Eddie Van Halen Was Planning To Work On Music With Sammy Hagar When He Died

Before Eddie Van Halen's death in 2020, he and Sammy Hagar mended their years-long feud, and that's not all: in a new interview, the Red Rocker revealed that he and his former Van Halen bandmate were planning to work on new music before the guitarist died.

“He wanted to keep going,” Hagar said, recalling some of the last conversations he had with Van Halen, who had been experimenting with new instruments during his final days. “He was getting into it before he died. When we first connected, you know, again, after we went through all the fighting, and he was sick, and I reached out, and we got together and talked a lot. He was talking about playing cello and playing some wind instruments.”

The duo had been estranged since Van Halen's 2004 tour but Hagar was determined to reconcile when he heard Eddie was sick.

"He had come to peace with everything. He knew he was sick, and it was so great to contact the guy when he was in that state of mind. If I’d have gotten him six months earlier or a year, it probably would have been, 'Oh yeah, well, you said this, you said that.' [But] he was totally above it all," he recalled at the time.

Van Halen died in October 2020 after a long battle with cancer.