Van Halen won’t be heading to our shores any time soon and we find out why from Download Festival Organizer, Andy Copping. You can also cross Aerosmith off of this year’s list but ZZ Top are a possibility. It’s all inside!

What about Van Halen for this year’s Download? Is it zeroes on the chequebook and that’s what would bring them over?

“It’s beyond that,” admits Copping. “It’s totally beyond that. What you have to realise with Van Halen is that they make so much money in America, they can continue to tour and go back to play places that they’ve already played and they sell out, sell out, sell out. The money that they were raking in the US was huge and what people forget is that Van Halen weren’t that big an act in the UK and Europe. They’d probably be one of my favourite acts ever with Dave Lee Roth, I love them, and I would love them to come over and play. Whether it’s Download or dates or whatever”

“They need a certain amount of money to make it work which is, quite frankly, ugly but the reality of it is that they don’t want to be on the road together, they think Europe’s cold, they don’t want to be on a tour bus or in a place with David Lee Roth regardless of what you see onstage, the band go off one side of the stage and Dave goes off the other, his dressing room is as far away from theres as is humanly possible in a venue…these guys don’t get on.”

“Onstage, you wouldn’t know it, but it’s tough,” continues Copping. “Why would they leave there own country when they’re making so much money? Why would they come here for less money when they’re at home out there too? I saw 3 shows on the tour and it’s fucking incredible. We’ve had the same situation with Aerosmith. The money in the states is so good, why would they bother? That’s not a slight to their fans or anything like that but they can bleed the American market because the desire’s always there to see the band. That’s where it is with the Van Halen camp.”

Copping also compared the Van Halen situation to the state of affairs that kept Aerosmith from returning to European shores for a full 9 years.

“I think Van Halen will probably make it here at some stage, lord knows when, but it will possibly be when things have dried up in the US. Aerosmith played in Hyde Park last year and we’d been trying to snare them for 5 years. The reason that they’ve not been because they could always go out in the US. “We’ll put you out with Kiss” and they were drawing such a huge amount of money that they let that to dry up and that’s when they said “we’ll head to Europe” and that’s what I think will happen with Van Halen. It’ll get to a point where they cannot play the US anymore, they’ll come to Europe.”

In other Download news, Metal Hammer have released an interview in which the organizers speak about trying to book ZZ Top to play this year’s festival, as well as reunited line-up’s for Limp Bizkit and Faith No More.