“It was fun writing”: the Van Halen era Sammy Hagar wanted to last forever
It’s never easy for any rockstar to savour the moment whenever they are at the top of the charts. It might feel like the days of touring the world and having legions of screaming fans will go on forever, but it can be a lot more complicated trying to find moments to sit back and take in everything between the constant album/tour cycle. And while Sammy Hagar can look back and appreciate many of his best moments these days, he admitted that his time with Van Halen had moments that should have been fleshed out a bit more.
But looking at his time with the hard rock icons, ‘The Red Rocker’ had an almost equal amount of time with the group in their prime as they had with David Lee Roth. He was certainly much different from what ‘Diamond Dave’ had to offer, but since he brought a more musical approach to everything, there was a lot more depth to what the band worked with when they made tracks like ‘Summer Nights’ or ‘Right Now’.
By the time they hit Balance, though, things started to go south. Never had an album title been more ironic in the 1990s, with Hagar and Eddie butting heads over nearly every creative decision that they made behind the scenes. And when they should have logically taken some time off, their shifting management and burnout led to Hagar being either fired or outright leaving the band, depending on who was talking about it at the time.
While Hagar would have never quit the band willingly, it was clear that things were heading south for the group when he left. They already weren’t the biggest band in the world in the age of grunge, but the fact that they kept pushing forward with Gary Cherone and had a reunion with Roth that lasted three hours led some people to wonder why Hagar was let go in the first place.
After all, the band always felt at ease with Hagar singing for them. Not every album was great from back to front, but compared to the larger-than-life persona they had to deal with every time Roth got behind the mic, ‘The Red Rocker’ was much more down-to-earth, which should have been a breath of fresh air when they got back together to make a handful of tunes for a greatest hits album.
Although the band eventually split apart again once their reunion tour ended, Hagar thought they should never have let a good thing go, saying, “I was against doing a greatest hits of any kind and wanted to make a new record. My favourite track hands-down is ‘Up For Breakfast’ – it was fun writing and singing those lyrics. Looking back now, I really wish we would’ve made a whole new record.”
But that would have also involved getting Eddie back into proper shape. According to Hagar, a lot of the band’s reunion tour with him was marred by Eddie not taking care of himself, and after years of wear and tear on his body, his demons started to turn up onstage, to the point where Hagar never wanted to go back on the road with him again in those type of conditions.
Then again, the greatest tragedy here is that Hagar never got to properly make up with Eddie onstage before he passed away. It’s nice to know they were on good terms by the time of the guitarist’s passing, but since Roth got to close that chapter of his career with A Different Kind of Truth, was it really too much to ask that Hagar be given an opportunity to get that kind of closure?
