By Steve Morse, Globe Staff, 10/10/96

Move over, Sammy Hagar and David Lee Roth. There's a new kid in town. His name is Gary Cherone, locally born and bred, who's about to become the new singer for Van Halen, a band he worshiped as a youth.

"God threw this into my lap," Cherone said this week from Los Angeles, where he's been staying in the guest cottage of guitarist Eddie Van Halen.

"We're only a signature away," said Van Halen, jumping on the phone to praise Cherone and take some parting shots at past Van Halen singers Hagar and Roth - especially Roth, adding that "the magic just wasn't there anymore."

An official announcement of Cherone's new job is expected next week, pending contractual details with Cherone's publisher and last record label. But,. Cherone, 35, is already writing songs with Van Halen and is slated to sing on an album planned for next year, followed by a tour.

"Gary can sing anything," Van Halen said. "He can sing [hard rock] and sing like an angel. He's a talent from heaven. He sings from the heart. There's no contrived anything with him."

"The new record is going to be wild," Cherone said. "It's going to be eclectic and will be a new birth for everybody."

Van Halen has recently participated in very public feuds with Hagar and Roth, which prompted Cherone to say, "I consider myself the Ross Perot of this whole thing."

Cherone last sang with the Boston band Extreme, which scored Top 40 hits with the acoustic "More than Words" and "Hole-Hearted," but otherwise was a hard-rocking, funk-laced group that cited Van Halen, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin and The Who as prime influences. Extreme lasted 10 years before breaking up recently when guitarist Nuno Bettencourt opted to go solo.

"Nuno wanted to move on," Cherone said. "Obviously my heart was with Extreme and there will always be a piece of it there." (Bettencourt will soon release a solo disc. Cherone co- wrote two of the songs and sings on one.)

Cherone grew up in Malden and was "nest-fed" on Van Halen, to the point where he sang several Van Halen songs in early clubs gigs around Boston. "I've now got the opportunity to write with some of my heroes."

"And Eddie is just unbelievable. He goes nonstop and can write songs at 8 a.m. or 4 a.m., it doesn't matter. Everybody knows what he can do with a guitar, but you should see him sit at a piano and play these beautiful classical melodies."

Although Roth has charged that Van Halen hired a new singer three months ago, Cherone said he and Eddie Van Halen only hooked up only a month ago, merely to write a song. A management contact had told Van Halen that Cherone might be a good songwriting partner.

"Eddie called me out of the blue," said Cherone. "We hit it off as people first, then hit it off musically."

Recalled Van Halen: "I sent him a tape of a pop tune. I had the melodic idea of it and asked Gary to sing on it. Then he came out and blew our minds."

The decision to hire Cherone climaxes a nasty soap opera with Hagar and Roth. Of Hagar, Van Halen said, "First he says he quit, then he says that I fired him. The truth is that he felt frustrated and wanted to go solo again. He was spending more time writing with Meat Loaf and doing other things. His track record showed that he did not want to be here. This is a collaborative effort, so I asked him, `Are you a team player or not?' And he said, `No, I'm frustrated. I want to go back to being solo.'"

The Roth situation is thornier. He is the band's original singer and was invited back ("It was my crazy idea to get Roth back," said Van Halen) to record two new songs for the band's "Greatest Hits" album. "If anything, we gave the hard-core fans two more songs together," said Van Halen.

No promises were made to Roth about a permanent reunion, said Van Halen, but Roth assumed as much when he was asked to accompany the band to the MTV Awards in New York last month. Van Halen is still perturbed that MTV played the "Welcome Back Kotter" theme music when they came out together.

Last week, Roth released this angry statement: "It sickens me that the reunion as seen on MTV was nothing more than a publicity stunt."

Van Halen said that Roth "went off on me backstage" at the awards and that Roth is lying about claims made that he was back in the group. He said Roth also refused to do videos for the two new songs and that any tour with Roth "would be ripping off our fans. We don't want to just do oldies anyway."

Cherone, on the other hand, sounded like a political mediator when he said that he'd gladly sing Van Halen songs from both the Roth and Hagar eras. He said this of Hagar: "The worst thing that Sammy did was neglect that whole catalog [from the Roth era]. He deprived the fans of that great music for 10 years, but I have no problem with it."

Before getting the nod from Van Halen, Cherone had considered leaving the rock touring world to concentrate on musical theater. Last summer, he starred in a Boston Rock Opera production of "Jesus Christ Superstar," playing the role of Christ and winning rave reviews.

"I thought I was going to be in theater and go on and do something like 'Rent.' I thought that was the next logical step for me," said Cherone. "But my passion is still in rock 'n' roll. I can't wait to see what happens now."

This story ran on page d1 of the Boston Globe on 10/10/96.

Thanks to Joe O'Leary and Joe Doherty in Boston for sending this to the Van Halen News Desk.