Sammy Hagar on why he was forced out of Van Halen: “I was told that I quit”
Band relationships tend to be like marriage relationships half the time. Even though you might not be getting married or having children together, seeing the same person every day on the road and then having to come together to create something from nothing in the studio means having a closer relationship than any two people really should be. Most bands are bound for divorce court, though, and Sammy Hagar claimed that he never had a say in the matter when he left Van Halen.
By the end of Hagar’s time in the band, it didn’t look like the band was the hard rock juggernaut they once were. They could still play their asses off, but it’s not like Balance was raking in the same sales that 5150 did nearly a decade before. Considering the band’s biggest single from the record was ‘Can’t Stop Lovin’ You’, it sounded like they were dangerously close to becoming a run-of-the-mill dad band were it not for Eddie’s trademark guitar licks.
All they needed was a break, but Hagar wasn’t pleased when he came down to work on the song ‘Humans Being’ for the movie Twister. Though the soundtrack may have done decent numbers and put Van Halen in the public consciousness for a few seconds, Hagar leaving the band came after one too many disagreements with Eddie.
It’s not like Hagar was totally in the right here, though. Considering both Eddie and Alex Van Halen were from the Netherlands, there’s a good chance that they didn’t want to work with the same guy who made tracks like ‘Amsterdam’, with lines about having nothing to do but smoke weed in their home country.
For Eddie, it was already the end of the line, leading to him calling up Hagar to let him know that the band did not want him in the group anymore. It may have seemed like the right time, but for Hagar, this came right the hell out of nowhere.
Speaking with Rolling Stone, Hagar thought that he was blindsided and forced out of the group, saying, “I was told that I quit by Eddie. The phone rings, and I’m laying there with my brand-new baby. He goes, ‘You know, you always just wanted to be a solo artist, so go ahead and be one. We’re going to get Dave back in the band’. And when he said that, I flew up out of bed like I’d seen a ghost”.
Then again, maybe Eddie just wanted an excuse to stretch out. He had already been confined to what Hagar and David Lee Roth wanted before him, so maybe the third time would be the charm with Gary Cherone. It turned out three was a black magic number for him, though, leading to one of the biggest fumbles in rock history on Van Halen III.
Although Hagar eventually got back together with the band for a brief reunion, he still insisted that he never wanted to leave in the first place, explaining, “It wasn’t like he said, ‘You’re fired’. He just said, ‘You’re quitting the band. You’re leaving the band. We’re moving on without you’. Whatever. It was not my call, whatsoever”.
That being said, Hagar was also willing to forgive and forget, eventually patching things up with Eddie and having a lot of kind words to say about his former bandmate after he passed away. The Hagar years of the band may be a distant memory, but who knows what could have been had the band been able to kiss and make up rather than fight and ask questions after the fact?
