He Was This Close to Fronting Van Halen. He Finally Got to Play Live With a Member

Thirty years ago, Mitch Malloy’s dreams were shattered when he came within an inch of landing the role as Van Halen’s lead singer, only to lose the position to Extreme’s Gary Cherone. But he finally got the chance to live out his Van Halen fantasies at the Vegas Rocks! Magazine Awards on September 20 when Michael Anthony welcomed him onstage to sing “Ain’t Talkin’ ’bout Love” with an all-star band that included former Guns N’ Roses guitarists Tracii Guns and Gilby Clarke, former Slaughter drummer Blas Elias, and one-time Journey lead singer Jeff Scott Soto.

“Mad Anthony Bassman is just as great and nice now as he’s always been,” Malloy wrote on Facebook following the performance. “So great to see you again kind sir. And even better to rock with you again and this time in front of a crowd.”

Back in 1996, Malloy’s audition with the band was so successful that they told him he landed the job. [Eddie Van Halen] put his hands on my shoulders, hugged me, kissed me on both cheeks, said, ‘Congratulations!” Malloy told Rolling Stone in 2021. “Turns and walks out of the room. I go back up, sit down again at the console and giggling … my body’s actually giggling. I can’t control it. I’m giggling like a 12-year-old girl, and I actually uttered the words, ‘I’m in Van Halen.'”

In the weeks that followed, Malloy was blindsided when the group appeared with David Lee Roth at the MTV Video Music Awards without letting him know in advance. Convinced this meant he was doomed, Malloy sent the group a letter formally passing on the opportunity to join the band. “Ed called me to apologize,” Malloy said. “He said that he was sorry and he mostly talked about how horrible it was with Dave and that they got into a huge fight…To be honest, when I pulled out, they didn’t come after me. They could have. They didn’t go, ‘Oh, please, oh, please. We’ll never lie to you again.’ There was none of that. It was done. It was over.” (A recording of Malloy singing “Panama” with Van Halen during his audition has leaked out.)

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Van Halen hasn’t existed in any form since the end of the group’s 2015 tour. The closest approximation is Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony’s recent Best of All Worlds tours, featuring guitarist Joe Satriani and drummer Kenny Aronoff, which focuses heavily on music from the Van Hagar era. But there are no plans to keep it going after their residency at the Park MGM in Vas Vegas on September 26.

“I’m kinda done with being the Van Halen guy,” Hagar recently told Eddie Trunk. “I mean, I’ll always keep some of it in my show. But originally, the Best of All Worlds tour with Joe Satriani, was supposed to only be once and that was in 2024. But it was so damn successful that we got the [Las Vegas] residency, which is what I really wanted…I’ve got so much Montrose, those are great songs and fun stuff, I’ve got fans that have been following me since then. You know, the red album [1977’s Sammy Hagar], the red rocker era, pre-Van Halen, the Geffen years. I want to do so many things, I don’t want to just go out there and just do Van Halen.”