“I hope Wolfgang goes through some of it. There’s probably miles of the stuff. I’m sure there’s stuff that Eddie did on his own”: Michael Anthony offers an update on the never-before-heard archive of unreleased Van Halen songs
Michael Anthony has further teased the existence of a catalog of unreleased Van Halen cuts, which could include some never-before-heard solo Eddie Van Halen material.
However, despite the band’s former bass guitar player saying he’d like to see such songs receive an official release, he concedes it’s highly unlikely – and we’ll probably “never” get to hear them.
Anthony made the revelation in an interview with Ultimate Guitar, during which he was asked about the unreleased Van Halen cuts that have been previously discussed.
“There were quite a few songs that I was a part of and worked on and written,” Anthony says, “even a couple of things before the first Van Halen record and the early part of Van Halen that they actually restructured and used on the A Different Kind of Truth album that they put out.
“There were songs that were basically written way back in the early days when Dave, Eddie, Alex, and myself were together that they ended up using on that.
“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]. Which is miles of stuff.”
As Anthony explains, the existence of so much surplus Van Halen material is the result of their recording practices: every time they were in the studio, everything they played was committed to tape.
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“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 continues. “We recorded everything, every idea that we had.
“I hope Wolfgang [Van Halen] goes through some of it because I’m sure there’s a lot of stuff that Eddie did on his own, too, that might be kind of interesting to listen to also. But there’s tons of stuff that we’ll probably never see. Or hear.”
This isn’t the first time Anthony has discussed the existence of a never-before-heard Van Halen archive. However, when he mentioned it last year, he implied there was a plan in place to release some of those songs.
“There is movement in there,” he said. “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.”
Whether something has happened behind the scenes to put a halt on the process, it’s unclear. But, unfortunately, it seems as though any prospect for a belated Van Halen release has drastically diminished.
As well as never hearing this unreleased material, Anthony has also said we’ll probably never witness an official Van Halen tribute tour, after he set the record straight on the much-rumored project last month.
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