Sammy Hagar has wondered if jealousy is the reason why Alex Van Halen hasn’t spoken to him in 21 years.
- READ MORE: Eddie Van Halen, 1955 – 2020: a colossus who turned guitar solos into a firework display
In 2022, Hagar said the drummer had completely cut him off, adding that “Alex has got a stick up his ass about something with me still.” Notably, Van Halen also left details of Hagar’s years in Van Halen out of recent memoir, Brothers, whose narrative ends before the departure of vocalist David Lee Roth.
Now, Hagar has spoken to Rolling Stone about their ongoing feud. “I dreamt about Alex the other night, man. It was crazy. And it was so friggin’ real,” he said. “I was saying, ‘What are you pissed off at me about, man? What the fuck? Now just tell me what your problem is. What did I do? Just tell me.’”
The interviewer wondered if it related to Hagar detailing “the worst period of Eddie’s life” in his own 2011 memoir, Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock, but Hagar dismissed this.
“I don’t think that’s it. And I’ve had this conversation with a few people, including [former Van Halen manager] Irving Azoff. I’ve asked him, ‘What’s the problem?’ And some people have said to me, ‘Oh, Cabo Wabo. At one time, Van Halen, when you built it, you guys were all partners in that. And then they didn’t want it anymore when it was losing money, and they gave it to you, and you turned it around and made hundreds of millions of dollars on it. And they’re angry. Alex is angry about that.’”
He added, “To that I said, ‘How the fuck could they be angry about that? They gave me the damn thing, they walked out on me, left me with it. And they made me indemnify them in case I got sued and lost everything. They made me sign off big time.’ And I’m going, ‘I hope it’s not that.’”
Later, Hagar wondered if it was related to the fact that Van Halen has been relatively inactive in music while he himself continues to tour.
“I think Al’s angry because I’m out doing it, and [bassist] Mike [Anthony] and I are out doing it, and he can’t,” he suggests. “He’s not a singer. He’s not a guitar player. He is not really a band leader. And he seems like he doesn’t want to play drums or can’t play drums anymore, and he can’t go write a new record. Alex wasn’t the songwriter in the band. He was the drummer. Eddie and I wrote the songs. Dave and Eddie wrote the songs, and so we can go out and do them.”
He continued: “I think that really bothers him that Mike and I are still out there doing it. I would feel bad. If I put myself in his shoes, I would feel terrible if I couldn’t do it anymore. But I’m the happiest guy out of all of them. That pisses people off in itself. Being too happy, people don’t like that.”
The interviewer countered with the suggestion that Van Halen’s health could be to blame, as well as the difficulty of playing without his brother following Eddie’s death in 2020.
“Yeah, I’d say so. And I’m okay with it. Al, you’re fine. Just leave me alone. I’ll leave you alone. Everything’s good. I’m making you money, by the way, Al. I’m out there selling Van Halen records and keeping the name alive, keeping the music alive.”
Hagar recently released a new single, ‘Encore, Thank You, Goodnight’, which includes a guitar lick that the late Eddie Van Halen showed him in a dream.
