Guitarist NIXED SINGER's Cover Song In Favor of his Original…Became Band's Only #1-Professor of Rock

The story of this next song is so good. So entertaining it almost feels made up, but it’s not. Van Halen with David Lee Roth at the helm headlined one of the first big festivals of the 80s… while they were in the middle of working on the song Jump from their blockbuster hard rock masterpiece 1984. The other big headliner was the Clash, the most famous punk band on the planet, and Joe Strummer and co dissed Eddie Van Halen’s band because they were getting paid more… Van Halen was already in disarray as the guitarist wanted to add more pop element to their hard rock while the David Lee Roth wanted to do cover songs. Eddie got so pissed he threatened to burn the masters. In the end, Eddie worked on a melody he’d had for a while and turned it into the band's biggest hit… Jump went to #1 for a month. But this happy-go-lucky 80s hit is actually pretty dark…Almost no one realizes some have said David Lee Roth wrote the song encouraging someone to take their own life… kind of... Find out the real story next on Professor of Rock.

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Van Halen was busy working on their upcoming blockbuster album 1984 in early ’83 when they were offered one of the 3 headliner slots for a new music festival to be held over Memorial Day weekend in San Bernardino California, just east of Los Angeles.

The offer to headline was lucrative, and the look was huge. The US Festival was conceived to be one of the largest music festivals in history, with a projected attendance of 500K people.

The other two headliners were to be David Bowie and The Clash. The US Festival did, in fact, have a massive audience of just over 400K, but it turned out to be infamous for losing over $10 million for the creators, which included Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

The US Festival was also notorious for the hostility & resentment it caused to the relationships between some of the performers. Most contentious was the rift between Van Halen and The Clash.

The Clash were incensed because they discovered, on-site at the festival, that they were being paid only half of what Van Halen was getting. Van Halen received $1.5 million- which was then a record for the biggest payout for a single performance by any artist.

David Bowie, reportedly, also received $1.5 million, and that is the main reason Van Halen got the same amount, since they had a clause in their contract that they were to be paid no less than any other act playing at the US Festival.

The Clash were apparently OK with Bowie getting paid that kind of cash, but they called Van Halen “hamburger music.” I love the Clash and have always looked up to Joe Strummer as one the greatest forces in rock ever. But they were dead wrong in their assessment of the titans of rock. Apparently, Joe Strummer & David Lee Roth got into a full-on shouting match backstage. How unbelievable would that have been to witness? Yes, please.