There are certain rock bands that have impeccable vocal harmonies. Well certainly, Van Halen should be included in that list as well, due to Michael Anthony and Eddie Van Halen’s ability, to vocally harmonize with any of the lead vocalists they worked with over the years.
But how did they create their vocal harmonizing skills? During an interview with Get On the Bus, Anthony was willing to spill the beans on the matter.
Michael Anthony reflected on joining Van Halen, saying he initially didn’t plan to sing and was excited to just play bass, assuming David Lee Roth and the others had vocals covered. However, once the band heard him sing background vocals, they immediately had him handle most of the harmonies. He also described Roth as a great entertainer.
“Dave was Dave,” Anthony said, in reference to singer David Lee Roth.
“Dave was a great entertainer. But when I first joined Van Halen, I didn’t even plan on singing, because I’d been lead singing in every little garage band that I was in.”
“I’m going, ‘Oh my God, I can just play bass.’ Dave sings, Ed harmonizes with him, and Alex would even yodel a little bit, but he wasn’t really a singer. And then the first time they hear me sing background, then all of a sudden, boom, I’m singing all the backgrounds.”
Anthony then mentioned a band that, while an influence musically on Van Halen, proved not to be a vocal influence, due to the fact that their music did not contain one iota of backing vocals or harmonizing vocals.
“And the one thing that we did really pay attention to was we knew that we had decent background vocals between Ed and myself, backing up Dave.”
“And so we would write with the intention of putting a lot of backgrounds in it, and not just be like a Led Zeppelin, where there was just a solo guy singing [Robert Plant]. It’s one thing that we made a conscious effort about — to put a lot of background vocals, because we thought it sounded cool.”
While Van Halen’s vocal harmonies were at their peak when David Lee Roth was in the band, they continued with the group’s other vocalists, Sammy Hagar and Gary Cherone, who manned the mic after Roth’s exit.
