With talks recently of a potential Van Halen tribute tour, longtime Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony revealed that he had been involved with talks concerning the potential trek. The bassist reached out to numerous other musicians to see if they’d want to be a part of the tour, but it ultimately hasn’t worked out as of yet.
Anthony says he had “a conference call with [manager] Irving Azoff, Alex [Van Halen] and Dave [Lee Roth] last year” about a tour honoring Eddie Van Halen in an interview with The Mitch Lafon and Jeremy White Show. Joe Satriani, Anthony’s Chickenfoot bandmate, was also a part of the talks about handling guitar duties while on tour. “I spoke to Joe about it, and it was more, you know, just something kicking around,” explained the bassist.
Looks like Anthony isn’t the only member of Van Halen that was thinking about a Van Halen tribute tour. Earlier this year, it was revealed that Alex Van Halen approached former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted about seven months ago about participating in the tribute tour.
In his interview with The Palm Beach Post, Newsted said that while he listened, he ultimately thought, “How could you?,” adding that “there’s nobody that can top it, so how do you show it honor? I didn’t want it to be viewed as a money grab. And then it kind of just all fizzled.”
Within the chat, Anthony revealed that news of Newsted’s potential involvement came as a surprise to him, as he had been in on the initial talks, so he was unsure of “what the Jason thing was all about.”
Anthony is still hopeful that a Van Halen tribute tour will work out at some point. “I hope something happens in the future,” says Van Halen bassist. “I think Joe was mentioning in some of the interviews that it’s more a celebration of the band and of the music than calling it ‘Van Halen.’ Obviously, Eddie being probably the most integral part of the whole band, you can’t really call it Van Halen after that.”
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