Sammy Hagar reveals David Lee Roth “went AWOL” after tour invite
Sammy Hagar has revealed that the possibility of David Lee Roth joining the Best of All Worlds tour is at an all-time low. He claims his Van Halen predecessor “went AWOL” after an offer was made for them to tour together.
Hagar began his hotly-anticipated Best of All Worlds Tour on July 13th at the THINK Financial Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach, Florida, and the run of dates will conclude on August 31st in St. Louis. The jaunt was announced in November last year, and features the former Van Halen and Montrose frontman performing a host of classics with the band’s bassist Michael Anthony, as well as Jason Bonham and Joe Satriani.
Despite featuring many famous Van Halen tracks, the participants have been careful not to label it a tribute tour to the American outfit, as original frontman Roth, drummer Alex Van Halen, and the late guitarist Eddie’s son Wolfgang Van Halen are not involved. The iconic metal group’s pioneering guitarist and leader, Eddie Van Halen, died from cancer in 2020, which ended the band, as the surviving members knew they could not go on without him.
Now, Hagar – who joined Van Halen in 1985 after the acrimonious departure of Roth – has revealed that after extending an invitation to Roth to join him on stage to play a couple of the band’s older hits, his predecessor “went AWOL”.
After Hagar announced the tour and invited Roth, he initially expressed interest. However, after the former clarified that the offer was only to guest on a song or two rather than join them for the entire tour, Roth allegedly went quiet. Performing older Van Halen tracks is a significant move for Hagar, as he refused to do so when he joined the band, as they all wanted to put their past endeavours behind them.
“He went AWOL,” Hagar explained on a recent chat on The Eddie Trunk Podcast. “After (clarifying the offer), he just kind of went to sleep on it, which is fine. I don’t need Roth antagonising me.”
However, Hagar maintained that the door is still not closed to a Roth appearance on the Best of All Worlds tour, despite being somewhat disparaging about his personality, which he has done so more explicitly in the past.
“If he really wanted to come out and play music, sing a song and be real and not try to pull some crazy whacked-out stuff,” Hagar said. “You know, the guy’s unpredictable. And God bless him, he’s been an entertainer his whole life and he’s a showman and he likes to upstage people and that’s been his game. And so, we’re just not into that.”
“I would love him to come and sing ‘Jump’ at the end of this show,” he added. “Just you come out and sing the fucker instead of me.”
Additionally, Hagar noted they are performing some material from Van Halen’s early chapter such as ‘Ain’t Talkin’ ‘bout Love’, ‘Panama’ and ‘Jump’, but feels they don’t want to overdo it with songs from that era. Elsewhere in the chat, the ‘Red Rocker’ revealed he’d invested $1.5 million of his personal funds into the tour.
It’s not just Hagar from Van Halen who has discussed not being on speaking terms with Roth. In April this year, Michael Anthony revealed that his last conversation with the charismatic showman was about “a possible reunion thing”, which failed to come to fruition.
Notably, Hagar and Roth have toured together in the past. In the summer of 2002, they embarked on the widely successful Sam and Dave tour and saw the pair alternate as opening acts. While this would eventually lead to Hagar’s reunion with Van Halen the following year, it also made him realise just how different he and Roth are as people.
“I thought that tour would be really cool, and it wasn’t,” Hagar later reflected. “He [Roth] was so pompous and demanding. He’s a strange guy.”
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