Ed Van Halen cans Michael Anthony...

Flamin Lip

Flamin Lip

New member
Just saw in rolling stone that EVH fired Michael Anthony in order for his kid to take up the bass duties....... He claims hos kid is a monster player and can blow MA away, but cmon.... how demanding are the VH bass lines(runnin w/ the devil? LOL)?

Not sure about the inter-band polotics or anything, but seems like a dick move from my perspective, as I was fortunate enough to see VH back in the glory days w/ Dave L Roth singing, and MA was a huge part of the show/sound... Just seeing what the rest of you guys thought about this deal...... Kinda smells to me!!
 
The way Eddie has gotten, I'm suprised he hasn't kicked Alex out of the band too. They are done and over.
 
Eddie Van Halen suffers from some serious problems.

I think Sammy Hagar said after joining the band that one of the most suprising things to him was how much of the sound of the band was Michael Anthony's backing vocals.
 
They haven't been the same since Sammy's original dismissal and the Cherone-era.

IMO they're basically "The Eddie Van Halen Band featuring former members of Van Halen."

I loved both the DLR and Hagar days (and even thought the Cherone album was decent) but it seems that Eddie's ego has simply demolished one of the few truely great American rock bands.

Eddie and this band are barely even shells of their former selves.
 
toad said:
but it seems that Eddie's ego has simply demolished one of the few truely great American rock bands.
Click to expand...
It's not his ego, he has developed serious mental problems. If he wasn't Eddie Van Halen, he would be the uni-bomber.
 
Farview said:
It's not his ego, he has developed serious mental problems. If he wasn't Eddie Van Halen, he would be the uni-bomber.
Click to expand...

I certainly can't argue that.

I remember when he was hyping up Cherone so much in the media prior to the "III" release in one interview he went off on this tangent about how he was now writing while on the toilet because, quite literally, the flushing of waste from the body opened up room for new ideas/songs to enter his mind.

Ego, mental problems....IMO he has them all!

Also, I have to mention that I don't like the "avant garde" style he started using on the DLR-tunes on the original "Best Of" that carried forward onto "III" and the Hagar-tunes on the "Best of Both Worlds" compilation. I saw them on the '04 reunion tour with Hagar and he was trying to incorporate all that stuff with the classic tunes...it was sloppy and, IMO, simply didn't work.
 
Eddie Van has always been fickle; his band has always had a swinging door approach. Anyone one who gets a little more press then him gets booted. He has always been and forever will be a wacko.
 
Evh

Well, for what it might be worth here's a little story:
In 1997 I enrolled at Musicians Institute; I studied rock guitar. I learned lots of stuff there and was lucky enough to have many great teachers. The recurrent question to all of these teachers was along the lines of:
"Who is the greatest guitar player of all time?" or "Who is your favorite guitar player?" And I have to say that every single one of my teachers at MI had Eddie in the top 3!!! Every single one.
Whatever personal situations, trends, or musical situations he might go through, amongst most guitar players I know, he's one of the greatest of all time TECHNICALLY AND MUSICALLY and IMO, one of the best, up there with Randy Rhoads, Vai, Hendrix and Malmsteen (and yes, even Yngwie is admired by teachers at MI).
Carlos
 
Does Van Halen even have a singer now? If not, then they got bigger problems then who plays bass.

Still it seems like a shitty move to someone who has been with you for 30 years or so.
 
carlosguardia said:
Well, for what it might be worth here's a little story:
In 1997 I enrolled at Musicians Institute; I studied rock guitar. I learned lots of stuff there and was lucky enough to have many great teachers. The recurrent question to all of these teachers was along the lines of:
"Who is the greatest guitar player of all time?" or "Who is your favorite guitar player?" And I have to say that every single one of my teachers at MI had Eddie in the top 3!!! Every single one.
Whatever personal situations, trends, or musical situations he might go through, amongst most guitar players I know, he's one of the greatest of all time TECHNICALLY AND MUSICALLY and IMO, one of the best, up there with Randy Rhoads, Vai, Hendrix and Malmsteen (and yes, even Yngwie is admired by teachers at MI).
Carlos
Click to expand...

No doubt he's a great guitar player...and probably the biggest innovator on the instrument since Hendrix.

I think we're all just saying he seems a little off his rocker and, IMO, he seems a little like a jerk as well.
 
The little research I did on this makes me think that Eddie has gone a bit megalomaniac!

Apparently Michael Anthony created a hot sauce brand, and at a radio interveiw... the DJ asked about it and Eddie got all pissed that MA was cross promoting with HIS band, so a couple of days later, he had his lawyers issue a legal rider to the upcoming radio interveiw DJs, barring them from speaking about hot sauce....... SHEEEEESH!!!!

I guess as long as Eddie is in the band people will show up at the shows for nostalgia value, but It seems like a shame they couldnt keep it together with some sense of dignity.
 
Given that Anthony has been with the band sooooo long and hung through all the politics and all the shows where EVH was drooling on himself .... firing him from the band is simply a terrible, low class thing for EVH to do (as someone else indicated...maybe Alex better start looking over his shoulder). :D

Many years ago, I was a fan of the band (while the Hager years were OK, I thought the Roth years defined the band). While there is no doubt EVH has earned his place in the history of rock guitar - like so many other tragic examples, his personal demons have compromised his legacy and sadly turned him into more of a trivia joke than an artist of substance.
 
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