David Lee Roth vs Sammy Hagar: The story of the feud nobody ever wanted
The antagonism between David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar stands as one of rock’s most infamous, as the two musicians have been pitted against one another over the last four decades in a rivalry to determine who is the better Van Halen frontman.
Such contentions stem from Van Halen’s early beginnings, with their original singer, Roth, at the helm. In 1972, while in his late teens, Roth was singing in the Red Ball Jets, an R&B-influenced rock band, with whom he occasionally rented their PA sound system to another local Los Angeles band, Mammoth (soon-to-be Van Halen), for a mere $10 a night. The Van Halen brothers, Eddie and Alex, eventually enlisted Roth as their lead singer, after two lacklustre auditions, and two years later, they became Van Halen.
The years that followed saw the band shrouded in classic rock ‘n’ roll excess: Roth’s persona both on-stage and off was one of hedonism with partying, women and drinking, which eventually came to define Van Halen’s image. As Van Halen dominated the charts over the next decade, this idea became increasingly synonymous with who the band were – or, rather, who they were perceived to be.
When it was announced that Roth would be leaving Van Halen after 11 years, in 1985, Eddie offered an infamous goodbye to Rolling Stone: “12 years of my life, putting up with his bullshit.”
Later, he apologised: “I slagged him in the press because I was pissed and I was hurt. The thing was, Dave is a very creative guy and working with him was no problem. It was living with the guy,” Eddie explained to Rolling Stone in 1986. “And that’s what I meant by all the years of putting up with his bullshit. I didn’t mean musically. But, boy, it just freaked me out. He left us hanging.”
After Eddie considered the idea of having a rotation of singers lend their vocals on a new album, with him listing the likes of Patty Smyth and Joe Cocker as potential features, the Van Halen brothers decided to continue the band, as it once was. Once the mention of singer Sammy Hagar casually came to Eddie’s attention – he’d been a fan of Hagar’s, as well, from his work in the crunch-rock band Montrose – the idea to have him step in as their frontman came to fruition.
A fateful jam session at Eddie’s home recording studio in Los Angeles sealed the deal: “Our jaws just dropped,” the guitarist recalled of Hagar’s skills, as he began with improvising lines on an unfinished song, “After 20 minutes, we all hugged and kissed and said, ‘Fuckin’ A, here we go.’”
Hagar’s showmanship was not too dissimilar to Roth’s, in its own way: Hagar was known for being positively erratic on-stage, joking with the audience and comically putting on various clothing items thrown at him. From his point of view, as he detailed to Rolling Stone, his role as the new frontman of Val Halen was to bring a sense of joy that was sorely missed in the years that preceded him.
“I like being happy, and these guys have been unhappy for a long time,” he mused. “They’re used to coming in, everybody trying to hold each other back. It was a real mess toward the end.”
At the beginning of his tenure with Van Halen, Hagar tried to remain as neutral as possible on the subject of Roth. As he told Rolling Stone, he’d initially wanted to meet with Roth and hear his side of the story of Van Halen, before he joined the fold. “I’m hearing it from these guys, and not that I disbelieve them, but I’d just like to shake hands with Roth and say, ‘Hey, we’re two grown men, life goes on. I had a nice solo career, you’ll probably have a great one yourself.’”
Hagar offered. “But I doubt he really wants to talk to me. I think he’s got more against me than I got against him.”
The two singers would embark on years of unwelcome comparisons to one another and comments on each other’s talents, as musicians, in a decades-long, contrived “feud” that was never really a feud, to begin with. Rather, it seems to be a case of inevitable semi-discomfort, as the two talents attempted (and struggled, somewhat) to exist under the mutual umbrella of a legendary act. It also did not help either party’s case that their personalities were quite different: both were showmen, in their own right, but they clashed in their differing ideas of bravado, on-stage and off. In the summer of 2002, their tensions were set aside for Song for Song, the Heavyweight Champs of Rock and Roll tour, when both Hagar and Roth co-headlined a tour together.
The theatrics of their supposed “feud” saw a coin toss determined that Roth would close the tour’s opening date, with alternating opening and closing slots to follow a 21-date run. Hagar claimed in his autobiography, Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock, that he posed the idea to Roth of singing together, to “make it a friendly thing,” but was rejected.
“He envisioned something more along the lines of WWF Smackdown,” Hagar wrote.
“I was open to all sorts of crazy ideas,” he wrote, explaining that he and his manager, Irving Azoff, conceptualised the tour “just to piss off Van Halen and get the fans worked up”. At a press conference in Los Angeles, ahead of the tour, Roth explained the concept of the tour from his point of view.
“Sam and I are like fraternity brothers that have been through the same shitty hazing,” he said. “There’s a rivalry between us, so the audience gets the absolute best out of both of us. You have to think of it as two title fights with no undercard.”
Over the course of the tour, however, the pair’s tensions grew stronger to the point where they would physically avoid one another. The two final dates were cancelled on account of Hagar’s illness, but it also marked the end of the sole attempt to have any true reconciliation between him and Roth.
The ongoing subject of a “feud” is one that Hagar broached in 2021, asserting that in the midst of the fleeting comments and references to one another, there was no severe animosity on his end. “Him and I don’t even have a feud. To be honest with you, I have no problem with Dave,” Hagar expressed on The Mike & Carla Morning Show.
Adding, “I don’t know what he’s got going with me, but I think he always feels competitive. So I think he feels like he has to raise his flag, like, ‘I’m Van Halen.’”
Hagar then explained that his solo career before joining Van Halen, with Montrose, and post-Van Halen, with the supergroup Chickenfoot in the early-to-mid-2000s, is fulfilling enough for him. ”Dave has got Van Halen, so I think he has to hold on to that kind of tight,” Hagar said. “But I don’t care about that. If someone said, ‘Oh, I never knew you [were] in Van Halen,’ I’d say, ‘Eh…’”
The “feud” between Hagar and Roth, however, manufactured by media attention and fan fervour, can be surmised as years of tension and contrasting egos going largely unresolved. There may be no definitive answer to who the “better” Van Halen frontman may be, but as it stands, the rivalry between the two will perhaps always remain.
