Half the reason anyone would go to a Van Halen show would be to see the guitar genius at work. While the band prided themselves on making bulletproof hooks whenever they went into the studio or sauntered onstage, the main draw was always seeing Eddie Van Halen teaching a clinic on how to play guitar, featuring a barrage of notes that would take most novice guitar players years to decipher. Although the band had an equally strong frontman throughout every iteration of their career, there was one aspect of their sound that Eddie never gelled with.
When putting together his first bands as a teenager, though, Eddie was always drawn to the sounds of heavy guitars before the vocals. After inheriting the guitar when his brother Alex got behind his drumkit one day, Eddie fell in love with the tones he heard coming from early Cream records, doing his best to emulate the sounds of Eric Clapton.
By the time the brothers had started gigging up and down the California club circuit, they had already started to move in a heavier direction, playing riffs that felt like they could have come off an early Black Sabbath record. While the band had the musical side of their sound down to a science, it wasn’t until David Lee Roth came into the fold that things began falling into place.
Having an unstoppable charisma whenever he went onstage, Roth practically became a glorified cartoon character every time he performed, usually involving swinging a sword around and playing a court jester role alongside Eddie. In terms of vocal power, though, the band got a shot in the arm when Michael Anthony joined.
Coming from the band Snake, the bassist was primarily known for his extremely high-harmonisation vocals, which would give a sonic sheen to some of Van Halen’s most celebrated records. Although Anthony could have easily carried an entire show through the sheer strength of his voice, Eddie would later say that he was never a fan of how the bassist sang.
When talking about the different pieces of the Van Halen sound, Eddie didn’t consider Anthony’s voice to have as much swagger as the others, saying, “Mike’s voice is like a piccolo trumpet. But he’s not a singer. He just has a range from hell. Mike was just born with a very high voice. I have more soul as a singer than he does. And you know, people always talk about Mike’s voice on Van Halen songs, but that’s a blend of Mike’s voice and my voice. It’s not just him”.
While Eddie eventually stepped behind the microphone for the song ‘How Many Say I’, taken from Van Halen III, Anthony’s high tenor is one of the foundational elements of the band’s early hits. Despite the magnificent performance that Roth puts into songs like ‘Runnin With the Devil’ or ‘Dance the Night Away’, Anthony’s voice always fills out the low end of the mix, making the band sound like a hard rock choir.
Even though Anthony’s time with Van Halen ended once Eddie’s son Wolfgang took over bass duties, he has continued to show off his pipes with former Van Halen frontman Sammy Hagar, working on various projects, including The Circle and the supergroup Chickenfoot. Van Halen may have always packed stadiums throughout the 1980s, but without Anthony’s voice, they would have lost a foundational part of their identity.
