According to Extreme guitarist Nuno Bettencourt, Eddie Van Halen was planning to bring Michael Anthony back into VAN HALEN for a farewell tour
Nuno relayed the story while appearing on SiriusXM’s Hair Nation, while promoting the upcoming EXTREME album “Six“, which is set to arrive on June 9 via earMusic.
Bettencourt discussed meeting the late iconic guitarist back in 2019, during the recording sessions for the EXTREME single “Rise“.
“He’s playing us some of Wolf’s new stuff, which we all know now was coming out,” recalled Nuno. “And he was like a proud papa saying that, like he played all the instruments and he did that and everything else.
“And then he said something really cool, he was like, ‘Hey, just between us, I’m like, I wanna let you know, like Van Halen‘s coming back and we’re gonna go out the way we came with Michael. We’re planning a run, and we’re gonna go out the way we came in like a farewell tour, but like, do it old school.’
“And I’m like, ‘Amazing. Overdue, way overdue.’ He was even saying, like, ‘You know Wolf, he’s the one who’s like, he’s reaching out to Michael.’ It was like a really cool thing, right?”
Check out the interview segment below courtesy of SiriusXM.
In related news, Michael Anthony recently relayed to radio host Eddie Trunk that there were lots of unreleased VAN HALEN tracks in the vaults that could be released in the days ahead.
“We’re digging back into stuff,” said Anthony. “There’s a lot more stuff at Ed’s 5150 studio; Wolfie or Alex will start going through stuff there and see what there is. There’s a ton of stuff.”
