The musician Eddie Van Halen cut ties with forever: “We had some issues”
The entire story of Van Halen can’t really be told without going through everyone’s dirty laundry.
As much as the band brought the party to every single town they ever played, the fact that they could even play onstage together was a miracle, depending on how much time they had spent taking potshots at each other in the press half the time. But while Eddie had more than his fair share of fights with David Lee Roth, he had a lot more of a bone to pick with every other member of the band when he felt that they weren’t delivering at the level they were supposed to every single night.
Because while ‘Diamond Dave’ could be one of the most annoying presences in rock and roll, you can’t say he didn’t do his job well. He was holding court every single time he performed onstage, and even if the rest of the band got a little tired of his antics, he wasn’t leaving the stage until he was sure that everyone was having the best time in the world. In fact, Eddie could find more than a few times to turn on his brother when things got out of hand.
Yeah, you’d think that the band that was named after both of them would mean that they were joined at the hip, but there were more than a few times when things got out of hand. Members of their road crew remembered them getting into screaming matches and shouting at each other in Dutch every now and again, but even if they knew how to kiss and make up at the end of every single argument, Eddie seemed to have some kind of unchecked hostility towards Michael Anthony every time he made a move.
While Anthony was absolutely essential to the band’s sound in the early days, Eddie felt that he only slowed them down every single time they played their song. His harmony vocals could have been a little bit harsh for those who hadn’t heard them before, but that didn’t matter so long as he could still tie everything together when singing tunes like ‘Panama’.
If you’re looking at the way that the end of the band unfolded, though, Anthony really got the short end of the stick a lot of the time – not only was he being replaced with Eddie’s son, but he was also going to get every single insult that he could think of thrown his way, including Eddie claiming that the bassist didn’t even know how to play and that he had to be shown every single lick that he ever played.
And while Anthony didn’t harbour any ill will towards the band, he felt that it was a shame that he and Eddie never found the time to settle things once all the bad blood cooled down, saying, “We actually hadn’t spoken [for many years], and unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to, and, you know, it kind of bothers me, because we had some issues that were never resolved, but, I mean, what can you do?… We were on track [for] a reunion, which I’m really sad that it never happened, but, you know, life and the show goes on.”
But a lot of that animosity may have had a little something to do with Anthony’s allegiance to Sammy Hagar. ‘The Red Rocker’ was one of his best friends in the band when he joined, and while Eddie was able to mend a few fences with Hagar, the fact that Anthony never got the chance to speak to Eddie again and build some of those bridges back up was bound to leave a hole in his heart that was never going to be filled again.
Then again, Anthony has been able to let even the harshest critiques of him roll off his back, and that’s the kind of attitude that every musician should really take notice of. Because in a band that had as many flying egos as Van Halen had, it’s important to have someone like Anthony who seemed to be the Zen master behind every single one of their records.
