The ears of Van Halen fans have perked up after Michel Anthony revealed that the vault doors to the band's archive are slowly being opened.
Ultimate Classic Rock reported that during a chat with SiriusXM’s Eddie Trunk, Anthony said, “There is movement, and we’re digging back in the stuff. Obviously, there’s a lot more stuff that’s at Ed (Van Halen)‘s 5150 Studio. A lot of that stuff, Wolfie and Alex (Van Halen) will start going through there, seeing what there is. There’s a ton of stuff.”
He said, “We’re starting a bunch of the reissue stuff with the Sammy (Hagar) years, with all his albums, and the first one that will come out will be the Right Here, Right Now live album that we did in 1992. . . Hopefully we’ll be following up, doing (David Lee) Roth stuff, too. Who knows?”
Regarding live soundboard recordings, Michael Anthony admitted: “We used to record every single show. That was just for the band so that we could critique ourselves after every show, and this went on for a few years. Like, the first few tours we would record almost every show.”
Anthony added that he has tapes in his collection that are, quote, “almost album quality.”
A few years ago, Wolfgang Van Halen told us that fans shouldn't bank on seeing any Eddie Van Halen tribute projects emerging from the vast tape archive he left behind. Wolfgang, who is now in charge of his late-father's unreleased work housed at his 5150 California studio, explained that the process to get everything adequately cataloged is his first priority — not getting new product out ASAP: “That's not gonna happen for a long time — even without the intention of release, I want to — at the every least — archive it properly and digitize it so everything is safe for years to come. Because it's going to be an incredibly difficult process — and a very long process to properly. . . just get the material off the old tapes, that I wanna do it right.”