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Anthony Explains Van Halen Snubbings


09/05/07
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(antiMusic) As we reported a couple weeks ago Van Halen's snubbing of founding bass player Michael Anthony has gone beyond not inviting him to participate in the reunion, the band also removed his songwriting credits from the 1984 album and briefly removed his image from the album art on their official site, replacing it with Eddie's son Wolfgang. Now Anthony reveals that the bad blood reaches back to before the band's 2004 reunion with Sammy Hagar.

In a new interview, Anthony says that he found out about the current reunion with David Lee Roth online and confirmed the rumor that Eddie Van Halen tried to keep him from taking part in the band's 2004 reunion with Sammy Hagar. He explained where the bad blood came from. "[Eddie] was always put off that I was going out and playing with Sammy when we weren�t doing anything. It wasn�t like I was doing it to spite anybody. I was just tired of sitting at home and doing nothing," Anthony tells Rolling Stone. "Sammy asked me one day if I would like to come out and maybe make an appearance at one or two of [his] shows and have some fun, and I said, 'Yeah, great.' It kind of snowballed into me coming out and doing a few songs with him here and there."

Word on the street is that Hagar went to bat for his friend and told the Van Halen brothers that he would not take part in a reunion that did not include Anthony. Obviously, David Lee Roth didn't have the same reservations. And when it came time for the band to reunite this time, the Van Halen camp didn't even give Anthony a courtesy call to tell him it was coming. He had to find out about it online.

"Nobody ever contacted me about anything. I just kind of found out with everyone else," He said in the interview. "I found out on the Internet and through word of mouth. I can understand that he wants his kid to play with him. If I had a kid like that, I�d like to have him perform with me, too. It was kind of funny when I first heard about it being a Van Halen 'reunion.'"

While Eddie, Alex, David and Wolfgang tour this fall as the newest version of Van Halen, Anthony is teaming up with his buddy Sammy Hagar for a string of dates and naturally that band is called "The Other Half". You can grab the dates for that at http://redrocker.com

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