Count Michael Anthony among those wanting a Van Halen reunion with both David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar. And, yes, he wants to be there too.
Anthony appeared on Eddie Trunk’s Sirius/XM show “Trunk Nation” on Wednesday in Los Angeles to talk about an upcoming fundraising walk for Children’s Hospital Los Angeles he’ll be part of and to promote the upcoming tour of Anthony’s latest band Sammy Hagar & The Circle.
It didn’t take long for Anthony to address the latest buzz surrounding Hagar’s well publicized desire to launch a full-scale Van Halen reunion tour featuring both Roth and Hagar. Anthony is not only on board with Hagar about the reunion but he also agrees with Hagar’s idea to have each singer trade off two songs on and off throughout the night.
“If we did, like, an hour with one singer and an hour with another singer, ya never know, there might be a lot of people that don’t wanna come for the first hour, don’t wanna come for the second singer, whatever. This way you mix it up and everybody’s gotta stay for everything. Believe me, if something like that came to fruition I guarantee there wouldn’t be one person who would leave that show disappointed with anything, with either singer,” said Anthony.
Another highly publicized topic among Van Halen Nation recently has been that of Anthony’s former bandmate David Lee Roth donating $10,000 to Anthony’s fund-raising campaign for the upcoming Children’s Hospital Los Angeles event called Walk L.A. That story was first broken here at The Van Halen News Desk.
The news of the donation came shortly after Anthony tragically lost his grandson Rex who died at just over two weeks old after undergoing an emergency procedure to correct a heart condition.
Many questioned the legitimacy of Roth’s contribution speculating that it could easily have come from anyone posing as Roth. Anthony addressed those doubters.
“I check the donation page every single morning when I wake up just to see how the team’s doing and, ya know, [find out the] people that are donating and I saw this one morning – ‘David Roth’. I’m like, ‘Oh my God. I can’t…what? No this can’t be right,” said Anthony. “And then what happens is an e-mail gets sent to me personally saying a donation’s been made on behalf of David Roth for ten thousand dollars.”
“I can e-mail back to thank the donors,” Anthony continued. “This e-mail went to a, I don’t wanna say who, but it went to a business management agency. That’s where the donation came through and I actually e-mailed back and said, ‘Dave? Is this you? I hope it is,’ ya know and I thanked him for the generous donation. From the bottom of my heart…Dave, if you’re listening, thank you. I sent the e-mail and I said [in the e-mail] ‘Here’s my e-mail address. E-mail me back, let me know it’s you cuz I would really like to talk to you.’ I got an e-mail back a couple days later from the same business management agency. It just said, ‘Hi Michael it’s David, sorry about your loss and I’ll be in touch,’ but I can pretty much confirm that it was him.”
Anthony covered a lot of Van Halen history in the interview dating all the way back to the band’s club days through the Sammy Hagar era through the short-lived Gary Cherone era. Later on he took several phone calls from fans.
Along the way Anthony also had some interesting reveals such as Edward Van Halen’s “infatuation” with Patty Smythe leading to the brief consideration of her becoming Roth’s replacement back in 1985. Also, Anthony told Trunk he sang vocals on two tracks from Hagar’s 1987 solo album ‘I Never Said Goodbye’ including the track “Boys Night Out” but was not credited. He also told Trunk that Cherone was “told” what and how to sing on the poorly received 1998 album ‘Van Halen III’.
You can hear Anthony’s 50 minute interview below.
The above photo of Michael and his ’33 Fire Roadster is from Michael’s Instagram page, Mad Anthony Bassman.
You can hear Trunk Nation on Sirius/XM’s “Volume” channel (Channel 106) every weekday from 2-4pm Eastern. Visit EddieTrunk.com for more info.
This article is by VHND contributing writer, Eric Senich. You can listen to Eric live on the radio at Brookfield Connecticut’s Home of Rock And Roll, i95 WRKI every Saturday from 10am to 3pm on 95.1 FM. You can also listen online by clicking here or by downloading the radioPup app for your mobile device.