Sammy Hagar‘s The Best of All Worlds Las Vegas residency kicked off Wednesday night at the Park MGM. The Red Rocker and his band, which includes guitarist Joe Satriani, bassist Michael Anthony, drummer Kenny Aronoff, and keyboardist Rai Thistlethwayte, stuck largely to the setlist they brought around to North American amphitheaters last summer, with some very notable surprises.
The first one took place at the top of the show, when they opened with “Encore, Thank You, Goodnight,” the brand-new song that Hagar claimed he wrote with Eddie Van Halen in a dream. “This was one hundred percent a communication from the beyond,” Hagar told Rolling Stone in April. “There is no question about it. I dream about Eddie all the time, quite honestly.”
The second one came near the end of “Ain’t Talking’ bout Love,” which Anthony traditionally sings by himself, when Hagar sauntered onto the stage near the end alongside unannounced guest Kesha. “Kesha in the house!” he told the crowd as she grabbed a mic and sang the “hey, hey, hey!” refrain along with Hagar and Anthony.
Shortly afterwards, the group kicked into “Amsterdam” from the 1995 Van Halen LP Balance. It hadn’t appeared in a Hagar solo show since 2007. They dug way deeper into the past at the very end of the night by breaking out “Love Walks In” from Van Halen’s 1986 album 5150. Even though it was a big hit, Hagar last sang the power ballad at the 1993 Bridge School Benefit.
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This was the first of nine Best of All World shows at the Park MGM. “We play on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and there’ll be about three songs at least different each night,” Hagar recently told Rolling Stone. “At first, we thought that we’d change out the deep tracks, and then we realized that Van Halen doesn’t have deep tracks. Every album sold 5, 6, 7 million records. There’s no deep tracks on those records. We have what we call semi-deep tracks, but the deepest track you could play off of a Van Halen album, I play them live, I can hold the microphone up, and the audience knows every word.”
Hagar has no touring plans beyond the Vegas residency. And at age 77, he doesn’t expect to be out on the road much longer. “If I were 60 years old, I would take this band and this show all over the world,” he told Rolling Stone. “I wouldn’t miss one place. I would tour for three or four years, whatever it took. But I can’t do that. At my age, I know I’ll break down. I know something will go wrong. I won’t be able to sing. I won’t be able to fuckin’ walk, or something’s going to prevent me from going on, and I don’t want to do that to the fans.”
