Dary Hall, vocalist and guitarist for legendary pop-rock outfit Hall & Oates, has confirmed he was almost drafted in to join Van Halen to replace the outgoing David Lee Roth more than 35 years ago.
While in conversation with Out of the Box with Jonathan Clarke, Hall touched upon his much-speculated collaboration with Eddie Van Halen, revealing it was actually the late electric guitar icon who initially proposed the idea to him in the first place.
"Well, yeah,” Hall said when asked if Eddie Van Halen had approached him (transcribed via Blabbermouth). “I knew those guys [Van Halen] really well; we actually shared some people, crew and things like that. And Eddie came to a show with [his then-wife] Valerie [Bertinelli] and David had just left the band.
“Eddie said, 'Do you wanna join Van Halen, man?'” he continued. “He was half-joking, but I think he was serious. I really do believe he was serious. And I took it seriously. I went, 'Meh, I think not. I think I've got my own shit going on.'”
Hall also went on to say Van Halen confided in him that Jump’s iconic intro riff was inspired by the hook in the Hall & Oates cut Kiss Is On My List. “That is correct,” he said when quizzed if it were true. “That’s what he always told me. That inspired Jump.”
You can hear the exchange in the video above from the 9:15 mark.
The Hall & Oates singer wasn’t the only one who was scouted to replace Roth – who left Van Halen after the release of 1984 – before the ultimate appointment of Sammy Hagar.
In 2020, former Journey vocalist Steve Perry told Rolling Stone that Van Halen had asked him to “come down sometime and jam” soon after Lee Roth had left the group.
“At some level within me I felt so honored because I was in awe of Eddie’s natural talent,” he said. “I wanted so badly to do that. We talked about how cool that would be musically.”
However, the pair never formally linked up, with Perry saying he didn’t know if he “could be the guy to go out and represent the David Lee Roth years with my voice. I don’t know if I wanted to be that guy”.
Hagar would eventually go on to replace Lee Roth, and worked with Van Halen on four studio albums between 1986 and 1995. He left a year after Balance arrived, though would rejoin the group on two occasions – in 2004 and 2007 – for reunion tours.
