Gary Cherone has revealed some details about his rekindled relationship with former bandmate Eddie Van Halen prior to his death. Cherone took over Sammy Hagar‘s place as the frontman of Van Halen in 1996 and was a part of the band for three years.
During Cherone’s interview with SiriusXM’s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk” on Thursday (June 16), the vocalist shared that he rekindled his relationship with Eddie Van Halen at the end of 2015/beginning of 2016. “I reached out to him and we picked up where we left off. It was wild, because we went back and forth and we talked. And then when I went out to L.A., I finally got to see him, and it was great,” said Cherone.
While the singer visited Eddie Van Halen he was going through cancer treatments at the time and said, “I’m kicking its ass.” According to Cherone, “At the time he was. He’d have good days. There was one time I saw him, and he was just getting back, and he was just, like, ‘Ah, man. I’m not feeling great.’ That’s cool. We can just hang for a little while. But he was great.”
Then, according to the singer, “the last six months it got real quiet. I reached out to him a few times. And he got back to me later. I just had a feeling something was going down.”
Cherone says that most of his conversations with Eddie Van Halen were them talking as friends, but there were a couple of conversations about music. “I remember hanging out with Eddie and he was talking about the [proposed] ‘kitchen-sink’ [tour] – not in those terms. It was around the time [of their] 40th anniversary and they were talking about getting together to do something, I think with Dave [Lee Roth],” recalls the vocalist.
During his conversation, Cherone told him “‘Yeah when you do that Ed’ – it wasn’t the kitchen-sink thing. When they were talking about doing something again with those guys, I remember saying to him, ‘Hey, if it doesn’t work out, I know a singer for cheap.’ And he laughed. And he looked at me, and at the time he goes, ‘You never know.’ And I remember thinking, ‘That was odd.’ I just remembered him saying that, and then when Wolfie said it, after he passed, I go, ‘That was his reference.'”
