Popular SiriusXM host Eddie Trunk has revealed footage of himself on Eddie Van Halen’s autopsy special was archival.
For the record I did NOT participate in any way on the @eddievanhalen @ReelzChannel Autopsy show. As a matter of fact I passed & discouraged the UK based production company from doing it. The very brief clip of me in it is sourced from an old show.
— Eddie Trunk (@EddieTrunk) June 6, 2022
It’s always hard to lose. It’s especially hard to lose such an amazing opportunity. That was the case for Mitch Malloy, who auditioned to replace Sammy Hagar in Van Halen in the summer of 1996.
According to Malloy, Eddie told him he was in the band on his third day in the studio. But when Eddie, Michael Anthony and Alex Van Halen stepped onstage with their estranged singer David Lee Roth for the first time in 12 years at the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards, Mitch knew that his dream gig had fallen apart which totally killed any faith left within him.
Mitch Malloy stated (via Rolling Stone) the following as he recalled the story: “I’m sitting, watching TV there by myself. It wasn’t good. I think literally, my jaw dropped. So in that moment, I was shocked. And you know how sometimes as humans we just know some things? You just know it. You don’t have to say it. Nobody has to say anything. People just know things. And that moment that Roth walked out behind them, I knew it was over. I am not going to be in Van Halen. I just knew somehow. And so that was it for me. I was just like, ‘That’s it. This can’t happen now.’ I just knew it. It was just … a wall came down.”
Mitch continued: It just felt like it was over, somehow. It was like, ‘This can’t work now.’ Not because people won’t accept me. But there’s just something else going on that I didn’t even fully understand at the time. You know what I mean? It was like a knife sliced through and just, it was over. I think it’s the only time it’s ever happened to me in my life, where it was that definitive. And I had a lot going on at the time, aside from VAN HALEN. Real promise with my career moving forward. So it wasn’t, for me, my only thing. I wasn’t like, ‘Oh, my God! This has got to happen,’ kind of thing. Of course, I really did want it to happen. But who wouldn’t?”
As Mitch had suspected, he would not become the newest singer for Van Halen, but rather he would join the band, Great White.
