3 bass players Eddie Van Halen praised in the 80s

During his career, Eddie Van Halen played alongside only two bassists as a member of Van Halen: Michael Anthony, the band’s longest-serving bassist, and his son, Wolfgang Van Halen, who, like his father, is a multi-instrumentalist. Over the decades, however, Eddie also had the opportunity to perform with many other outstanding bass players while jamming or making guest appearances on stage with other artists. In the 1980s, he met several remarkable bassists and later mentioned three in particular whom he greatly admired.

3 bass players Eddie Van Halen praised in the 80s

Billy Sheehan

“I always have a lot to say to Michael Anthony (laughs). I always give Mike ideas. (Have you played bass on previous albums?) No, but I play bass all the time. Actually, I play fretless quite a bit. Lately I’ve written songs on bass. (I like) even, what’s his face, who plays with our old bud (Dave Lee Roth)-Billy Sheehan! He’s good. I’ve known him for years. His band Talas toured with us. Steve Vai is good, too. I’ve got no beef with him (laughs). He’s a great guitarist,” he told Guitar Player magazine in 1987.

Billy was a good friend of Van Halen, and according to him, Eddie approached him on three different occasions about joining the band, but it was never an official offer. “Though I spoke with Eddie Van Halen on 3 different occasions where he asked me about being in his band, the offer never came through. They never followed through on any sort of an official offer. Therefore I never ‘turned down’ any offer, because it eventually fell through,” he said.

Curiously, Sheehan also said that he is probably the only person who had the chance to play with all the members of Van Halen from all eras. “So at that point (when he played with Sammy Hagar at one show), I would actually become the only guy who ever played with every member of Van Halen. I’ve played with Mike, Al, and Ed, played with Dave, played with Gary Cherone, played with Sammy…”

He continued:

“Then Wolfie, I didn’t actually play music with but one time on a flight home from a benefit show I did along with Van Halen, he picked up his son on the way and he wanted to sleep on a flight home, so I played with his son.”

“I got some paper and we were doing number games, and drawing animals, and things like that. Ed was sleeping, he wakes up, looking over and he goes, ‘Yeah, you’d make a good father.’ ‘Ed, go back to sleep, we’re good.’ So technically, I played with Wolfie. So now I played with every member, I’m very honored,” he said in an interview with Breaking Absolutes in 2021.

Besides having been a member of Talas and David Lee Roth’s band, Sheehan is also known for being part of Mr. Big and other groups like Winery Dogs and Sons of Apollo.

Jeff Berlin

Jeff Berlin was another bassist Eddie Van Halen admired, and the two had the chance to play together once. That happened in the 1980s, when Jeff was a member of Allan Holdsworth’s band. Holdsworth was one of the guitarists Eddie admired the most. Curiously, when remembering that moment, Eddie said he had no idea what he should play and Berlin was whispering him the chords. “I did a semi-seminar with Allan Holdsworth one day. It was right after I played at the Roxy (In Los Angeles) with Allan. He spent the night at my house and the next day he had to do a seminar at G.I.T. so I brought my guitar along and played with Jeff Berlin and Allan and Gary Husband (Drummer).”

“It was a lot of fun considering I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I was playing along with Allan’s stuff and Jeff Berlin was whispering the chords to me. I ended up playing chromatically the whole time. But I surprised myself. I freaked myself out because I landed on my feet. I love doing that too, just going out and playing in weird keys and stumbling and landing on your feet. It’s a great feeling. It’s like doing a backward flip off the high dive and landing right,” he told Steve Rosen in 1983.

Jeff Berlin has been praised by many rock stars over the years, including Rush’s Geddy Lee. Although his career has been primarily focused on jazz, he has also played with artists such as Bill Bruford and Allan Holdsworth, whose music leaned more toward jazz fusion and experimentation. Interestingly, Jeff said that Eddie Van Halen once approached him about the possibility of joining Van Halen, but he turned the offer down.

He said:

“(After playing together) Eddie Van Halen and I became friends at that time. I was invited to play in the band, an invitation which I turned down. But I think they wouldn’t have had me anyway. I don’t think David Lee Roth felt I was of an attitude to have in that band. But nonetheless, Eddie did make me that offer and I did consider it.”

“For reasons I won’t go into, I didn’t accept it, except to say I would love to play with him today. We’re older gentlemen. He’s, to me, as great a musician as John Coltrane in that Coltrane changed everything in the way that the saxophone was viewed and the manner of playing, he originated everything. So did Eddie Van Halen.”

“He is one of the great and unique talents that I’ve ever heard on guitar. And always felt that somebody like myself, a Billy Sheehan, someone of a more adventuresome nature, might make even Van Halen sound greater. Although I do admire what his son has done. I am quite a fan of Michael Anthony having felt that he was, even still, the perfect bass player for Van Halen. No doubt about it,” Jeff Berlin said in an interview with Make Weird Music in 2016.

Percy Jones

The final one mentioned by Eddie was Percy Jones, Welsh bass guitarist best known for being a member of the Jazz Rock group Brand X, which had Phil Collins as their drummer in the late 70s. In the early 1980s, after Van Halen had already released several albums, Michael Anthony was asked by Jas Obrecht which of his recordings with the band was his favorite. He chose “Push Comes to Shove,” explaining that he played in Percy Jones’ style on the song after Eddie Van Halen introduced him to the bassist’s music.

“Let’s see. From the new album, I like ‘Mean Street’ for a straight-ahead rocker. And I really liked doing ‘Push Comes to Shove’, because Ed turned me on to Percy Jones, the bassist in Brand X. I really got into his style of playing. So at the very beginning of the song I copied a little of his stuff. Playing that was really fun, real different from anything we’ve ever done before. But it’s still got the Van Halen flavor. When we first heard it back, we’d just go,Wow!” he said. Besides the albums he released with Brand X, Percy also put out several solo albums and collaborative records.