Patty Smyth has recalled receiving an invitation from Eddie Van Halen to join Van Halen after frontman David Lee Roth departed from the band.

However, the former Scandal singer said she turned down the invitation, partly due to their alcohol consumption.

“They were heavy drinkers,” she told Stereogum. “I don’t drink.” She also didn’t want to leave her hometown, adding, “I never saw myself living in L.A. I was like, ‘I’m from New York, we don’t move to L.A.'”

Smyth says that she might have accepted Van Halen’s offer if they had invited her to make an album.

“It’s all semantics because if [Eddie] had said to me, ‘Let’s make a record,’ then I would have said yes to that,” Smyth said. “But joining the band — to me then, ‘Oh god, they fight all the time, him and his brother, and I don’t want to get into a volatile situation.’ And I was probably heavily hormoned out because I was eight months pregnant, so there was a state of mind that I was in of how I need to take care of myself. But I regretted turning him down. For a long time I regretted it. When you start to have regrets, I was like, ‘Oh man I would’ve made so much money.'”

“And I never said anything about it for years,” she added. “I got a call from Ed and he was like, ‘Look, I’m not saying that I asked you to join because I don’t want Sammy Hagar to look like [he was] second choice,’ and I was like, ‘OK.’ So I never spoke about it after that. I’m like, all right I don’t need to tell people. If someone asked me, I didn’t lie but I didn’t really talk about it that much.”

Source: RTT Music News