UltimateGuitar.com conducted a new interview with Michael Anthony that’s mainly about Chickenfoot. Here’s the Van Halen segment:

Michael Anthony: ‘It Is An Unusual Mix Of Characters That Make Up This Band’

Ultimate Guitar: With all your years with Van Halen, what do you consider one of your most treasured memories of your time with the band?

Michael Anthony: It is probably when we walked out on stage in Southern California at the US festival in 1983. There was like 300,000 to 400,000 people there as we walked out on to that stage. I mean my mouth just dropped wide open. It was Woodstock times ten to me.

Ultimate Guitar: My personal favorite Van Halen album of all time is the Fair Warning album.

Michael Anthony: Cool, Fair Warning is my favorite Roth era album.

Ultimate Guitar: I really think that album has been highly under rated over the years. Looking back now, what do you remember about the making of that album?

Michael Anthony: After having had made a few Van Halen records, we were obviously becoming a lot more comfortable in the studio. I think at that stage, as players, we were really becoming more accomplished as far as playing better than we have ever had as a unit and as a band. I just remember it was all good times. One great thing about a lot of that early stuff too is that we never, or used very, very few, overdubs, guitar overdubs. We always wanted to play it live, like we did on stage because that was how we would ultimately end up playing it to the people anyway. At that stage we were also learning a lot of the technical stuff, all the magic and all the stuff, the fairy dust that you can spread on stuff in the studio, but we always wanted to maintain that raw type sound. I think at that point we were probably rocking as a band.

Ultimate Guitar: Finally having been in this industry for many, many years now, what advice would you offer on the business side of things to up and coming musicians?

Michael Anthony: To probably go with what you feel in your heart to do. Like we [Van Halen] had management and record companies try and sway us one way or the other, but Van Halen, we always stuck to our guns and recorded the kind of music that we wanted to play. We never sold out to doing what was happening in the industry at the time or what everybody else was buying. Sometimes you may suffer or starve a little bit, but it is always more satisfying to play what you feel in your heart and what you love to play rather than trying to second guess and please anybody.

Click “Read the rest” for the full interview.

From Undercover.com.au.

INTERVIEW: Michael Anthony Talks Chickenfoot and Van Halen

by Paul Cashmere – November 14 2009

In 1974, Michael Anthony, Eddie Van Halen, Alex Van Halen and David Lee Roth became known as Van Halen. That decision took up the next 30 years of Anthony`s life.

However things changed in 2004. What started as a reunion tour with Sammy Hagar that should have taken the band around the world disintegrated after 80 shows on the North American tour. When the band once again reunited in 2007 for a tour with David Lee Roth, Anthony discovered via the press that he was no longer in the band.

Anthony had no intention of retiring but the next phase of his career would be for the fun and music, not the money or the fame. Chickenfoot had played a few casual gigs at Sammy Hagar’s club in Mexico but this year they took it one step further.

The first performance was in February 2008 in Las Vegas. Anthony, Joe Satriani and Red Hot Chili Pepper’s drummer Chad Smith joined Sammy Hagar on stage at his gig and played three songs. That night is now documented as the first Chickenfoot performance.

In June 2009, Chickenfoot released their debut album.

To find out the Chickenfoot story and the truth behind the implosion of Van Halen, I talked to Michael Anthony.

Click “Read the rest,” below, for the full interview.