In a new interview with the Los Angeles Times, Sammy Hagar once again spoke about how he mended his relationship with the late Eddie Van Halen. Prior to the guitarist’s October 2020 passing after a long battle with cancer, Sammy said that the two were fortunately able to reconnect thanks to the great comedian George Lopez.
“I miss the guy so much,” Sammy said. “Thank God we connected towards the end, otherwise I’d be heartbroken. I am anyway. But it was so important to me that we did connect in that last year. Eddie said to me, ‘Don’t tell anyone about us talking because I don’t want to be answering questions about rumors of a reunion.’ But he said, ‘Next year, we’re gonna get together — we’re gonna make some noise. Let me beat this shit, and let’s do it.’ He goes, ‘Please don’t talk to anyone — not even Al [VAN HALEN drummer and Eddie‘s brother Alex Van Halen].’ I’ve never said that to anyone, and I bet you Al is gonna have a fucking fit. But Eddie said, ‘Don’t even talk to Al about this.’ I said, ‘Ed, I don’t talk to Al.'”
Sammy also explained his previous comment that “it hasn’t been the same since Eddie died.” He said: “Things aren’t the same without that hope. After the 2004 tour, with Eddie being in the condition he was in, I was very angry with him. But in my heart I was hoping he would heal and would become the Eddie that I loved and knew from when I was in the band — from the good times. I was hoping that would happen and that we’d get together and play someday. And not only for the fame and fortune, which of course I’ve never gotten back to that level since. That was the pinnacle of my career. But more than that was the creativity and the energy we had together writing songs like ‘Right Now’ and ‘When It’s Love’ and ‘Love Walks In’ and ‘Top Of The World’. He brought something out of me that just ain’t the same without him. At my age, you sit there and wonder: If Eddie was alive, could I reach that again? Now that dream is gone.”
Hagar replaced David Lee Roth in VAN HALEN in 1985 and recorded four studio albums with the band — “5150”, “OU812”, “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge” and “Balance” — all of which topped the U.S. chart.
Sammy, Eddie, Alex and bassist Michael Anthony last teamed up in 2004 for a U.S. summer tour. In exchange for taking part in the tour, Anthony reportedly had to agree to take a pay cut and sign away his rights to the band name and logo.
In his autobiography, “Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock”, Hagar slammed Eddie, saying the guitarist was unkempt, hunched over, frighteningly skinny, drinking wine straight out of a bottle, missing part of his tongue (after a cancer scare) and several teeth. He told an interviewer in 2012: “What happened on that reunion tour in ’04 was some of the most miserable, back-stabbing dark crap I’ve ever been involved with my whole life.”
In a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone, Eddie questioned an “embellished” portion of “Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock” that painted the guitarist as a “very angry drunk” during the group’s 2004 reunion tour.
In November 2020, Eddie‘s son Wolfgang revealed that his father had contemplated a “kitchen-sink tour” that would have included Anthony, as well as vocal turns from both Hagar and Roth. There was even talk about bringing back Gary Cherone, who sang with VAN HALEN on one poorly received album, 1998’s “Van Halen III”.
Eddie died at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, California. The iconic VAN HALEN axeman passed away from complications due to cancer, his son confirmed.
Hagar previously talked about his relationship with Eddie Van Halen during a July 2021 Instagram Live chat with Washington Post reporter Geoff Edgers. He said at the time: “When I [reconnected] with Eddie four or five months before he died, we got together and we kind of made amends. It wasn’t, like, ‘Oh, you’ve gotta apologize for this.’ When I talked to him the first time after all of ’em years, I said, ‘Hey, Eddie, I’ve been trying to get a hold of you. I called your brother.’ He [said], ‘Why didn’t you call me?’ I’m going, ‘Well, it’s a good point.’ And I said, ‘I wanted to make sure you were cool with me getting in contact. I didn’t want you to call me some names and hang up the phone and stir the whole thing back up.’ And he said, ‘No, no, no.’ He said, ‘I love you, man.’ And I realized at that point that he had elevated his whole thing. He had come to peace with everything. He knew he was sick. And it was so great to contact the guy when he was in that state of mind. If I had got him six months earlier, it probably would have been, ‘You said this. You said that.’ He was totally above it all and elevated. And, man, I’m so glad that that happened at that time, because if it wouldn’t have, if we had never made peace and he would have passed the way he did, I would feel terrible. I wouldn’t be able to talk to you about it. I wouldn’t know what to say. So I’m so grateful that we connected. And he said, ‘Hey, let’s make some noise.’ He goes, ‘I’ve got a lot of work to do on myself this year. You ain’t gonna believe it. I’ve been fighting this stuff for 15 years. And now I’ve got this big thing on my neck and my throat right now. I’ve gotta get it all straightened out. And next year, you and I have gotta make some noise. We made some great music together, and I wanna do it again.’ I was just, like, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘Eddie, that ain’t what I’m calling you about. I’m calling about to see if you’re okay.’ But hearing those things really made me able to handle his death. ‘Cause it’s still tough as hell. I miss the guy.”
Hagar also discussed the musical chemistry he shared with Van Halen, saying: “We wrote all those songs together. It ain’t, like, ‘Oh, we wrote a couple of songs together.’ We wrote every VAN HALEN song from my era, from ’85 to ’95, and then three more on the [2003-05] reunion thing. We wrote all them songs together. You don’t write songs like that with a real musician and real musicians getting together — you don’t phone that in. You don’t do it by e-mail. No. We sat in rooms together, him and I, and wrote those songs and went and sang them, and he coached me through things he might hear… I miss that. There’s nobody like that.”
Source: blabbermouth.net
