The “only regret” Michael Anthony has about Van Halen: “It was not to be”
Being the bass player in a band with plenty of egos and larger-than-life personalities roaming around must require the patience of a saint. Often seen as being the ‘sensible’ member of a band, although there are exceptions, bassists are often relied upon to provide a sense of stability, keeping a cool and collected head on their shoulders, so being among fiery characters must sap the energy out of even the most tolerant individuals.
If you’re required to not only be the mediator between these big characters, but also between siblings, then the pain must be unimaginable, so being in Van Halen, for example, must have been a nightmare.
Michael Anthony, their long-standing and long-suffering bassist, seemed to manage this task incredibly well, holding his position in the group from 1974 for a total of 32 years before he finally called it quits and walked away from the group in which he’d been an integral piece of the jigsaw.
It’s always a bold decision to walk away from a group you’ve been so important to, especially after you’ve managed to endure the ups and downs that come with being in one of the world’s most successful rock groups, but his dissatisfaction with the direction in which things were going after the turn of the millennium didn’t seem to be showing any signs of improvement. Rather than see out the remainder of his time on Earth regretting his decision to continue in a band that was clearly running out of steam, he chose to bow out in 2006 and sever all ties with the group.
Several years after his departure, Anthony acknowledged that being in the group at times was like “living the dream, a ‘fairy tale’,” and that being in a band of this calibre was one of the most thrilling things he could have asked to be involved in. However, that also came at a cost when things began to run on a downward trajectory for him and his relationship with his bandmates.
When the band decided to reunite in 2003 for a tour, Eddie and Alex Van Halen were determined to oust Anthony from the group, but vocalist Sammy Hagar insisted that he wouldn’t be part of the group if that was the case. If it hadn’t been for Hagar kicking up a fuss when the idea was floated, Anthony would have left the band in far more acrimonious circumstances, but this instead marked the beginning of a slower and painful decline. Three years later, Eddie would end up recruiting his own son, Wolfgang, as the new bassist in Van Halen, and Anthony’s three-decade run with the band was over.
Anthony never made amends with Eddie over his unsavoury departure, and the fact that this led to the classic lineup of the band never being able to come to a satisfying end with one final blowout prior to Eddie’s death in 2020 remains one of the biggest regrets of Anthony’s career. During an episode of the Get on the Bus podcast in 2025, Anthony claimed that “the only regret that I have is how things, unfortunately, turned out for Van Halen,” before adding: “It should have gone out with a fricking bang that shook the world, and it was more like a whimper, the way everything ended.”
He can certainly look back on everything he achieved with the band with pride, but you do have to feel sorry for him after having been such a faithful servant to the band for so many years, that he was never afforded the right to finish business with the group in an appropriate manner. “They were planning on coming to all of us and putting together a big reunion tour with all of us,” Anthony said of a conversation he’d had with Wolfgang shortly after Eddie’s passing, but the fact that he never even had a chance to bid farewell to his ex-colleague made this an impossible feat. “Unfortunately,” Anthony concluded, “it was not to be.”
