Van Halen 'Bit Off More Than We Could Chew' with Tour, says Eddie

by Aaron Couch, THR  |   June 13, 2012 5:05 EDT

After Van Halen abruptly decided to postpone more than 30 dates on its North American tour, fans speculated that the infighting that had historically plagued the band was back. The band insisted it was simply a case of being overbooked. Now Eddie Van Halen has offered his take.

"We bit off more than we could chew," the guitarist told USA Today. "This record took a lot out of us. And we went on tour earlier than we wanted to so we could play Madison Square Garden [in March, before a renovation], and that threw the schedule out of whack."

Source: Van Halen's Scrapped Tour Dates Due To 'Fatigue,' Not In-Fighting

Van Halen, whose 21-year-old son Wolfgang is playing bass for his second tour with the band, said many of the canceled shows were in cities they had already played.

"So in November, we'll hit Japan, and in the new year, we'll possibly do something special, but I can't talk about it."

In the interview, the iconic guitarist also revealed that playing live still makes him so nervous that he vomits.

"Really. I did it just before the show last night," Van Halen said. "Then I don't eat, so by the time I get offstage, I'm cooked."

The band's latest album, "A Different Kind of Truth," is its first with singer David Lee Roth since 1984. Released in February, it debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 with 187,000 units sold, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The band has sold 57 million albums in the U.S. during its career.

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How Gaga and Bieber could win the White House

Singer Lady Gaga and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg kiss each other during celebrations at the New Year Eve ball in Times Square in New York, January 1, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Eduardo Munoz

By Lucas Shaw

Tue Jan 3, 2012 1:42pm EST

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - With Twitter becoming indispensable for news and politics, the Washington Post has climbed aboard the speeding train, launching a new metric for tracking presidential candidates -- @MentionMachine.

@MentionMachine monitors Twitter and other media outlets for the number of times a candidate is mentioned, thus tracking his or her position in the national conversation. In other words, forget about the antiquated metrics like polling or endorsements and go straight to the source.

And if Twitter endorses a Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber ticket? So be it.

In introducing the new app, the Post showcases all the ways it can be used to evaluate how engaged readers are with certain candidates.

"Growth in number of legitimate followers or a high recurrence of retweets are both indicative of growing grass-roots support," the Post notes. "A spike in the number of times a candidate is mentioned on Twitter might signal an event that could alter a campaign."

How can the reader see whether a candidates is experiencing a surge of support? There's a toolbar on its campaign coverage page to show "scores" for each candidate, with each score representing the number of times that candidate was mentioned on Twitter in the past week.

One can also go in depth on a specific candidate, looking at the progression of mentions over different time periods. And what good would it be without the ability to compare candidates?

This is not the first time the Post has put some of its eggs in the social media basket. It launched the "Social Reader" for the revamped Facebook, enabling users to read their post stories from their profile rather than having to hop over to the Post's site.

With its parent company coming off a ghastly fiscal year and an "uneasy" newsroom, these forward-looking measures have to help, right?

At the very least, they could signal progress. With eight out of the top 10 most followed on Twitter being women, the era of a female president may be just around the corner.

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