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You are here: Home / Chickenfoot / Michael Anthony: “I Was Really Given Total Freedom” on “III”

Michael Anthony: “I Was Really Given Total Freedom” on “III”

by VHND — updated September 26, 2011 52 Comments

From UltimateClassicRock.com:

The last time we spoke with legendary Chickenfoot bassist Michael Anthony a few months ago, we hadn’t heard the band’s new album ‘III,’ which vocalist Sammy Hagar describes as “the best record I’ve ever made.”

Now that we’ve listened to (and reviewed) it, the record certainly lives up to Hagar’s hype, and we were happy to get a chance to dig into the inner workings with Michael with a fresh interview to find out how it all went down and what we can look forward to on the band’s upcoming tour:

Is there a particular song on ‘III’ that surprised you as far as the direction that it went?

God, there’s actually a few of them, you know? Obviously, we’ve got the rockers like ‘Up Next’ and ‘Last Temptation.’ But songs like ‘Different Devil’ and ‘Something Going Wrong,’ are kind of a little bit of a different direction for us. I think just the fact of the studio time we’ve had, being out on tour and hanging out and being more comfortable with each other musically, the band is really evolving now.

‘Different Devil’ is one that has classic vocals from both you and Sammy.

Yeah, obviously as far as the vocals went, the music just really lent itself to some great background parts for me, and I think it’s probably some of the best background stuff vocally that I’ve ever done on an album.

Leading up to the release of ‘Chickenfoot III,’ we heard that your contributions would be more prominent in the mix for the new album. Was there a particular catalyst for that?

No, not really. But in this band, it’s so great that everybody is really allowed to put their 100% of what they want to do into it. I don’t think there was one song on this album where like Joe or myself said to each other “hey, why don’t you try this” or “why don’t you play that.”

So I was really given total freedom, which is great. Because you know, as time went on in Van Halen or
Read the rest at UltimateClassicRock.com

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