David Lee Roth and his first solo band (which debuted on 1986’ Eat ‘Em And Smile), were to celebrate their 30th anniversary on Wednesday, November 25th, 2015 at the Ultimate Jam Night at Lucky Strike Live Hollywood/Highland for a free show. Roth himself was set to make an unannounced appearance at the event. This would have been the first time in 30 years that Roth would have performed with guitarist Steve Vai, bassist Billy Sheehan, drummer Greg Bissonette, and keyboardist Brett Tuggle. However, the show was canceled at the last minute by the Fire Marshal due to overcrowding of the venue.

Vai recently talked about the experience with Ultimate Classic Rock:

“When we got there, they had crammed 1,700 people in a 350-seater, and the line was literally three or four people thick all the way down [the street] and around the block,” Vai tells Ultimate Classic Rock. “I’ve never seen anything like it. And then Dave got out of the car, and people just went ape shit.”

Vai recalls plans for the reunion came together casually — “a very innocent kind of thing” involving an open-mic night. “Billy was telling me about it, and he said, ‘What if we just showed up and played a few songs?’ Like ‘Shyboy’ and ‘Yankee Rose,’ you don’t need to rehearse those,” he explains. “So I said, ‘Yeah, let’s do that.’ And then I thought maybe Dave would be interested. So I just floated it out there and he was. We didn’t do a proper rehearsal, but Dave came over to my house before we went there, and we reviewed it all and we just kind of went over it so that there was a comfort level.”

Plenty of fans were disappointed that the show was shut down, but there was hope that 2016 might bring a second shot. “We tasted a little bit of the forbidden fruit there,” Vai says. “We all decided that it would be nice, why not? It was a great era. It was a great record, we were a great band. So it’s on the radar. It’s just a matter of getting everybody’s schedules to align. That’s the tough part.”

Go to this location for the complete interview.