Michael Anthony Speaks on Unreleased Van Halen Archive Material

Eddie Trunk’s full interview with former Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony has been posted, and it seems fans may be hearing more from the VH archives soon. Trunk brought up the fact that there has not been much live material released, and Anthony says, “There is a plan.”

“We’re starting a bunch of the reissue stuff with the Sammy [Hagar] years, with all his albums, and the first one that will come out will be the ‘Right Here, Right Now’ live album that we did in 1992…,” he said. “So there is movement in there. We’re digging back into stuff. There’s a lot more stuff at Ed’s 5150 studio; Wolfie or Alex will start going through stuff there and see what there is. There’s a ton of stuff.”

There seems to be no shortage of live material. As Anthony said, many quality bootlegs were made by tapers and by venues over the years. Van Halen also recorded all of their shows when they were starting out.

“I know for a fact [on] all early tours, we used to record every single show,” says Anthony. “That was just for the band so that we could critique ourselves after every show and this went on for a few years… the first few tours, we would record almost every show. I’m sure [they’re] somewhere around Eddie’s house, or Wolfgang’s got them now – they’ve got a lot of these tapes.”

Hopefully, we’ll get to hear all that soon. Elsewhere in the interview, Anthony announced a new side project with Bon Jovi guitarist Phil X, Aerosmith touring drummer John Douglas, and a yet-to-be-named singer. However, Trunk intros the interview by saying he thinks the group is mostly for fun and that he does not expect Anthony to be recording and touring with them.

You can listen to the full interview on The Eddie Trunk Podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts.