Sammy Hagar Thinks There Will Be a Van Halen Reunion
Will some version of Van Halen ever play together again? One of the band’s former singers, Sammy Hagar, sure seems to think so!
In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Hagar says that even though he hasn’t spoken to Eddie or Alex Van Halen since their last tour ended in 2004… and even the band’s last tour with David Lee Roth concluded in 2015… and even though David Lee Roth previously said the band is “finished”… that “Until Ed or Alex Van Halen die, they’re not finished.” He re-emphasizes that there’s at least some truth to the rumor that the band was trying to put something together with original bassist Michael Anthony for 2019, before Eddie Van Halen was diagnosed with throat cancer. But he also says that “I heard [Eddie] got it together” — meaning the revered guitarist has recovered from the cancer — and boldly predicts that “if there’s concerts next year, Van Halen will probably be on tour next year”:
“I foresee it happening. I’m not trying to plant a seed like I know something is happening. I know nothing. I just know what I know in my heart and my head, which is that it has to happen. Whether it’s Sam and Dave or not, I don’t know that either. But I know that Eddie and I are not done. If enough water goes under the bridge before we die, it’ll happen. It has to. God is going to slap us both around if he has to.”
Hagar also describes his ideal version of a reunion tour:
“My dream tour is the Sam and Dave tour with Ed, Al and Mike. Let [Wolfgang Van Halen, Eddie’s son who replaced Anthony for the DLR reunion] put his band together and open. I have a son, Andrew Hagar, who makes great music. Let Andrew open, let Wolfie play with his band in the middle and then have the Sam and Dave tour where we do an hour each. An hour with Dave songs and an hour with me.”
What… no set with Gary Cherone? What are you thinking, Sammy?!?!
Kidding aside… Hagar and Diamond Dave toured together in 2002, and notoriously didn’t get along, though. So Hagar admits that his fantasy line-up will probably never occur:
“If Dave wants to come out together, we can do that. But of course he wouldn’t want to do that, so I couldn’t care less if I even saw the guy. The truth of the matter is, for the fans, and just for me to be a part of that, I want to to walk out there every night and do the best of Van Hagar and have him do the best of that era. That’s as good a tour as anyone would ever do on the planet and it’s for the Van Halen fans. I love making people happy. And it would make me happy.”
I think most fans would concur — that is as good a tour as anyone would ever do on the planet. A tour featuring Anthony back in the fold and David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar could charge pretty much whatever it wanted for tickets and people would re-mortgage their homes to pay if they had to. It might even outdo the Guns N’ Roses reunion tour, which became the third-highest grossing tour ever and made GN’R the twelfth largest economy in the world. I would think the lure of being able to purchase his own small country would be enough to get DLR on board, but who knows, maybe the dude’s ego really is just too big to make it work.
Regardless, I hope Sammy is right, at least about the band finally playing shows with Roth and Michael Anthony. That version of the band — the original version of the band, with whom the world first fell in love — hasn’t played together since 1984. It would be nice to see at least a few final shows before one of the members dies.
You can read the entire interview with Hagar here.
