Apart from being the band’s final record, “A Different Kind of Truth” marks the only Van Halen album without Michael Anthony on bass. With the Van Halen brothers and David Lee Roth bringing in Eddie’s son Wolfgang to play bass on it, this lineup ended up doing the band’s final tour in 2015.
As he gears up to tour with Sammy Hagar, Joe Satriani, and Jason Bonham under The Best of All Worlds banner, we sat down with Michael Anthony and asked him to weigh in on the only Van Halen album without him and share some info about the band’s unreleased music.
To the best of your knowledge, how many unreleased Van Halen songs are there from when Dave was in the band? Because if you read old interviews with Dave or Eddie, they mention titles of songs that were never released.
“There were quite a few songs that I was a part of and worked on and written, even a couple of things before the first Van Halen record and the early part of Van Halen that they actually restructured and used on the ‘A Different Kind of Truth’ album that they put out. Songs like ‘She’s the Woman,’ that’s the only thing that comes to mind.”
“There were songs that were basically written way back in the early days when Dave, Eddie, Alex, and myself were together that they ended up using on that. But, God, I can’t recall. There’s probably miles of stuff. I mean, you’ve probably seen pictures of all the boxes of the tapes and everything [in Eddie’s studio]. Which is miles of stuff.”
“Every time that we went into the studio, whether it was Donn Landee or whoever was engineering for us, we had him press record. We recorded everything, every idea that we had. And there’s stuff in there that…”
“I hope Wolfgang goes through some of it because I’m sure there’s a lot of stuff that Eddie did on his own, too, that might be kind of interesting to listen to also. But there’s tons of stuff that we’ll probably never see. Or hear.”
You just mentioned the “A Different Kind of Truth” album. Did you ever listen to it, and if so, what did you think about it?
“I listened to a little bit of it. It was different. Dave was singing differently. And adding Wolfgang into the mix. It was different than what we were obviously doing when I was in the band. There’s a lot of good stuff on there. But yeah, I thought it was a good album.”
“A lot of people are going, ‘Joe, he doesn’t play like Eddie.’ I know that – but he can”: Sammy Hagar on why Joe Satriani was the only man for his Eddie Van Halen job
When he decided his summer tour would be heavily Van Halen-centric, Sammy Hagar felt like there would be only one guitarist to play in the stead of the late Eddie Van Halen.
“I think probably the smartest move I made if I was gonna go out and do this was to get Joe Satriani,” Hagar tells Classic Rock. He and Satriani, of course, are bandmates in the currently dormant Chickenfoot, but they – along with original Van Halen and Chickenfoot bassist Michael Anthony – are alongside each other again for the Best of All Worlds Tour, which kicked off last weekend and wraps up at the end of August (full dates below).
“A million guys could’ve done it – well, not a million. But you walk into a music store and you see a 12-year-old kid sitting on an amp with one of Eddie’s guitars and he’s playing Eruption. These genius little kids can do it now, but he doesn’t necessarily know what he’s doing. You ask him to write a song like that, and he’s going, ‘Ah, I don’t know how.’ You say, ‘Joe, write me a song like that;’ Joe’ll write you a song like that ’cause he knows where it’s coming from.”
The Hagar setlist is dominated by Van Halen songs, including several – Judgment Day, 5150, Summer Nights and The Seventh Seal – that haven’t been played in many years. Hagar is also performing the David Lee Roth-era Panama for the first time with his own band.
“It’s so musical and so complex,” Hagar, who fronted Van Halen in 1985-96 and again in 2003-05, says of the material. “Joe’s the professor. He’s a scholar. He’s a very high-level musician, so every time I’ve ever worked with Joe on Chickenfoot and all that I knew he knows what he’s playing.”
“And it’s so funny,” the Red Rocker continues. “Joe can play a shredding solo, just on fire, and then he stops and is like, ‘Hold it. I fucked up.’ I’m going, ‘Where did you fuck up? How did you even hear it, you’re playing so fucking fast?!’ ‘Oh, that one note right there, and it’s like, “Holy shit…’ He knows exactly what he’s playing.”
We caught up with Satriani earlier this year, in the midst of a joint North American tour with good friend and former student Steve Vai. He told us both were spending their off time studying for their next gigs – Satriani learning the Van Halen material for the Hagar tour, Vai boning up on King Crimson for the upcoming Beat project.
