Van Halen Inducted into the Rock Hall.

So the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony was last night, and 2 hours into the ceremony, Velvet Revolver finally came out to induct Van Halen. Velvet Revolver was a terrible choice for that from the beginning. Everyone knew it. They have absolutely nothing in common with VH musically. I mean, it’s usually nice when an artist is chosen to induct another artist they grew up listening to and have some respect for, so there’s a little bit of admiration there, but VR came out and had little to none for VH. They read off of cue cards with the passion of a rotten banana.

After the lame intro was done, Michael Anthony and Sammy Hagar came out to accept the induction. The only 2 guys to show. Clearly neither of them had prepared their speeches, but there’s something nice about that. The first thing out of Mike’s mouth was some love to Eddie. Given the way Mike’s been treated by Ed lately he certainly didn’t need to do that, but he did, and that showed class, and was nice. He fumbled though some other comments and then Sammy took over. He showed similar class. Cool that these guys showed up to represent the band, but ironic that the only members of VH to show were the only guys that aren’t actually currently IN the band..

Anyway, after Mike and Sam spoke, Velvet Revolver came out and completely destroyed 2 Van Halen songs. They did a craptastic version of “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love”, followed by what I guess was supposed to be “Runaround”, though the later was completely unrecognizable. The only way you could tell what song they were trying to do was because the only lyric they sang was “Run-around ‘round ‘round..” over, and over, and over and over and over.. musically you would never have known what song it was. The performance was god-awful. You might think I’m exaggerating because I’m a biased VH fan, but it really did suck that bad. It's impossible to put a positive spin on it. Not even Eddie Van Halen would have recognized it as one of his songs, and he wrote it! I actually gave better musical performances as an infant when all I knew how to do was drool and bang a spoon on the floor all day.

Anyway, After that trainwreck, Mike and Sammy came out and performed a less then steller job of "Why Can’t This Be Love?" with Paul Shaffer. It was okay, I don’t think Mike and Sam had planned that. I think they were backstage watching Velvet Revolver completely mangle their tunes and after hearing the audience boo so bad they figured they had to go out and try and redeem it a bit. They tried their best with what they had. *shrug*.

In the end, Van Halen is now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So that’s cool. It’s just sad that the band is so dysfunctional that they couldn’t even pull it together for a few hours for something special.