How Kool and the Gang Won Over Skeptical Van Halen Fans

Robert “Kool” Bell is aware of some individuals thought he and the remainder of Kool & the Gang had been nuts to signal on because the opener for Van Halen’s 2012 tour.

Van Halen followers could also be keen to rejoice good occasions with David Lee Roth, Eddie Van Halen, Alex Van Halen and Wolfgang Van Halen, they reckoned, however to get down on it with a veteran R&B group?

Appeared like a stretch.

Practically a decade later, nonetheless, Bell says it was all good. “Oh, we had a good time,” he remembers of the multi-month run. “We had enjoyable for all 48 exhibits.” The important thing, he explains, was the women.

“It was somewhat tough across the edges with their viewers at first,” the bassist remembers. “However that they had a whole lot of girls of their crowd, and once we received to ‘Girls’ Night time’ and ‘Get Down On It’ and ‘Celebration,’ the women that comply with Van Halen received up out of their seats, after which whoever was nonetheless being cussed it was like, ‘Hey, rock head, you higher rise up and get down on it, too.’ They usually did. It labored out.”

Bell admits he was “sort of stunned” Roth known as with the invitation to have Kool & the Gang be part of the Van Halen tour. Roth had apparently caught Kool’s set on the 2011 Glastonbury competition and favored it a lot that he received his individuals in contact with their individuals. “Kool & the Gang and Van Halen are the sounds of a whole continent at recreation,” Roth advised Canada’s Solar Media on the time. “We have come to characterize that – though you are extra more likely to hear Kool & the Gang at a bar mitzvah than me.”

Bell, in the meantime, thought the Van Halen-Kool pairing could be “an fascinating mixture, as a result of Van Halen is extra on the rock facet and we do what we do. It actually caught us unexpectedly. However the extra individuals I point out it to, the extra fascinating they’re saying it’s.”

Bell says Roth advised him there was some resistance from Eddie and Alex Van Halen.

“He stated they stated, ‘What? You been smokin’, man?'” Bell says, however the Van Halen camp was in the end supportive and pleasant through the trek. “We solely noticed ’em within the dressing room, issues like that, and never very a lot. It was largely, ‘I am joyful to work with you guys’ – that sort of vibe. We did not see them some time lot, however they had been at all times good once we did.”

The Van Halen pairing additionally netted Kool & the Gang a subsequent stretch opening for Child Rock. “We favored doing these excursions,” Bell says now. “They received us in entrance of an entire completely different viewers. Individuals knew the songs, the hits, however they did not know the band behind them, so we received to indicate ’em.”

Kool & the Gang simply launched Excellent Union, their first new album in a decade. It comes after the deaths of a pair of founding members – Bell’s tenor saxophonist brother Ronald Bell, who coproduced the album, final yr, and alto saxophonist Dennis Thomas earlier this month. That leaves Robert Bell and drummer George “Funky” Brown as the one members left from the unique 1964 lineup.