Apparently, Van Halen had some dignity. Despite the rumors that the hard rock band would be in season two of CBS's reality series Rock Star, the network announced that Supernova, a rock band made up of ex-members of other rock bands, will do the honors.
If you've never heard of Supernova, that's because they didn't exist before now. Supernova is made up of Motley Crue drummer and Tommy Lee Goes to College star Tommy Lee, Metallica bassist Jason Newsted, and Guns'N'Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke. Producer Butch Walker, Rolling Stone's 2005 Hot Producer of the Year, is on board to help harvest the fruit of this labor, Supernova's debut album.
"Starting a new band with old friends on worldwide television is going to be a blast," Lee said in a statement.
Newsted added, "The anticipation is building in me every day. This is a supergroup in the truest sense."
"Rock n' Roll is so alive and I'm so excited to be a part of CBS's Rock Star. This is television history," an exultant Gilby Clarke proclaimed.
Walker, who has produced albums for Avril Lavigne and Pink, said, "I'm looking forward to whoever the new lead singer is going to be so the guys can start corrupting their mind!"
Rock Star is produced by Survivor and Apprentice impresario Mark Burnett. Dave Navarro, himself a rock star from Jane's Addiction and The Red Hot Chili Peppers, hosts the show along with Brooke Burke.
Rock Star: INXS featured the members of '80s Australian hitmakers INXS conducting a televised "audition" to see who would fill the shoes of the late singer Michael Hutchence. The band settled on JD Fortune, a Canadian who was an Elvis impersonator prior to appearing on the show. The first INXS single released after the show, titled "Pretty Vegas," peaked at 37 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Recently, ex-Van Halen singer David Lee Roth blasted rumors that the band was going to be called in for the show. On his daily radio show, Roth, never a man to mince words, said an appearance on the reality show would turn the band into a "novelty act" and that he had "a little bit of hope and faith that there's a little bit of something left of [band leader] Eddie Van Halen's pre-frontal brain lobe."
When Rock Star: Supernova premieres in the summer, ratings will tell if audiences will watch a band with no previous history pick its singer via a reality competition or if interest in the original was piqued by viewers wanting to see how the hopefuls measured up against a known quantity.