Van Halen Never Officially Offered Sheehan Position

William Lee | 02-08-2020

Best Of Both Worlds cover art

Van Halen never officially offered Billy Sheehan a position in the band, the bassist explained after comments he made in an interview created headlines.

Sheehan, who was a member of Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth's original solo band, recently spoke with The Metal Voice and they published excerpts of the interview.

Under the heading of "When asked if he was ever asked join Van Halen," they quoted him as responding, "Three times through the years and I consider it a great honor. However I am torn because I love Michael Anthony and I think he is the best bass player for Van Halen. And as much as I would have love to do that I want to see Michael in the band. I'm not sure why they asked me to join the band Michael is an awesome player and singer and who knows what the situation was.

"The first time was the tour of Fair Warning we talked about it then, then I spoke about it with David Lee Roth but I mostly spoke about it with Eddie Van Halen in Toronto Canada and then the second time was 1984 Eddie showed me the stage set up we talked abut it then. Then the last time was when I got together with Eddie and Alex Van Halen at their house. "

After his comments created news, Billy shared a link to one story on Friday (February 7th) via his Facebook page calling such reports "fake news". He then clarified, "Though I spoke w EVH on 3 different occasions where he asked me about being in his band, the offer never came through. They never followed through on any sort of an official offer and therefore I never 'turned down' any offer, because it eventually fell through.

"This is the result of recycling old news ( I've spoken of this before) because I thought I'd do a favor some little website that asked for an interview, and then they decided to make this the headline ( for clicks) and many other websites picked up the 'story' to get more clicks. Recycled, inaccurate and rebranded old news. Never happened."