Sammy Hagar's upcoming tour will include Van Halen and Led Zeppelin material according to bassist Michael Anthony – but don't count on it being particularly well rehearsed.
Anthony – who worked with Hagar in Van Halen and Chickenfoot – joked that he, Hagar, drummer Jason Bonham and guitarist Vic Johnson will likely meet up and goof around rather than rehearse for A Journey Through The History Of Rock tour of the US this summer.
Anthony tells Ultimate Classic Rock: “Don’t let the title mislead you, because it’s not like we’re the historians and we’re going to take you through a journey of the whole rock and roll spectrum. Most of it is just kind of the history as we’ve lived it. We might throw some stuff in from bands that we grew up listening to, but of course we’re going to cover all of the snippets from Montrose, Sammy’s solo stuff, Van Halen and with Jason in the mix, we’re throwing in some really cool Zep stuff too that I’m really enjoying playing.
“There’s no properly rehearsing for this. There’s no choreography and in fact, I got a basic shell of a setlist from Sammy the other day and I guess what we’re just really focusing on are the first three songs and the last three songs. Then everything in the middle, we’re going to throw it up in the air and the way the show feels and how it goes, that’s what we’re going to do. We are going to rehearse a couple of times though.”
Anthony adds that Chickenfoot still have no plans to record or tour and he and Hagar wanted to keep busy. And he also discusses how Van Halen were urged to change their name when Hagar replaced Dave Lee Roth in 1985.
He says: The record company really wanted us to change the name of the band. They felt that Dave’s identity was so strong that we shouldn’t call it Van Halen. Of course, besides that fact that Ed and Al were saying, ‘Hey, this is our last name,’ we’re also telling the record company that this is our career. ‘You guys aren’t going to lose your jobs if we fail. We’re the ones that will be out in the cold’. With Sammy, there was just a renewed energy when we were working on the 5150 record.”
