Former VAN HALEN members Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony have confirmed they are not involved in the album project being assembled by Alex Van Halen alongside Steve Lukather, and they also noted that they were never approached to contribute.
Speaking in an interview with Rock Of Nations With Dave Kinchen And Shane McEachern, Hagar addressed questions about participation in the project and whether he would be interested in joining. He said: “No. We haven’t been asked, number one. I can tell you, the day I walked in the studio, in 5150, to basically, if you wanna call it an audition, but to meet the guys and to play music, we played for about eight hours at least. And we recorded everything. Everything that I ever did, and every time we made a record, we recorded hundreds of hours of jam and music, and then we cut ’em up, made songs. That’s the way we did it. So there’s so much stuff from Mike and I and Ed and Al in the studio.
“Like I said, just the initial day that I went in there, we got ‘Summer Nights’, we got ‘Good Enough’ and the beginnings of ‘Get Up’ from [the] 5150 [album] — three songs that came from that eight-hour jam. And I remember there was a blues thing we did, and I was making up lyrics. So there’s so much stuff that Al could really choose from, if he wanted to include Mike and I. But, obviously, Al‘s got a reason, and he’s Alex Van Halen; he can do whatever he wants. And, to me, it’s an Alex Van Halen project, and it’s not necessarily a VAN HALEN project, but I guess we’ll see if it ever sees the light today. But I’m disappointed that Mike and I wouldn’t be invited. It’s, like, what? Are you kidding me? We’re still alive. We’re out here doing it. We’re playing those songs. We can still do it, you know?”
Anthony echoed a similar sentiment, stating: “Yeah. If this is material that we jammed on or whatever, I’d have no problem coming in and singing or [playing bass] or whatever. It’s all good there.”
Speaking recently to Brazil’s Kazagastão, Alex shed light on the project’s direction and the care being taken with the material.
“Ed and I had a lot of stuff that we made, that we made musically that we never let go. Many people have asked, what about releasing unreleased stuff? Well, we’re not gonna release it in its embryonic form because it wouldn’t make any sense. But I’ve been fortunate enough to have Steve Lukather, who was a good friend of Ed‘s, and we’re working on putting a record together, but it has to be of the quality and the level of where we left it. Not just to say, ‘Hey, here’s some music that we made. If you like it, that’s great.’ No. It has to be the quality that we expect.”
Importantly, Alex confirmed that much of the instrumental foundation is already complete.
“Well, these are recordings that were going to be the next [VAN HALEN] record, and that were stopped because [Ed] didn’t live that long… The drums are already recorded. The drums, the guitar and the bass are already in there. What we didn’t have is a vocalist, and obviously the subtleties and the glue — we call it the glue or the spackle.”
That missing piece — a vocalist — is now the key focus. As Alex put it, “Luke and I are looking for somebody right now.”
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