Legendary Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony feels there absolutely needs to be a proper Eddie Van Halen tribute concert. Blabbermouth reported Anthony spoke about the prospects on KLOS and was all for a live bash celebrating the life and music of his departed former bandmate: “There has to be one. Obviously, we all loved Eddie, and the music was all great, whether you're a Dave (Lee Roth) fan, a Sammy (Hagar) fan, a Gary (Cherone) fan, or whatever. And it's gotta be celebrated at some point.”
He went on to say, “Obviously, now is not the time, because his family's grieving, his son's grieving, (and) I'm still trying to wrap my head around it actually having happened. But I'm sure it will happen some time here in the hopefully not-too-distant future. And I'm definitely in when it does happen. It'll be a great celebration, I think.”
Sadly, although there were early plans in the works for Anthony to re-join Van Halen on the road, the guitarist's illness precluded a reconnection between the bandmates on any level: “I actually did not have the chance to do that, and I really feel bad about that. We all, kind of, in the inner circle that were kind of close to him, knew that he was ill, but I didn't know to what extent. And he was very private about his illness, and so we all kind of respected that. So we really weren't that much in touch before I found out, with everybody else, that he had passed.”
No too long ago, when Eddie was still alive, Michael Anthony told us that was ambivalent about playing early-Van Halen songs in concert even though he still felt like he had “ownership” of the old songs: “Part ownership, anyway. I was part of it. Y'know, that's kind of one of the reasons why I've never wanted to like actually put a (solo) thing together and go out and play like that. I know (David Lee) Roth did it for quite some time. But y'know, to me, I mean, that's basically, that's Van Halen's stuff, and it's best left to Van Halen doing it.”