In a recent interview with Ultimate Guitar, bassist Michael Anthony discussed the wealth of unreleased Van Halen material recorded during the band’s early years with David Lee Roth. The conversation, focusing on the band’s extensive archives and the possibility of future releases, sheds light on the prolific nature of Van Halen’s studio sessions.
When asked about the number of unreleased songs from the Roth era, Anthony acknowledged the abundance of material. “There were quite a few songs that I was a part of and worked on and written, 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. Songs like She’s The Woman, that’s the only thing that comes to mind.”
Anthony highlighted the extensive nature of these recordings: “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.”
Discussing their recording process, Anthony noted, “Every time that we went into the studio, whether it was Donn Landee or whoever was engineering for us, we had him press record. We recorded everything, every idea that we had. And there’s stuff in there that… I hope Wolfgang 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.”
The conversation also touched upon the album A Different Kind of Truth, which features reworked versions of some of these early songs. When asked if he had listened to the album, Anthony responded, “I listened to a little bit of it. It was different. Dave was singing differently. And adding Wolfgang into the mix. It was different than what we were obviously doing when I was in the band. There’s a lot of good stuff on there. But yeah, I thought it was a good album.”
Released in 2012, A Different Kind of Truth by Van Halen is available for streaming.
