‘Amnesty is Granted’: The lost Van Halen song written by Sammy Hagar
Despite their monumental impact, Van Halen seemed like a band destined to break up. While a lot of their issues stemmed from conflicts of interest and substance abuse, their inconsistency and inability to see eye-to-eye never really carried longterm potential, even if they were able to momentarily bench their challenges and take to the stage for one perfect explosion of musical excellence.
That said, the band did exercise more resilience than most. Even when David Lee Roth left, disbanding was never really in contention, even if it significantly impacted the dynamic and sound thereafter. Even the addition of Sammy Hagar didn’t prove to be a cure-all bandaid, and eventually, the members began to suffer at the hands of the same issues that nearly tore them apart.
When Hagar left, however, Van Halen’s success had already started to wane, with records like Balance struggling to maintain the hype and electricity garnered by earlier works like 5150. At this point, it seemed the only person carrying them forth was the guitar work of Eddie Van Halen, who rarely faltered, even when their broader sound and surrounding excitement started to fade.
And so Hagar left with the desire to go out and explore new territories as a solo artist. At least, that’s how one story goes. One—Hagar’s own—claims that he was forced to quit by Eddie, who called him up to give him the news bluntly. “I was told that I quit by Eddie,” he told Rolling Stone, explaining that his bandmate had said: “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.”
Nonetheless, Hagar got to work on Marching to Mars, his tenth record and first solo album post-Van Halen. Eddie had supported Hagar and played bass on his ninth album, I Never Said Goodbye, but Marching to Mars saw him enlisting more help from external musicians and including his version of ‘Amnesty is Granted’, a previously Meat Loaf-released Hagar original written when he was still in Van Halen.
Hagar had mixed feelings about the band while working on the album, particularly as some songs overlapped with his time among the musicians, and some paralleled his experiences when he felt most betrayed. ‘Little White Lie,’ for instance, spawned after he witnessed Eddie and Alex dismissing him on MTV, transforming a song about racism into a broader statement about anger and betrayal.
However, ‘Amnesty is Granted’ likely could have made it onto Balance or a future Van Halen record had it not enjoyed such success on Meat Loaf’s Welcome To The Neighborhood, or had he not discovered his bandmates saying negative things about him on television. This is evidenced by the awareness within the lyrics, which seems like a cry for togetherness, even amid complete disdain and despair, which is ultimately what pushed Hagar out of the band.
Many of the lines also propose questions about confusion and yearning and the slow yet frustrating loss of control when things at one point had seemed quite different. “Love’s an hourglass, it goes out wide, then it comes in closer,” he sings, “Time ticks away, it drifts away leaving empty shattered moments / Who said that love could last forever? / I’m growing tired of feeling like I do.” Evidently, the song tapped into Hagar’s experiences with the loss of love and himself while in the band, even if it was released as a solo piece.
