Michael Anthony has not spoken to any of the Van Halen guys since 2004 aside from small talk one time

Michael Anthony has not spoken to any of the Van Halen guys since 2004 aside from small talk one time

With rumours swirling that Van Halen will be playing concerts in 2019 with the original line-up, Premiere Radio Networks, a division of iHeartRadio, reached out to bassist Michael Anthony yesterday to find out what he had to say in that regard.

Anthony advised (as reported by Sixx Sense):

“The only comment I have is that I haven’t spoken to any of the guys since we last played together back in 2004,” Anthony told Premiere.

Anthony also advised that he did run into Alex Van Halen “a few years back” but the two didn’t get into anything more than small talk. With respect to the latter encounter, Anthony was interviewed by Eddie Trunk on the Trunk Radio show on SiriusXM channel Volume 106 on October 21, 2016 during which the advised (as transcribed by Sleaze Roxx):

“You know what? This is pretty interesting Eddie. There’s a mutual friend of Alex‘s and mine. His name is Craig DeFalco and this is a guy who was a tech for me  for awhile. He was actually Eddie‘s tech — uh, I don’t know if it was the 2007 tour — but he teched for him for one of the tours and he stayed in touch with us, Alex basically. I am living; I’ve got a relatively new place out here at the beach in Southern California and this guy Craig, he had never seen my house so he came out. He had been on tour with Lenny Kravitz or someone doing… and had a break. So we went out on a boat. I was like ‘We’ll cruise around the bay. You know, you can check the place out.’ So you know as it goes, I had a couple of cocktails and next thing you know, we’re talking about the band, the good old days and all that stuff ’cause he did I think at least two or three Van Halen tours with me back in the ’80s and uh, so, next thing you know, I got him holding his iPhone up and I am shooting a video going ‘Hey Alex man. Just talking about the good times and you know, everything that is going on, I’ve got all these heroes of ours. People that we grew up listening to starting to drop left and right. It’s like Oh my God!’

And so later on, we’re at my house, er my buddy and myself — Craig and his phone rings and it was Alex. And he’s like ‘Tell Mike I said hi.’ Next thing I know, he’s handing me the phone and he’s like, ‘Here. Al wants to talk to you.’ And I’m like, ‘Whhhaaat?’ And this is, this is this past May [2016]. I hadn’t spoke to Alex in like ten years I think — ten, eleven years. And you know, nothing heavy. I didn’t want to get into anything about the band but you know, it was just great to talk. We talked for about 20 minutes and had a great conversation — just about life in general and [laughs] getting older and just what’s going around in the music industry you know. And it was actually really great talking to him.”