Kenny Wayne Shepherd believes that Eddie Van Halen was completely different than he was portrayed in the media.
Shepherd had a long relationship with the late guitar god; he had toured with Van Halen twice.
“We toured with them in the 90s when Van Halen III and Gary Cherone was in the band for a brief moment as a singer,” Shepherd recalled during a recent appearance on the Appetite for Distortion podcast. “And then we toured with them again in 2015, on the very last tour.”
Shepherd, who also developed a social friendship with Eddie offstage, found the rocker to be friendly and outgoing and far from the aloof figure he had portrayed in the media.
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“What I’ve learned in my life is that you hear stories about people and a lot of times you just tell the bad stories because they make a good headline or something,” Shepherd explained. “So I learned not to judge people based on other people’s experiences and I’ve only had great experiences with Eddie. He was always just a nice guy to me.”
“I think people often confuse shyness with reserve,” the blues-rock guitarist continued. “A lot of people prefer to keep to themselves. A lot of them aren’t very sociable in private, but on stage they’re larger than life.”
Shepherd also noted that he never noticed the reported bitterness between Van Halen and his bandmates.
“(Eddie) never badmouthed anyone,” he confirmed. “He never spoke badly about anyone.”
Shepherd noticed a big difference between Eddie Van Halen and David Lee Roth
Although Shepard made it clear that his experiences with Van Halen were all positive, he noticed a noticeable difference during the band’s last tour.
“On that last tour, I saw Wolfgang all the time. I saw Alex a lot. I saw Ed every day,” the rocker recalled. “The only guy I never saw, who never said hello to me or anything like that, was David Lee Roth. So I can’t talk to him because I never met him.”
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“His people always tried to act like when he walked into the building, they would say, ‘He’s in the building! Everybody, clear the room!'” Shepherd continued. “There was definitely a difference between my interactions with Eddie and the way David Lee Roth seemed to go about things. But I’m not going to judge that guy because I had never really interacted with him.”
Shepherd’s new album, Dirt on my diamonds Vol. 2will be released on September 20th.
Lineup changes at Van Halen
Over the years, the Van Halen brothers have been joined by three different singers and two different bassists.
