Well, y’know it’s funny, though. It just strikes me now in hindsight as so ironic, ‘cause when I first heard it, I was kinda like, “What the fuck are they doing with this?!” But now, surprisingly, the more I listen to it, the more I start to look at it from a different perspective. Now, it’s one of my favorite tracks on the album, which just befuddles the hell out of me.

Yeah, that was my first choice for first release. But we do everything democratically and I got out-voted. But that was my first choice, believe it or not.

How much of a say do you guys have as far as what’s being released as a single?

Well, you see, we don’t really release singles; we release tracks. All that really means is that we ask the radio stations to kind of focus on a certain song, because the reality of it is, they can play any song off of any record they want. So, you don’t have that much control, but probably the most control you have is what video you end up making for what song. We tend to go by instinct and whatever the majority votes for. We all wanted to have “Without You” as the first song, and so it was a no-brainer. Okay, there it is: “Without You.” So then we went out and made a video for it.

It always strikes me as strange because I think over the last ten or twelve years—actually, beginning with 5150—personally, I’ve never really thought that the lead-off track released to radio was the most indicative of the album.

No.

It always strikes me as strange when the first new song is played off a new Van Halen disc. It’s kinda like, “What’s this?!” Not that I didn’t enjoy it, but it wouldn’t have necessarily made me run right out to buy the album. It would be more of a thinking kind of thing, like, “What are they up to now?” And then subsequently, usually the material that follows, it’s like, “Oh, okay, this is what I would have expected.” It just seems like a different kind of perspective.

No, each record is different, and our heads are in a different place. That’s the reality of it. We’re not in the music field to repeat ourselves. Y’know, you try to—what’s the word? I was going to say answer that call of the wild. [Laughs] On the one hand, you don’t consciously change just for the sake of change, but it’s human nature to try different things. And musically, that’s what we kind of aim for. You can feel when something is fresh, and you can feel when something’s stale. And obviously, we gravitate toward the fresh stuff. Some people will use the terminology, “Well, that’s not what I expected,” or “It’s not traditional Van Halen.” Well, “Jump” was not traditional either, y’know?

Yeah, but in hindsight, it’s classic Van Halen.

Exactly. Well, there you go—in hindsight. I think maybe ten years from now, people are gonna look at this record and go, “Wow! Y’know, that really was a fucking interesting fucking record.” But we have no control over that. Once the record is done, once the creative process as far as in the recording studio, as soon as that’s done, what happens to a record is out of our hands. Fortunately, the record has been received, I think, very well under the circumstances. And I think it’s kind of good that’s it’s being received the way it is because the band is in transition. And at the same time, I might add, this record is not the one indicative record. Y’know, this is not the definitive Van Halen record. It is also not indicative of “some new direction that we’re wandering off into.” The best way I can describe it is that this record is just one more page in a long book that is far from being written. We got a long way to go, and this is just one more step.

Oh, sure. Well, I think that’s evident with a lot of the stuff that you guys have done.

Oh, yeah! But I’m just saying this in context of the fact that this is probably the most scrutinized record we’ve ever put out because of the fact that the band line-up changed, y’know? [Laughs] So people are really looking at it. Now, they’re tearing it apart and looking at it and sniffing under the carpets, so to speak. If they were going to do that to any record, this is probably the one to do it because it is so diverse.

I think maybe people are looking a little closer than the last time when you changed singers because it seems to me that maybe it wasn’t so much of a jump. The way I’ve been describing it is Dave and Sammy were both vaudeville, and Gary’s more Shakespearian.

Yeah, right. [Laughs hysterically] That’s a good way to put it.

So maybe it wasn’t much of a jump from Roth to Hagar, but from Hagar and Roth to Gary, it’s like, two different movies, two completely different things.

Yeah, right. Mm-hmm.

Now that the record’s been out for awhile and you’ve had a chance to live with it, how does it sound to you now, as compared to when you first [got into the studio] and you were excited about it?

Oh, I love it! There’s not a single record and/or a single song that we have ever had on record that we put on just for the sake of putting it on. I mean, we’re not embarrassed about any of it [and] we wouldn’t change a damn thing.

No, I didn’t mean to imply that—

No, no, I’m just saying that’s the way I look at it. In terms of when we’re done recording the song, you’re either happy with it or you’re not. Y’know, I listen to the stuff occasionally; I don’t play it every moment of my waking existence, because the fact is, we play it at night as well. So there is such a thing as—what’s the old expression? One cannot eat honey all day?

Yeah. [Laughs] When you guys put this record together, essentially, you hadn’t really played live as a band with the four people who are involved now. I’m really curious as to what you think’s going to happen with the next studio project now that you’ve had some time, that you’re out on the boards and you’re doing it live.

I don’t know. I really don’t know what’s going to happen. I do know that there certainly will not be any shortcoming of creative ideas, because even when Van Halen III was being put together, there were already—see, Ed originally wanted to put out a double record.

Oh, really?

Yeah. We had about fifty different ideas for songs, some in a very, very primitive, embryonic stage, and some close enough to start tracking—all in different states of completion. But had we gone for a double record, I mean, that would’ve really been a lot to swallow. This would’ve been like an anthology of music from the caveman days ‘til now because of the stylistic changes that would’ve been happening. And also the time. We ran out of time. Two-and-a-half, three years is long enough for anybody to wait, especially if you’re a fan of the band. And we were tired of waiting. Believe it or not, yes, we’re in the eye of the storm, but at the same time, when you step back and look at the process and say, “Man, this is taking too long.” So that was it. We sped things up and got it out as fast as we could. And then, of course, we had to deal with the reality of record company. The record was done four months before it was released, and that was a record company call; we had no influence over that.