If you’re the headliner, you don’t want your support act to upstage you, but you do want them to set the tone - and the mood - for what’s to come. So you can understand why Kool & the Gang bassist Robert “Kool” Bell was slightly taken aback when, back in 2011, David Lee Roth asked them to open for Van Halen.
Speaking to The Sunday Times, Bell said that the invitation came after Kool & the Gang’s Glastonbury performance in 2011. “They had Coldplay and U2 and all the big rock groups there,” he says. “So we came on and did our thing and David Lee Roth saw it and said, ‘I want Kool & the Gang to be my support act.’”
