“I am in my acoustic, zen phase of life”: Why Paul Rodgers declined an offer to front the new Van Halen album

As Alex Van Halen and Steve Lukather continue to work through archival material for a new Van Halen album, iconic British rock vocalist Paul Rodgers has explained why he declined the chance to front the band.

There’s been much talk – and mystery – about Alex Van Halen’s forthcoming Van Halen project. The drummer temporarily broke the internet last year when it was revealed that the late Eddie Van Halen’s longtime friend Steve Lukather, of Toto fame, had been tapped up to get the project moving. Soon after, Lukather made moves to clarify his role in the album’s creation, and that he wouldn’t be playing a single note on it.

Last week, in an interview with Brazilian outlet KazaGastão, Alex Van Halen shed more light on the album, explaining that it had been written and mostly recorded during EVH’s lifetime, and intended as a follow-up to 2012’s David Lee Roth-fronted LP, A Different Kind of Truth.

The project’s efforts, he said, were now going into finding a frontman, with Diamond Dave and Sammy Hagar, who’s been pedalling his Best of All Worlds tribute tour in recent years, reportedly not under consideration. Rodgers, however, was, but turned the gig down.

Consequently, Rogers – who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with Bad Company in November – became a fixture in the rumor mill. As such, he’s taken to social media to burst that bubble and state that his health, which led him to miss the Rock Hall ceremony, was cause for concern.

“To squash the rumours, my health is good. I feel fit and strong, and I am rehearsing to perform on March 2nd at the Adopt the Arts Sound and Vision Awards in Palm Springs,” he writes. “Thanks to Van Halen for inviting me to work on a track with them, but I am in my acoustic, zen phase of life.”

Indeed, there’s certainly pressure and baggage that comes with fronting the band, given the heights they reached with both DLR and Hagar behind the mic. That was something that the one-time vocalist, Gary Cherone, felt when he joined the band in 1996. Speaking to KNAC in 2009 (via Van Halen News Desk), he admitted it was an “intimidating” gig.

And so the search goes on. Alex Van Halen previously hoped that Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant would get involved in the project. One could assume that, having asked Rogers, Plant has already distanced himself from the project.

The other caveat here is that Rodgers was invited to work on just one track. So was it intended as an audition, or could the pair be planning an all-star cast of singers? Only time will tell.

So far, there has only been one posthumous Eddie Van Halen recording, with Alex releasing the last song they wrote together, Unfinished, to promote his book, Brothers.