The musician Sammy Hagar said lied through his teeth: “Dragged me all through the mud”
Van Halen’s separation with Sammy Hagar was never going to be easy.
They had already weathered the storm of David Lee Roth leaving in the 1980s, but after the same amount of time, ‘The Red Rocker’ was out the door, and while there was some tension before he got that fateful call, Hagar knew that the record needed to be set straight about what really happened.
Granted, it’s not like Van Halen were in the best position as a band at this point. They had never had an outright dud in their catalogue yet, but Balance seemed to be the first record where they seemed to be fading a little bit. There weren’t many knockout singles on the record, and while that did leave room for some more mature lyrics to come to the forefront, having a song like ‘Amsterdam’ in the middle of the track list was always going to be a turn-off whenever Eddie had to play it.
The guitarist had already endured these kinds of compromises with Roth on 1984, but whereas that album was aces from back to front, the idea of the band getting right back to work with each other afterwards was the last thing they wanted to do. ‘Humans Being’ was a great song for the Twister soundtrack, but even though Hagar felt that they had another record in them, he was shellshocked when Van Halen were back on MTV a couple months down the road hamming it up with Roth all over again.
There were certainly cracks in the armour, but when Hagar got the call from Eddie that things weren’t working out, he wasn’t leaving of his own accord. From where he stood, he was kicked out of Van Halen so they could pal around with their old frontman again, and when Eddie started talking about his problems with Hagar, all ‘The Red Rocker’ saw was his old bandmate spinning a story for the media.
Looking back on the whole thing in 1997, Hagar was furious that Eddie would blatantly lie about his time with the band, saying, “I was pushed [out] ’cause I wouldn’t go along with the program. I kind of want the fans to know what happened, but I wish it wouldn’t be dragged back and forth through the mud, pulling me across first, and then I have to defend myself, you know? ‘Cause Eddie and those guys went out and they flat lied about what happened. And they dragged me all through the mud, so then I gotta drag them guys back through it, and now they’re gonna go out again if they ever get a new record done.”
But judging by how the Roth situation panned out, it’s not like the band were all buddy-buddy again. In fact, the “reunion” with ‘Diamond Dave’ might hold the world record for the quickest reunion blow-up in history, considering that Eddie announced that they were back together and then cut off all ties with Roth the moment that he started hamming it up too much when presenting at the MTV Awards.
Even when Hagar tried to put on a happy face for the band’s reunion, it was hard for him to go through seeing Eddie in such a fragile state. The emotional rollercoaster he had gone on had led to him not taking care of himself, and by the time that the last show wrapped up, Hagar vowed to never set foot on a stage with him if it was going to turn out the same way.
Although Hagar and Eddie were able to soothe the waters shortly before the guitarist’s tragic passing, it’s a shame the fans never got to see them back together again. A Different Kind of Truth did see Eddie close the book on his career the way he wanted to, but it would have been nice to hear him performing songs like ‘Dreams’ and ‘Right Now’ after playing ‘Jump’ and ‘Runnin’ With the Devil’ one last time.
