If you ever wondered what the internal gravity of Van Halen really looked like from the inside, Michael Anthony has a pretty straightforward answer: it was always the brothers, and then everyone else. Not in a hostile way — just the reality of a bond that ran deeper than music.
“Even from the beginning of Van Halen, it was always the brothers,” Anthony told WRIF’s Meltdown (via Blabbermouth). “Eddie and Al had this bond that, unlike any bond I had ever seen brothers have, musically and also as human beings. And so people naturally say it’s the brothers and everybody else. But they always supported one another in anything that they did. And so, you know what?! Thinking about it, I guess it was the brothers and everybody else.”
The split, as it turns out, came down to something far more mundane than creative differences. “The biggest thing when the band was together with Sammy is Eddie and Alex both smoked a lot, and Sammy and I didn’t smoke,” Anthony said. “So everything was — it was smoking or non-smoking. It came down to what buses you rode on or the dressing rooms. There was always the smoking and the non-smoking.”
Anthony and Hagar‘s friendship grew into something that outlasted the band itself. Anthony recalls that cars were the unexpected entry point. “When I first met him, it was on a band level, and then as we hung out more and more, his affection towards cars really grasped me,” he said. “I only owned, like, two cars before Sammy joined the band, and much to my wife’s dismay, I ended up owning about 10 cars.”
Geography sealed it. Both men are Southern California beach dwellers at heart, and that shared lifestyle kept them close long after Van Halen was done. “Sammy and I, we just get together as much as we can now when we’re around,” Anthony said. “He’s got a place in Hawaii, so he spends a lot of time over there now.”
The weight of how Van Halen ended still sits with Anthony. In a separate interview last Junewith Get On The Bus, he was candid about his one lasting regret. “When Van Halen was really firing on all 12 cylinders, we’re living the dream, it’s the fairy tale or whatever,” he said. “And the first time it ended when Roth left the band, luckily, Sammy joined the band, and it was like a rebirth. And, obviously, the band was even bigger at that point or whatever. But the only regret I have is the way it all ended. It should have gone out with a fricking bang that shook the world, and it was more like a whimper, the way everything ended.”
His falling out with Eddie Van Halen was left unresolved at the time of Eddie‘s death in October 2020. “Unfortunately, Eddie and I never [made amends] — we had some issues, and I’m sure that if he had not passed when he did that we would’ve reconciled or we would’ve really calmed all that stuff down,” Anthony said. He had heard through Wolfgang Van Halen that a large-scale reunion was in the works. “They were planning on coming to all of us and putting together a big reunion tour with all of us. And at that point in Ed’s life, I think he was a little bit more, like, ‘Hey, the past is the past. Let’s all… fricking water under the bridge,’ that whole bit. But, unfortunately, it was not to be.”
In December 2023, Anthony attended a Mammoth WVH show at the House of Blues in Las Vegas — his first face-to-face with Wolfgang in two decades. The meeting clearly mattered to both men. “We talked, we sat and talked, and there was a lot of closure for me there,” Anthony said. “Valerie [Bertinelli] was there. So it was a great night. Besides the fact that Wolf is a great guy, great musician, his band kicks ass.”
Wolfgang framed it simply. “He’s family,” he told Loudwire in January 2024. “It was long overdue. I think we had planned that at least since I’ve been touring, and it just worked out, and it was very wonderful to see him.”
On social media, both men made the reunion public. Wolfgang posted backstage photos with the caption: “Ran into an old friend at the @mammothwvh show in Vegas tonight. (Love ya, Mikey).” Anthony responded in kind, sharing his own photo and writing: “Went to see Mammoth WVH last night here in Vegas, and they threw it down! Love ya Wolf, so great to see ya! (Proud of you brother!!)”
Anthony holds no resentment about being replaced. “Eddie wanted to play with his son,” he said. “The way I kind of feel is that Wolfgang probably wasn’t excited, really, about being in Van Halen. That’s why in his band, he doesn’t play any Van Halen, ’cause he wants to carve out his own niche. But just to be able to get up and play with his father, I can totally understand that.”
