The 1990s band Sammy Hagar said he could never join: “Not after Van Halen”
There are hardly any other frontmen on this Earth who were up for having a good time more than Sammy Hagar.
Even though David Lee Roth gets most of the praise for being the party animal during Van Halen’s heyday, the reason why ‘The Red Rocker’ worked so well is because of how down-to-earth he felt every single time he got onstage. You would totally expect the guy to be offstage hanging out with the fans the minute that the show was over, but even as an easygoing guy that he was, Hagar knew that he needed to have some parameters over what band he was going to join.
Then again, it’s not out of the question for Hagar to play with everyone and anyone today whenever he has his jams out in Cabo Wabo. Everyone from Stephen Stills to Kenny Chesney to the members of Green Day has found their way into his all-star band more than a few times, and even though nothing was set in stone, Hagar usually liked to surround himself with people who were reasonably good.
He wasn’t going to settle for just a slouch when he lost Eddie Van Halen, so bringing in Joe Satriani was the next best thing when he started his solo career. But even if he was straight-ahead rock and roll most of the time, there’s a legion of metal fans that wouldn’t have existed were it not for Hagar getting the ball rolling. Montrose was the perfect hard rock band for their time, and while they had fans in everyone from the early Van Halen lineup to Iron Maiden, it wasn’t long before the next generation discovered them.
Hagar already had the opportunity of jamming with a few famous fans in his day, but getting the chance to work with Dimebag Darrell was definitely going to be a stretch. Pantera was certainly one of the greatest heavy metal bands in the world when they drafted in Phil Anselmo, but Hagar felt that they might have been a little bit too heavy for him to take when they asked him to join their band.
The Abbott Brothers had already struck out after Dimebag rejected Megadeth, but Hagar felt that joining the metal legends would have been too steep a jump, saying, “[Their manager] said Pantera, he said, wants me to be the lead singer of the band. And he asked me, ‘Would you be interested?’”
Adding, “And I said, ‘No, not after Van Halen. I’m not gonna join another band, especially covering for somebody else’, and this and that. And I brought it up to Vinnie one time. He didn’t remember it. But I don’t know if there’s any truth to that.”
Granted, it’s not like Darrell was lacking in the chops department after Hagar left Van Halen, either. Darrell looked up to the early version of the band, and even though he didn’t sound anything like Eddie, he had the same kind of distinct voice on the guitar that made everyone look on in awe at what the hell he was doing after every single one of his tunes.
And since Anselmo was known to be a far more grizzly singer than usual, getting someone with more melody would have been pretty interesting. After all, Pantera already started as a more melodic hard rock outfit when they were still teenagers, so maybe this could have been their excuse to make songs that called back to their old sound after working on the heaviest tunes of all time.
But when you look at Hagar’s process, his rejection of Pantera was the highest compliment that he could have paid to Eddie as well. ‘The Red Rocker’ did like how he was treated when he was asked to leave the band, but when you look at his solo career after he left the group, he still seemed to hold Eddie in the highest regard as one of the greatest guitarists to ever walk the Earth.
