a Van Halen's member opinion about people's music behavior and his life

A lot of people ask me which Van Halen singer was better. You can't compare them. It's like asking which guitarrist is better. Nobody is better than anybody. Every player is their own person, Music is not the Olympics; It's not a sport. It's a form of expression. There is no such thing as bad music. there may be music that you personally don't like but if you don't like, dont listen to it and shut up don't listen to it and complain about it. There's lots of music that I don't care for. but you can't say it's bad. that's subjective. When we played the new songs live, people would just stand there. Nobody said anything about them. why go to all the trouble, spend all of that time in the studio and spend tons of your own money to record a new album when people are only going to complain about it or ignore it or somebody is gonna download it from the internet for free? there's an element of satisfaction and joy in creating something new, but not when it comes solely at your own expense and when people are just going to shoot it down, no matter what you do. Poeple only see the end result. When you walk onstage, They don't take into consideration the years of practice, the attitudes and egos of other people that you have to deal with.... the songwriting, the recording, the record producer, the crew, designing the stage. All they see is the show. My son joined the band. contrary to people's beliefs. I didn't get rid of anyone to get him in the band. we needed a bass player... and when I asked if he wanted to play bass, he said sure, it's always been my brother and me and whoever else. People have asked me over the years, why did you ger rid of so and so? they don't understand that sometimes people don't wanna stay, or they don't wanna work hard and you have to replace them, you may not be happy about it,but it's like a factory just because a worker leaves, you don't close the whole factory down, The bottom line for me is I'm just happy to be here, I've had a hip replacement, I've beaten cancer, I had my hand operation, and I stopped drinking, people aways ask me if I'm in a program. aa didn't do anything for me. Rehab didn't work. Nothing worked. It's a strange thing, If you don't want to quit,...you won't, I can't tell you what happened, it just did, I don't need to drink, I don't even think about it anymore, it's like God give me one big bottle and I drank it all. So now it's gone, I'm done, I'm just happy to be alive and to still be able to play