Valerie Bertinelli Responds to Accusations That She Broke Up Van Halen: ‘I Certainly Didn’t’
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Valerie Bertinelli responded to rumors that she broke up Van Halen.
The rumors likely stemmed from the fact that she and frontman David Lee Roth notoriously didn’t get along.
“Yoko didn’t break up the Beatles, and I certainly didn’t break up Van Halen,” she said.
Valerie Bertinelli is clearing up a few things about her history with Van Halen—the band, not her late ex-husband Eddie.
In 1985, the group went through some restructuring—lead singer David Lee Roth left and was replaced by Sammy Hagar. That took place four years after Bertinelli and Eddie married in 1981, and in some music circles, she continues to be blamed for Roth’s exit because they didn’t get along.
Bertinelli explained her side of the story on Rob Lowe’s podcast, Literally! with Rob Lowe. Lowe asked her if she took on a Yoko Ono-esque role (whom some say is responsible for breaking up The Beatles). “Well, I have been accused of that, even though Yoko didn’t break up the Beatles, and I certainly didn’t break up Van Halen,” she said.
She did admit that she and Roth had a rocky relationship, but she never understood why. “I got along great with Al [Van Halen] and with Mike [Anthony],” she said. “I don’t know why he didn’t like me. I mean, I was always nice to him. I honestly don’t know.”
After she and Ed married, she said “all of a sudden” a new band rule was implemented that barred girlfriends and wives from joining them on tour. “One day I’d like to sit down with him and go, ‘Dude, what did I do? Honestly, I’ve always been a fan of yours. I think you’re a brilliant frontman, I think you’re a brilliant songwriter, I love your lyrics. Why don’t you like me? What did I do?’” she said of Roth.
Bertinelli and Lowe also discussed the lifestyle habits that the band introduced her to—namely cocaine use. “I am a prude now, but I [partook] as well for a few years there until I just couldn’t take it anymore,” she said. “Cocaine was everywhere and easy to get.”
Unfortunately, Eddie had a harder time bowing out. “I think that we all have a toolbox that we go to when we need to suppress any kind of emotion that we don’t want to feel, any kind of pain that we don’t want to feel. And I know that Ed’s toolbox was full of drugs and alcohol,” Bertinelli explained.
Sadly, the rock star died of lung cancer in October 2020.
“Near the end of his life, his pain was incredibly raw, and he was very vulnerable about it,” the Bertinelli star recalled. “I’m grateful that he was able to make amends with so many people that he loved and knew that he didn’t treat as well as he would have liked to because his heart, oh, my God, that man’s heart was just so kind and so sweet.”
He and Bertinelli met backstage at a Van Halen concert in Shreveport, Louisiana where she was living with her parents at the time. She was 20 years old, and they wed eight months later. “I saw what he looked like and I’m like, ‘OK, I’ll go, this guy’s cute,’” she said. “So I went, and there we go. It was love at first sight, for sure.”
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