The member Eddie Van Halen said had no impact on Van Halen
Was there any real sense in questioning Eddie Van Halen on anything Van Halen ever did?
The guitar legend was always going to have a major say in whatever the band were doing every single time they made a new record, and while Sammy Hagar and David Lee Roth helped bring structure to everything, it was all going to come down to Eddie’s handiwork. But even if everyone let him do his own thing, Eddie didn’t really think that they were all carrying their weight like they should, either.
Because when looking at both classic lineups of the band, it’s not like anyone else was going to question that Eddie was the star. He might not have wanted to have his name in lights like Roth did, but the pure spectacle of seeing him play was worth the price of admission. What he was doing felt superhuman at the time, but when any band member is doing that much, everyone else is going to look like musical window dressing.
And it’s not like Hagar or Roth were exactly the most well-rounded musicians in the group, either. Each of them brought something unique to the table, but whereas ‘The Red Rocker’ had a lot more vocal range than Roth did, both of them did have their pitfalls every now and again. There was a third incarnation of the group, but the less said about Gary Cherone’s time in the band, the better off most of us will be, despite Cherone having a great voice.
Eddie wasn’t going to keep his mouth shut when it came to what his lead singers had said over the years. He felt like he was stabbed in the back multiple times by both frontmen, but for as much resentment that he had for both of them after they left, there was always tension brewing between him and Michael Anthony from the first time they began performing.
Looking back on the classic lineup, Eddie thought Anthony hardly did anything to earn himself a spot in rock and roll history like he did, saying, “At least Dave pulled his weight. Mike didn’t. He didn’t really ever do anything: he had zero input whatsoever. Period. But he remodeled his whole house and bought himself a Turbo Carrera off the money he made off of us. Whatever. I never even listened to his bass when we recorded.”
Then again, are we remembering the same version of Michael Anthony here? Sure, his lines weren’t the hardest things in the world to master, but his job keeping the rhythm section tight was one of the most exciting parts of Van Halen’s records. ‘Runnin’ With the Devil’ and ‘So This Is Love’ have a certain atmosphere to them thanks to Anthony, and it’s not stretching to say that he was as much a part of their sound as Alex was.
And let’s not forget that immaculate high voice on some of their classics. While Eddie said time and time again that he never liked Mike’s harmonies on the record, there’s a reason why the band simply didn’t sound the same when his son, Wolfgang, took over on bass. There was a lot of character that Anthony’s voice brought to the table, and that was the secret weapon no one realised was there until it suddenly wasn’t.
Anthony is more than happy to keep on trucking in Sammy Hagar’s band whenever he gets the chance, but he should never be treated as a secondary character in the Van Halen story, either. He may have been the last one to create tension and start trouble, but every band needs that quiet member to help bring a sense of peace every single time they walk into the studio.
