Billy Sheehan Clarifies Van Halen Job Offers

Billy Sheehan of Mr. Big and Sons of Apollo clarifies his comments regarding the topic of him being asked to join Van Halen, saying that there has been no official manner of reaching out to him.

This was apparently needed after he shared that he’d been in touch with Eddie Van Halen on three different occasions. In an interview with That Metal Voice (which was covered by UCR), Sheehan said that he’d been offered the bassist position three times over the years, and although it had been tempting at times, his respect for the original bassist Michael Anthony has his feelings conflicted. “And as much as I would have loved to do that, I want to see Michael in the band,” he said.

But in a recent Facebook post, Sheehan wrote that no official offer has been made. Below is the rest of the post:

“More fake news —-
Though I spoke w EVH on 3 different occasions where he asked me about being in his band, the offer never came through. They never followed through on any sort of an official offer and therefore I never “turned down” any offer, because it eventually fell through. This is the result of recycling old news ( I’ve spoken of this before) because I thought I’d do a favor some little website that asked for an interview, and then they decided to make this the headline ( for clicks) and many other websites picked up the “story” to get more clicks. Recycled, inaccurate and rebranded old news. Never happened.”

It can be noted that Sheehan participated in David Lee Roth’s solo albums Eat Em’ and Smile, and Skyscraper, also saying that he had the conversations with EVH sometime between 1981 and 1984, alongside a recent jam session with EVH and Alex Van Halen.