DAVID LEE ROTH Rules Out Performing SAMMY HAGAR-Era VAN HALEN Songs

VAN HALEN singer David Le Roth was interviewed last night (Sunday, May 17) backstage at the Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas, Nevada. You can watch the chat below.

Asked if he would be open to working on new music with VAN HALEN in the near future, Roth said: "Everybody has a different work ethic. Everybody has a different approach. The Van Halens [Eddie and Alex] are perhaps a bit more traditional. I just spent the last two years living in Japan. I took the dog and my baseball hat and headed out. I didn't know anybody there… nothing. I went to school and so forth."

He continued: "My approach to life in general and the state of mind implied is a bit different. I'm obsessed. It's not an option. It's a question of what time you wake up and get started. And we're always working and singing, making the music. I'm always writing and have written with a number of other people. And I would always look forward to doing it again with VAN HALEN, but that works on a very traditional… Think like THE ROLLING STONES."

After acknowledging that he doesn't want to wait another ten years between studio albums, Roth said: "Somewhere in between, we'll get interstitials, and in between we'll start to add things in addition to."

Asked if he would ever consider performing Sammy Hagar-era songs with VAN HALEN, Roth responded: "Well, there's a credibility issue there. Good, bad or in the middle, you know Roth means it; the other guy doesn't. And that's why it sold half as well. Literally, Midas Bible half. Never did better than half. And why would you bring that into the proceedings? This hamburger don't need no helper. [There] ain't no rehearsing pants in my closet."

Hagar, who took over the singing chores in VAN HALEN after David Lee Roth left the band, is widely considered the better singer of the two. However, Hagar never managed to dazzle the crowd quite like Roth did. After an 11-year-run with the band, Hagar was fired or he quit (depending on whom you ask).

"The difference between Dave and I in that band, besides all the other million things, is that he can't sing any of the 'Van Hagar'-era songs, "Sammy told The Boston Phoenix in a 2012 interview. "Maybe he could do 'Finish What Ya Started', possibly — so that makes it kind of weird for [Alex and Eddie], I think, to take 11 years out of that thing."

VAN HALEN's appearance at the 2015 Billboard Music Awards — which aired live from the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas via ABC — marked the first time that the current lineup of the band (including original David Lee Roth and guitarist Eddie Van Halen's son Wolfgang on bass) has performed at an awards show.

Out now is "Tokyo Dome In Concert", VAN HALEN's first ever live collection featuring David Lee Roth, despite numerous pro-shot concerts from the band's original heyday being heavily booted for years — including film and videotaped-sourced shows from 1981 in Oakland, California; 1982 in Largo, Maryland; 1983 in San Paulo, Brazil and the US Festival in San Bernadino, California; and 1984 in Leicestershire, England — among others.