Michael Anthony was the longest-serving bassist for the iconic band Van Halen. He played on all of the band's albums except one, and definitely all the meaningful and important records. He knows all the ups and downs of what the group went through, but he has no regrets.
Except for one. He doesn't like how the band ended.
The final album for Van Halen was 2012's A Different Kind of Truth, which featured all of the members who appeared on the group's 1978 debut album (yes, even David Lee Roth) except for Anthony. On bass was Eddie Van Halen's son, Wolfgang.
Michael Anthony names his one regret about Van Halen
But Anthony doesn't admit to regretting missing out on the chance to play on that record. Instead, his one regret for the band is that, in his opinion, the band went out with a "whimper" instead of something that "shook the world."
Anthony espoused his views on the Get on the Bus podcast. He said, "The only regret that I have is how things, unfortunately, turned out for Van Halen. It should have gone out with a fricking bang that shook the world, and it was more like a whimper, the way everything ended."
Since he left the group in 2007, Anthony has played in a couple of Sammy Hagar supergroups, Chickenfoot and Sammy Hagar and the Circle. The issue is that Hagar might have been singing the tunes on some of the group's most commercially successful records, but Van Halen began to lose some integrity.
Hagar replaced Roth in 1985 in part because Eddie and Alex Van Halen wanted to offer versatility. This ultimately meant power ballads, something that Roth was never a part of. Did Roth have more of a showy voice than the quality of Hagar? Yes, but he was also a lot more exciting.
Roth also made the band a lot more fun and iconic live. Anthony did not mention which era of Van Halen he thought was best (he is still playing music with Hagar, so it might be unfair of him to say), but perhaps the group began to go out with a whimper in the mid-1980s. The ending was set when the band got rid of Roth and replaced him with the more boring Hagar.
Anthony said being in the legendary band was like a "fairy tale." The group has a massive following still, and some prefer Hagar over Roth (and some might even prefer vocalist Gary Cherone over both), but the best albums were still in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Those are the times many will remember most fondly.