Michael Anthony Says Journey Tried to Kick Van Halen off Tour

Michael Anthony claims that Journey tried to kick Van Halen off their tour “every week” when the bands were on the road together in 1978.

During a recent conversation with Sirius XM’s Eddie Trunk, Anthony looked back on his favorite tours with Van Halen, noting that the ‘78 trek was especially memorable.

“We were just freaking fired up so much that first tour in ‘78 with Dave [Lee Roth],” the bassist recalled, referring to it as a tour he’ll “never forget.”

At the time, Journey was the headliner, with Montrose occupying the second slot on the bill. Van Halen, who had released their self-titled debut album that February, was the opening act. Despite their early billing, the rapidly rising rock stars regularly whipped audiences into a frenzy – much to the chagrin of the headliners who had to go on after them.

“They were trying to kick us off the tour every week on that one,” Anthony recalled. “But we were selling tickets. The record company kept going, ‘No, you can't kick them off the tour.’”

Van Halen Woke Journey 'the F--- Up'

In a 2020 interview with UCR, former Journey singer Steve Perry looked back on that same 1978 tour with Van Halen.

“Now, you’ve got to remember that Eddie [Van Halen] and the group were on their first tour with Journey and we brought them out to open at the 3,000 seaters we were doing at that time,” Perry explained. “They cleaned our clock plenty of times and woke us the fuck up pretty quick. They were so focused and so on fire that they were just relentless. That was the most musical relentlessness that I’d ever seen.”

In a separate conversation with UCR, Journey guitarist Neal Schon also noted the ruthless nature of the tour.

“It was a competitive guitar bill,” Schon admitted. “And all I can tell you is that at that time, Eddie was red hot, but I was jamming hard, Ronnie [Montrose] was jamming hard, we were all jamming hard, you know? [We were] holding onto our own, but I was glad I wasn’t coming after Van Halen at that point, that’s all I can tell you.”