The potential Van Halen song Sammy Hagar hated: “This is an insult”
Most artists getting into a band need to know the meaning of the word compromise. The amount of egos swirling around just one group is usually enough to build up some tension before anyone has played a note, so when one of your fellow bandmates starts critiquing a song, it feels like watching them try to say something mean about your child. And even with all of the goodwill that Sammy Hagar built up as a member of Van Halen, Eddie remembered that there was a potentially great piece that the singer refused to participate in.
Coming from where they started, though, the thought of anyone not getting along in the group feels like a pipe dream. The whole appeal of Van Halen during the Hagar years was how easygoing everything was as if they were all finally relieved not to do with the massive frontman antics of David Lee Roth anymore.
Now, the hard rock legends could just write music because they wanted to, but that didn’t mean they didn’t get into some pitfalls along the way. Eddie famously hated the lyrics to the song ‘Amsterdam’ off of Balance and even made Hagar change some of the words to ‘Don’t Tell Me What Love Can Do’ because he thought they needed a bit more attitude.
After the group came together one last time for ‘Humans Being’, the release of a greatest hits album led to Hagar either quitting or being fired, depending on who you ask, since he thought that the group needed one more great record before thinking about putting a best-of collection. This is ironic because the next Hagar-fronted version of the band only came together because of the greatest hits package, The Best of Both Worlds.
But that’s not where the Hagar story was supposed to end. Though ‘Humans Being’ was the last new track he worked on in the 1990s, the group was also working with Glen Ballard on a song called ‘Between Us Two’, which was meant to be the start of the next wave of Van Halen material.
While Ballard had a decent track record working with pop acts like Alanis Morrissette and even working magic for Aerosmith later, Eddie remembered Hagar having a negative reaction to working with the piece, telling Eruption, “Everyone thought it had amazing potential. Sammy called Mike [Anthony] one Sunday afternoon and said, ‘I heard Glen has some great ideas for the song.’ Then he called me that evening, and suddenly, he started screaming at me, saying, ‘This is a fucking insult! I ain’t gonna sing someone else’s bullshit.’”
Even though the group tried to compromise by having Hagar come down to the studio to rewrite the lyrics, it may have just been one step too far. Hagar already had to deal with Eddie forcing his way onto his lyric sheet, so this might have just been like him asking the guitarist to play a certain lick for one part of the song.
But the writing was on the wall before the song even started. Looking at both sides of Hagar’s departure, it doesn’t really feel like any one person is the bad guy. This was just a case of some good friends who had slowly started to drift apart before suddenly snapping at the very end.
