Greg Prato, reporting for Ultimate-Guitar.com:
Apart from being the band's final record, A Different Kind Of Truth marks the only Van Halen album without Michael Anthony on bass. With the Van Halen brothers and David Lee Roth bringing in Eddie's son Wolfgang to play bass on it, this lineup ended up doing the band's final tour in 2015.
As he gears up to tour with Sammy Hagar, Joe Satriani, and Jason Bonham under The Best of All Worlds banner, we sat down with Michael Anthony and asked him to weigh in on the only Van Halen album without him and share some info about the band's unreleased music.
Ultimate-Guitar.com: To the best of your knowledge, how many unreleased Van Halen songs are there from when Dave was in the band? Because if you read old interviews with Dave or Eddie, they mention titles of songs that were never released.
Michael Anthony: "There were quite a few songs that I was a part of and worked on and written, even a couple of things before the first Van Halen record and the early part of Van Halen that they actually restructured and used on the A Different Kind Of Truth album that they put out. Songs like 'She's The Woman,' that's the only thing that comes to mind.
"There were songs that were basically written way back in the early days when Dave, Eddie, Alex, and myself were together that they ended up using on that. But, God, I can't recall. There's probably miles of stuff. I mean, you've probably seen pictures of all the boxes of the tapes and everything [in Eddie's studio]. Which is miles of stuff.
"Every time that we went into the studio, whether it was Donn Landee or whoever was engineering for us, we had him press record. We recorded everything, every idea that we had. And there's stuff in there that…
"I hope Wolfgang goes through some of it because I'm sure there's a lot of stuff that Eddie did on his own, too, that might be kind of interesting to listen to also. But there's tons of stuff that we'll probably never see. Or hear."
Find out what Michael thought of the one Van Halen album he didn't appear on, A Different Kind Of Truth, at Ultimate-Guitar.com.
Van Halen's 2012 album, A Different Kind Of Truth, is back on streaming platforms, including Spotify.
Guesting on SiriusXM's Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk in October 2023, Wolfgang Van Halen addressed the subject of A Different Kind Of Truth being removed from streaming platforms. It is the only Van Halen studio album he appears on, having replaced bassist Michael Anthony.
Wolfgang said: "The contract ran out on putting it up on streaming services. So we've been working on getting it back, but there are some people involved who do not like that record and are not making it easy to get it back up. You can put it together. I hate to say it, because people will think I'm making stuff up, but it's, like, man, I'd love to have the record back up there, but he (vocalist David Lee Roth) doesn't like it and he's not working with us to get it back up there. So I hope people who like it have a physical version of it (laughs)."
A Different Kind Of Truth tracklisting:
"Tattoo"
"She's The Woman"
"You And Your Blues"
"China Town"
"Blood And Fire"
"Bullethead"
"As Is"
"Honeybabysweetiedoll"
"The Trouble With Never"
"Outta Space"
"Stay Frosty"
"Big River"
"Beats Workin'"
