It's just too early to say this about Chester. There are Van Halen fans who heard "Why Can't This Be Love" and about shit themselves with how terrible they thought it was. And if you want to break it down, 5150 is an EIGHTIES record no doubt. But if you look past the production, it opened up Eddie's songwriting into areas he couldn't even touch with Roth, a guy with limited range. But fans were still stuck on, 'The I Can't Drive 55 guy? Really?'
Amazingly, by 1995, Van Halen were actually still relevant and were still getting heavy MTV play with the first single off of Balance, Don't Tell Me (What Love Can Do). They sold a lot of records and actually put out some really good songs during his tenure, even if it seemed odd at first.
Now, of course, we know that Eddie told Patty Smyth that she would be the new singer for Van Halen (when Roth left) if she didn't 'have tits.' We also know that for all of Eddie's talk about Cherone being the guy and the only guy and the savior, he'd already hired a guy named Mitch Malloy, who then said "no thanks" when he saw them get on stage with Roth at the 1996 MTV Video Awards. Cherone was the 2nd choice.
So we have no idea if Chester was choice number 1 or 7, despite what they say. Either way, we need more music and more time before we know whether or not Chester is more like Sammy in Van Halen or John Corabi in the Crue.
