“I hope Wolfgang goes through some of the tapes – there’s a lot of stuff Eddie did on his own”: Michael Anthony on the unreleased Van Halen material we’ll “probably never see”

Van Halen‘s back catalogue is pretty staggering. With 12 studio albums, the rockers have copious amounts of era-defining riffs to rifle through. And, according to former bassist Michael Anthony, there are countless more Van Halen tracks laying in the vaults.

Up until 2006, Anthony played a vital role in the band’s formula. While the Van Halen brothers would eventually replace Anthony with Eddie’s son, Wolfgang, Anthony appeared on 11 records.

• READ MORE: Van Halen’s A Different Kind of Truth returns to streaming services after a year and a half

But, in a recent interview with Ultimate Guitar, Anthony reveals there are ample unheard tracks buried away in Eddie’s studio. “There were songs that were written way back in the early days,” Anthony says. “But, God, I can’t recall. There’s probably miles of stuff. I mean, you’ve probably seen pictures of all the boxes of the tapes and everything [in Eddie’s studio].”

As Anthony explains, there was plenty of writing and recording that went on behind the scenes. “Every time that we went into the studio, whether it was Donn Landee or whoever was engineering for us, we had him press record,” he explains. “We recorded everything, every idea that we had.”

“I hope Wolfgang goes through some of [Eddie’s tapes] because I’m sure there’s a lot of stuff that Eddie did on his own,” Anthony continues. “But there’s tons of stuff that we’ll probably never see. Or hear.”

Hitting record doesn’t guarantee a hit track. However, there could be some gold nestled within the archives; even prior to the gang’s 1978 debut, they were writing hooks that would wind up on records later down the line.

While Anthony didn’t officially appear on 2012’s A Different Kind of Truth, he was somewhat involved. “There were quite a few songs that I was a part of and worked on… before the first Van Halen record [that were] actually restructured and used on A Different Kind of Truth,” Anthony recalls. He picks out She’s the Woman in particular.

Despite being cut from the band, Anthony bares no ill will towards A Different Kind of Truth. “It was different,” he reflects. “David [Lee Roth] was singing differently. And adding Wolfgang into the mix. It was different than what we were obviously doing when I was in the band. There’s a lot of good stuff on there! But yeah, I thought it was a good album.”

Anthony’s thoughts are far kinder than those of a certain Lee Roth, the singer calling the record “DOA” in a recent YouTube video. A Different Kind of Truth has also only just returned to streaming services after its removal in October 2022 – an act that was supposedly thanks to Lee Roth.

Wolfgang also admitted that the removal was thanks to “some people involved” who “do not like that record”.

“The contract ran out on putting it up on streaming services,” Wolfgang explained. “We’ve been working on getting it back, but there are some people involved who do not like that record and are not making it easy.”

When Trunk asked whether said person was “commonly be known by three initials?”, Wolfgang replied “I mean, yeah… you can put it together.”