“You would’ve ruined it”: The one regret Sammy Hagar had about being in Van Halen and what everyone gets wrong
As daunting as it might appear to be, there probably isn’t any greater honour than being asked to join a band that has already had plenty of worldwide success to replace an outgoing member, and when Van Halen lost their frontman in 1985, they had to find the right person to call upon to take his place.
While David Lee Roth had been an integral part of the band’s rise to fame, he wasn’t satisfied with the direction that the band found themselves taking on their landmark sixth album, 1984, and was particularly aggrieved by the fact that synths had been introduced as a major aspect of songs like ‘Jump’. Even though the song was a major hit that saw them gain attention outside of the heavy metal and hard rock world that they’d been active in, it simply wasn’t what Roth had envisioned himself doing with the band after a decade.
Step forward Sammy Hagar, who had previously been plying his trade with hard rock outfit Montrose, and had had some solo success with songs like ‘I Can’t Drive 55’, who, after a few failed attempts to recruit a new vocalist, was brought on board as the permanent replacement for Roth. The band had allegedly tried to bring in Daryl Hall, who was still active in the pop world in his duo alongside John Oates, but due to conflicting schedules, Hagar emerged from the most unexpected place to cement himself as the primary candidate.
Hagar shared a producer with Van Halen in Ted Templeton, but despite this musical connection, it was actually the mechanic that both Eddie Van Halen and Hagar used who introduced the pair to one another, and they immediately knew that the connection would be right for the band when they entered the studio together for the first time.
Their new frontman immediately slipped into the fold as though nothing had changed at all, and the band continued to have mainstream success with a new vocalist who possessed the same amount of power and theatricality that Roth had in the same role.
However, Hagar’s first tenure was marred by controversy and several bust-ups between members. His time as the frontman of Van Halen came to an end in 1996 after 11 years, when they briefly chose to reunite with Roth, but despite the acrimonious separation, he doesn’t reflect on his time with the band as being a negative thing that he harbours any ill feelings about.
Recalling how he was instantly impressed with Eddie Van Halen’s musical ability and desire to add more elements to the group’s sound, Hagar told WRIF Detroit in 2025. “He really wanted to expand as a musician,” he explained, noting that he was wowed by his keyboard playing in particular.
Adding, “To me, I think that’s what his dream would’ve been, and it was always held back by the record companies and the people around him. I think we would’ve broke out of that within a year and started doing some really crazy stuff.”
However, while there was pushback from the label and Van Halen’s peers, it was their core fanbase that Hagar noted as being the ones who were most aggrieved by the change. “Now, all the hardcore Van Halen fans are out there saying, ‘No, no. You would’ve ruined it. We want ‘Poundcake’,” he claimed. “But it’s all good, man. It’s all good. That’s the only regret I have.”
For someone who departed from the band twice due to relationship breakdowns, it’s quite remarkable that this is the only thing that Hagar ever regretted about being in Van Halen, and given that they came so close to actually realising this dream that he had for the band, it could have been the perfect project for him at one point.
