Van Halen bassist opens up

Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony hasn't been one over the years to spill group secrets, but that all changed in a recent interview. Anthony is featured in the Japanese music magazine Burrn!, and he detailed the status of the band, his summer tour plans with Sammy Hagar, and his relationship with Eddie and David Lee Roth. The bassist said the band is "currently in a state of limbo... truthfully Ed doesn't want to tour right now or maybe ever again. I don't know what he's thinking at this point. So I would say that we're on a temporary hiatus that possibly could become permanent... that's really where things are right now and tomorrow it could all change again."

Because Van Halen is on the shelf, Anthony will join Hagar's summer tour for a complete Van Halen set as the Other Half, along with guitarist Vic Johnson and drummer David Lauser from Hagar's band the WaboRitas. Anthony said they first did it at Hagar's birthday party in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, last year, "and it came off so great... and we were like, 'Hey you know, we want to go out and we want to play the stuff and the fans want to hear it." He added that he might take lead vocals on some songs, including "Running With The Devil."

However, Anthony said he'd love to play with Eddie and Alex Van Halen again: "The only reason is because the brothers aren't wanting to go out and play it for the fans. Now, if they want to come out and play, they're invited! If they want to come out and do it and do Van Halen and do it the right way and have fun, let's go, let's do it, I'm ready right now."

Anthony also revealed that when the Van Halen reunion with Hagar came together in 2004, he wasn't actually part of the band. He said, "Ed really didn't want me to be part of it. I don't know how he was going to call it a reunion (laughs), but I basically had to work out a deal with (Van Halen's) management company in order to be part of this thing. I kind of sucked it up a bit and I made less money, but the way I looked at it was, if this possibly was the last tour that Van Halen would ever do, then I'd be kicking myself because I wasn't a part of it -- and I want to be a part of it, even more so than the money, so I sucked it all up and came on and did it. I did it for the fans." Anthony also said that he's not on the three new songs that were included on the 2004 greatest-hits collection The Best Of Both Worlds.

As for David Lee Roth, who's campaigned on his radio show for a Van Halen reunion of his own, Anthony said people shouldn't count on that happening any time soon: "We tried to make this thing work with Roth three times and each time it was even worse than the time before... We went into the studio and it was kind of funny because we first got together in the studio and we were all in the one room together and we did 'Hot For Teacher,' 'Mean Streets,' and a few other songs, and... once we started playing it was like... 'There it is, that's the magic!'... But then of course the longer we spent in the studio... we just couldn't finish it and all those old reasons why he left the band in the first place, they started surfacing, you know? He went right back to his old ways."