The album Sammy Hagar said should have never been made
When Sammy Hagar first joined Van Halen, he had a very specific agenda for what he wanted to do.
The hard rock juggernauts had become one of the biggest touring acts of all time thanks to the cartoonish antics of David Lee Roth, but since ‘The Red Rocker’ saw them as a bit too animated, 5150 helped bring them back to the band they were always meant to be before Roth joined. They were now solely focused on the music rather than the stage production, but it’s not like they could agree on every single thing when they stepped down.
Before Hagar even started jamming with them, though, it was already considered a bit of a strange fit. He had originally been considered when their producer talked about replacing Roth in the early days of the band, but since the band had become so accustomed to Roth’s voice, there was no telling what was going to happen when they got someone with Hagar’s range in the group.
Then again, there was hardly anyone complaining when their tunes started to become the biggest anthems of the 1980s. ‘Dreams’ and ‘Why Can’t This Be Love’ didn’t have the same metallic sheen as something like ‘Panama’, but it didn’t matter. They were simply having fun making music like they used to do in the early days, but after hanging around for the same amount of time Roth did, Hagar felt like the band was coaxing by on easy mode when they started talking about making a greatest hits album.
Balance hadn’t exactly been the easiest album cycle they had ever been through, but the idea of making a whole different record that was focused on celebrating their best years together didn’t sit well with Hagar. There was a lot more work for them to do in his mind but now that they had Ray Danniels as their new manager, Hagar didn’t really have any power to make those big decisions anymore.
It was up to him whether he would sing on any of the new songs, but even with Roth coming in to make a few tunes with them, Hagar knew that he couldn’t bring himself to make a record like that, saying, “I didn’t think that we should be cashing in yet. I thought we had another good record in us and the new manager wanted us to do a greatest hits record with two new songs from me and two new songs from Dave. I wanted to do a whole record. I didn’t want to do a greatest hits record. I didn’t think Van Halen was there yet.”
Even if they did scrape some tunes together for what would become their greatest hits era, getting Roth back on board wasn’t necessarily the best idea, either. After sacking Hagar after a long friendship, the band’s idea of announcing Roth’s reunion lasted about five seconds before Eddie washed his hands of the entire idea and ended up working with Gary Cherone for what would become Van Halen III.
And since that idea went about as well as having an open bar in an AA meeting, Eddie learned really quickly what his former singers brought to the equation. This was the first major failure that the band had have endured, and while Hagar did find time to get back together one more time for The Best of Both Worlds compilation, seeing him tour with Van Halen left a bad taste in his mouth by the time he got onstage and had to deal with Eddie being strung out on booze every other time he took to the stage.
So while many artists have made a pretty penny off of their greatest hits records, this is one of the best examples of why it doesn’t always work. Some of them might be a blatant cash grab, and some of them might be a way of exploring a band’s work, but if no one’s on the same page throughout the record, forcing them to smile their way through everything was never going to work out.
