A Different Kind of Truth'' the band's first album of new material in 14 years. The album charted all the way up to #2 (same spot as ''1984''), spawned a hit single and returned them to the limelight, featuring some of Eddie's best playing in decades.
** Some mocked the band reworking old demo tapes for ''A Different Kind of Truth'', but most of that came from Wolf digging in the archives and making suggestions for new songs. Being the son and nephew of founding members, he knew exactly what fans would want.
* CreatorBreakdown: Eddie Van Halen had struggled with addiction issues for years, but was [[Main/FunctionalAddict mostly able to perform regardless.]] That changed on an infamous 2004 Van Halen tour. Video clips of Eddie’s sloppy playing began circulating. Reviews were savage. Both Hagar and Anthony reported Eddie was often angry and incoherent backstage. It wasn’t until 2012 that the above mentioned CareerResurrection happened, thanks to Eddie’s continued rehab work and a hefty assist from Eddie’s son Wolfgang.
* CreativeDifferences: A music reviewer summed up the Van Halen-David Lee Roth split quite well as a situation where Eddie wanted to [[GrowingTheBeard Grow The Beard]] and make the band more "artistic", but Diamond Dave was content with the success of their partying HardRock style. This holds up when one takes into account how the band went quite DarkerAndEdgier once Dave wasn't around to butt heads with and Eddie took over their creative direction entirely.
** For a long time, it was assumed Dave resented Eddie for making a guest appearance for the solo on "Beat It" by Music/MichaelJackson. Dave refuted that claim, saying he thought it'd be good exposure for Eddie's talents (and by extension, the band). What he ''did'' take umbrage with was that Eddie declined to be paid for his appearance. "We truly don't think alike at all."
** By the end of his original run, Hagar wasn't getting along with the rest of the band at all. A candid interview at some point in the 1990s saw him make multiple passive-aggressive jabs at the others before he went into a rant about how he felt locked out of the creative process - the brothers had a stranglehold on it, Michael Anthony would always back them, and the brothers themselves would always back Anthony, while Hagar was left with the dregs and had to make do with whatever meager room the other three left him for contributions.
* CreatorKiller: ''Van Halen III'':
** It marked the debut of Gary Cherone of Music/{{Extreme}} as the band's third frontman after Music/DavidLeeRoth and Sammy Hagar. It was also the ''last'' album he'd be featured on, as well as the last album of new material they would release until 2012, as its sharply negative reception would cause Cherone to leave Van Halen and the band to go on hiatus. The same factors that drove both Roth and Hagar to quit Van Halen on bad terms were responsible for the failure of ''Van Halen III'' -- namely, that, despite Cherone ostensibly being the frontman, Eddie Van Halen was the one who was really in charge, even though he had depended on Roth and Hagar to help compose the music in the past.
** It was also the last album that composer Mike Post would produce, after which he would return to his day job composing theme music for TV shows.
* HeAlsoDid: Eddie played the fast shredding solo on "Beat It" by Music/MichaelJackson.
* HitlessHitAlbum: They always had strong album sales but it took them a while to get the hang of writing hit singles, which led to a few of these early in their career.
** Their first album from 1978 spent a whopping 173 weeks on the Billboard 200 album chart, peaking at #19, and was eventually certified Diamond; nowadays it's widely considered one of the greatest debut albums in rock history. Of the four singles released from the album, just one (the band's cover version of "You Really Got Me") managed to sneak into the lower reaches of the top 40, peaking at #36. Only one of the other three singles charted at all, and that one only made it to #84.
** Their third and fourth albums, ''Women and Children First'' and ''Fair Warning'', both peaked in the top ten of the Billboard 200 and went triple-platinum and double-platinum respectively, despite having no significant hits. The band only released one single in the US from each album, with "And the Cradle Will Rock" stalling out at #55 on the Hot 100 and "So This is Love?" failing to chart.
* HostilityOnTheSet:
** Dealing with Eddie Van Halen was apparently not easy. He trashed Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony publically for over a decade while not speaking a word to the guys themselves, trashed Music/DavidLeeRoth ''while he was in the band'', and generally had a bad attitude about any-and-everybody that doesn't have "Van Halen" as their last name. Things eventually got so fiery with both singers that they wanted to take a rest, and Michael Anthony also didn't like being sidelined (to the point he only joined the 2004 reunion because Sammy wanted him there) and he wasn't even ''notified'' of the band coming out of hiatus with Wolfgang van Halen, Eddie's son, in his place. And sadly, when Eddie was trying to bury the hatchet with Hagar and Anthony so all six[[note]]well, seven; but not only [[Music/{{Extreme}} Gary Cherone]] is the only singer that seemingly never clashed with Eddie, [[FanonDiscontinuity everyone prefers to forget his tenure in the band]][[/note]] could tour together, he died of cancer.
** Sammy Hagar was against the video for "Right Now", as he was proud of the lyrics and complained that "People ain't even going to be listening to what I'm saying because they'll be reading these subtitles". During filming, Hagar was suffering from pneumonia and a fever and thus angrier and even less cooperative, as illustrated by how he both steps away from a microphone and slams his dressing room door. That being said, by the time of his autobiography ''Red'' he had warmed up to it, down to reusing the video's idea in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ayk1w3I9oUs "Cosmic Universal Fashion"]].
* KeepCirculatingTheTapes: The music video for "Once" was only ever released as an internet exclusive in 1998...so you can probably guess how well it looks by today's standards. If a higher-quality version does exist, then it has either been lost to time, or never been released (and given it was a song from the infamous ''Van Halen III'', it's unlikely it'll be unearthed any time soon).
* LicensedGame: ''VideoGame/GuitarHero: Van Halen''.
* MoneyDearBoy: Sammy admitted he only released his ''Unboxed'' Greatest Hits collection to pay for his divorce. His ex-wife Betsy got all the profits and he didn't see a dime. Despite making this clear to Alex and Eddie, they were paranoid he wanted to restart his solo career and the subsequent arguments eventually led to his exit from the band.
* OneBookAuthor: Alex never recorded anything without his brother - in Michael Anthony's words, "the only person that he plays with is Ed." - to the point his only non-Van Halen credit is doing keyboards in the instrumental Eddie recorded for ''Film/{{Twister}}''.
* ThePeteBest: Mark Stone, the bassist who preceded Michael Anthony.
* RarelyPerformedSong: They wrote very few songs that didn't find a place in their setlist at some point, but one noteworthy exception is "Feels So Good" from 1988. It was a modest hit, peaking at #35 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #6 on the Rock charts in the US, and they filmed a music video for it too. But for reasons unknown it's the only official single they released that they never played live.
* SimilarlyNamedWorks:
** "Right Now" has nothing to do with the Music/{{Korn}} song of the same name. Ditto "Dreams" for the songs by Music/FleetwoodMac, Music/TheCranberries, Music/{{Beck|Musician}}, etc.
** The guys wanted to call their band Genesis. When they learned that [[Music/{{Genesis|Band}} another band]] was using that name, they started calling themselves Mammoth instead until they changed it to Van Halen some time later.
* TestingTheEditors: A variant: they famously included a stipulation, buried halfway through their impressively long contract, requiring the band to be provided with a bowl of M&Ms, from which all the brown ones had been removed. This served as a quick way to determine whether the host had fully read the contract. Since the contract was mostly about technical issues to ensure Van Halen's epic concerts could be performed correctly, the lack of M&Ms, or the presence of brown M&Ms, suggested neglect on the part of whoever was responsible for fulfilling their end of the contract and, therefore, potential safety issues.
** One time they managed to inadvertently prove their point when the organizers at a show at CSU-Pueblo put out a bowl with brown M&Ms, and also apparently ignored weight requirements for their massive stage, which sunk straight through the floor of the basketball court they were set up on and caused $80,000 of damage.
* TroubledProduction:
** The video for "Jump" was badly affected by David Lee Roth's ego and his clash with the rest of the band. The other 3 members didn't want to be around him and asked director Robert Lombard if they could be filmed separately. Lombard hated the idea but buckled down except a few shots. Cameraman Pete Angelus didn't know how to operate a 16 mm camera properly, resulting in all footage he shot being unusable. Roth demanded that he be filmed doing a bunch of crazy stunts. Lombard wanted to cut out Roth's stunts and make the video a performance video to keep it personal, claiming it would make it more successful. The other three members agreed to this, and Lombard changed the video's format. Roth got word of this and demanded Lombard be fired. Lombard never again worked with Van Halen, Roth's stunt footage would surface in a future video, and "Jump" won the award for Best Performance Video at the first MTV Video Music Awards. It's also seen as one of the most memorable music videos ever made and helped cement the band's already monumental popularity even further.
** The sheer personal tension surrounding "Humans Being", from the soundtrack to ''Film/{{Twister}}'', nearly destroyed the band. The first half of 1996 was meant to put the band on a break, with the Van Halen brothers Eddie and Alex needing surgery and Sammy Hagar about to have his third child. However, manager Ray Danniels convinced them that contributing to the ''Twister'' soundtrack would make them enough money to get them through the rest of that year. Originally, Sammy and Eddie wrote two songs, "The Silent Extreme" and "Between Us Two". According to Hagar, the two songs were recorded, and he was about to head back home in Maui to his wife until Eddie informed him that "Between Us Two" wasn’t going to be used. Hagar and the Van Halen brothers clashed over lyrics, with Alex renaming "The Silent Extreme" to "Humans Being", Sammy flying back and forth between home and work so much that he moved to San Francisco and had to have the baby there (against his wife's wishes). At one point, the lack of compromise angered Sammy so badly he and producer Bruce Fairbairn rewrote their lyrics in 15 minutes ''on the hood of a car'', recorded his vocals in less than 2 hours, and stormed out. Hagar would not respond to calls about reworking "Between Us Two" (the second song was the Eddie instrumental "Respect the Wind"), and ultimately left the band as he got tired of the Van Halens' prima-donna tendencies. This is detailed in a particularly ugly interview from the [[http://www.vhlinks.com/pages/interviews/sh/gw0497.php April 1997 edition of Guitar World]], which suggests the issues went as far back as 1994 with problems rising up from a greatest hits package of Sammy's solo work.
* ThrowItIn: Most of David Lee Roth's speaking breaks, combined with SugarWiki/FunnyMoments. "Eruption" also started initially as a warmup before Templeman convinced Eddie to record it and put it on the album. The rain in the background of "Could This Be Magic?" is actual - the band opened the studio's door during a rainy day because it was hot and poorly ventilated, and the effect got caught on tape.
** By the way, the person saying "c'mon, Dave... gimme a break!" in "Unchained" is Templeman himself, telling Dave to stop before his talking got out of hand.
* WhatCouldHaveBeen: Singer-songwriter Mitch Malloy almost became the lead singer for Van Halen after Sammy's departure in 1996. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pfFErkwbFA This is the only existing demo they recorded together, but it doesn't sound half-bad.]]
** After ''Balance'', the band was tapping Glen Ballard to produce their next record with Hagar. Due to behind-the-scenes manipulation though, Eddie had Glen (a prolific songwriter himself) rewrite lyrics that Sammy wrote, which made Sammy absolutely furious. Ballard didn't take kindly to being lied to like that, obviously, and quit on the spot after finding out.
** Eddie said he would have loved to make an appearance in ''Film/BillAndTedsExcellentAdventure'' to tie in to the gag of their ridiculously assuming they could get him to join their band, but unfortunately he had no idea about it and no one asked him.
** Before Sammy Hagar replaced Roth, [[Music/DarylHallAndJohnOates Daryl Hall]] and Scandal frontwoman Patty Smyth were tapped as potential replacements. Hall turned it down, not wanting to end his duo and Smyth turned it down, feeling that the band were planning to bring in Hagar to replace Roth anyway.
** Music/OzzyOsbourne [[https://www.nme.com/news/music/ozzy-osbourne-eddie-van-halen-once-asked-him-join-van-halen-2796460 revealed]] that Eddie asked him to become the new lead singer after Hagar left the band in 1996.
** The ''1984'' line-up tried to record together in 2000, only for Roth not to help things. The resulting demos were even among the ones dug up for ''A Different Kind of Truth''.
** Both Hagar and Anthony expressed hopes that the band could reunite with them in a May 2020 [[https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/sammy-hagar-van-halen-tour-1001675/ interview]], which had it happened, would've marked the first time in which all five members of the classic era performed together. Eddie's death ended any chance of that happening. Wolfgang said in a November 2020 [[https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/eddie-van-halen-vault-wolfgang-interview-1090873/ interview]] that there were even plans to have Gary Cherone return to the fold for the reunion tour (dubbed the Kitchen Sink tour), which would've led the band becoming an seven-piece band.
** Three times between 1981 and 1984, Eddie and Alex tried to bring in Billy Sheehan (LeadBassist for Talas, a band that opened for VH) to replace Michael Anthony. Billy turned down the offer each time, feeling Mike was the right guy for the band, and respected him too much to steal his gig. He would later accept an offer to join Dave's solo band in 1986.
* WrittenForMyKids: "316", named after Wolfgang's birthday March 16. Tellingly, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvVk5y957Vw his first performances with the band]] were in that song.
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