The Van Halen member that would leave Eddie Van Halen extremely jealous: “On the outside looking in”
How can gods ever get self-conscious? Sure, there might be the average guitar player that has their off days or something, but it’s hard to picture someone on the same level as Jimi Hendrix suddenly falling behind or thinking that there is someone out there who can outclass them. But for however many musical deities that walk the Earth, even someone on the level of Eddie Van Halen had his moments where he felt a little bit self-conscious about his place in the band.
Then again, was anyone going to be wondering who was calling the shots in a band literally named after the lead guitar player? The answer is a pretty resounding no. Even when David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar came onboard to front both iconic lineups of the group, they knew when to get the hell off the stage and let Eddie do his thing when the spotlight came on him and he started his massive tapping runs.
When looking through the band’s back catalogue, though, it was more than Eddie that made up the final picture for most people. Everyone surely loved listening to him dominate every single lead line that he broke down, but each voice had its own personality whenever they got up to sing. Funny enough, one of the most central parts of the band’s sound actually came from someone who wasn’t out front.
Despite being one of the “lesser” Van Halen members, Michael Anthony is as integral to the band’s sound as any Eddie guitar lick or Roth scream. That high harmony is what set them apart from the rest of the bands in Los Angeles at the time. While it could be piercing listening to his voice for the first time, he was the perfect balance between Roth and Hagar’s voices, knowing when to scream bloody murder and when to glide over what the ‘Red Rocker’ was doing.
In fact, maybe he was down with Hagar a little too much. Even years later, Hagar remembered him and Anthony hitting it off so well that Eddie started to get a little bit resentful of their friendship, saying, “Mikey is like my brother from another mother. So much so that back in the early Van Halen days, Eddie would get all jealous. Because Mike and I would get into these soulful conversations for hours, and Eddie would be on the outside looking in.”
It’s not hard to see why Eddie would be feeling a little awkward around them, either. Since Hagar and Anthony were musical blood brothers in many respects, having the guitarist and his actual blood brother on the other side of things was enough to divide the band down the middle. But when the outfit is named after the guitarist, it wasn’t exactly a hard conversation about who would win the argument.
Even though they carried on with Eddie’s son, Wolfie, for a time, Anthony always managed to stick by Hagar through the 2000s. Were bands like Chickenfoot or The Circle pulling in as many seats as a Van Halen reunion? Absolutely not, but they did have the kind of passion that made millions of people remember why those Hagar-era songs were so great back in the day.
So while Eddie may have had reservations about everything, both Hagar and Anthony have always been joined at the hip for all the right reasons. Beyond being great players and road warriors for over half of their lives, they were never in the business to become famous. They wanted to play music because they loved it so much, and from beginning to end, you can hear that passion in every note they played.
