Eruptions Part 2: Sammy Hagar vs. Van Halen

Our special two-part series on the battles between Van Halen and their two most famous singers concludes with this exploration of the Van Hagar years. Before he joined Van Halen, Sammy Hagar was a journeyman rock howler with a love of fast cars and mind-controlling aliens. In retrospect, most fans prefer the Roth years, but Hagar was at the head of four consecutive no. 1 albums for Van Halen in the late 1980s and early '90s. And he had a true friendship with Eddie Van Halen, until various factors — including the Twister soundtrack — conspired against them. But in their prime, Van Hagar sold millions of albums to listeners hungry for synth-heavy power ballads with excellent guitar solos.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Rivals as a production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone,
and welcome to Rivals, to show about music, beefs and
feuds and long simmering resentments between musicians. I'm Steve and

(00:20):
I'm Jordan's and we are back for the second of
our two part episode in honor of Eddie van Halen,
who died on October six at the age of sixty.
Last week we looked at the relationship between Van Halen
and David Lee Roth, and this week we're gonna go
deep on the Sammy Hagar years. Yes, that's right, Van
Hagar fans rejoice. Get some cricket sound effects in there.

(00:41):
I think, okay, I can tell that. I guess I'm
going to be the one in this episode who says
nice things about Van Hagar. I don't relish this position.
I feel like like Atticus Finch and Kill a Mockingbird.
I'm playing the defense attorney in this episode, but like Johnny,
position I've been put into and I accepted nonetheless. Look,
I bought Van Hagar tapes as a kid. I still

(01:03):
put on occasionally, and I let the power balladry of
dreams wash over me like a fleet of blue angels.
Please don't judge me too harshly. They do have some
good songs, and you know, it's really interesting. There were
discussions about whether to actually rename the band Van Hagar
when Sammy joined, like basically as a way to preserve
the Van Halen brand if it all went south, and

(01:23):
the decision to carry on under the original name was definitely,
you know, a practical one, and I'm sure they had
you know, dollar signs dancing in their heads and everything,
but also it was a giant middle finger today because
bands tend to get held hostage by their lead singers
in front Man. We saw this with Bernie sum there
in New Order, because you know, they're viewed as justifiably
the one member of the band you really can't replace
unless you're in a band called Van Halen and you

(01:46):
are one of the Van Halen's. So in this case,
they bucked this trend with a new lead singer. And
I don't know, aside from A C d C or
maybe Black Sabbath or Genesis, I can't really think of
another band that achieved that much success with a new singer,
not just as a replacement, but as a way forward.
And it's just so fascinating to me because this was
such a hugely successful era for the band. I mean,

(02:07):
all their albums went to number one, but it just
seems to be universally looked down upon by Van Halen fans.
Wouldn't you say, Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean it's
not cool to see like Van Hagar. I mean you
look at Van Halen with David the Roth in the band,
and they're just like one of the most fun, infectious,
like badass American rock bands ever. And then with Sammy Hagar,

(02:27):
they just took this sort of adult contemporary turn towards
power ballads. You know, I mentioned Dreams before us, you
also had songs like right Now and like Love Walks
In and when It's Love, lots of songs with love
in the title. But yeah, I think it's worth noting
that like the change with Hagar occurred at a time
in the band's trajectory when I think they needed to
grow up a bit or risk turning into a caricature.

(02:48):
And like it or not, Sammy Hagar brought them into
a more mature era, which is kind of crazy given
that Sammy Hagar is a guy who drinks tequila all
day and write songs about the time he was abducted
by aliens. Yeah, I mean Jimmy off It meets Guy Fieri,
you kind of get like Sammy Hagar vibes there. I mean, yeah,
he seems awesome. But yeah, the Van Halen van Hagar
debate is one for the ages and something that's pitted

(03:09):
brother against brother and torn apart marriages. Uh. It's something
we'll get too later on this episode comparing the two
incarnations of the band, but for now we'll focus on
Sammy versus the other members of Van Halen. So I
hope you have your bottle of kabba wabo handy. Yeah,
I mean yeah, Like Sammy might seem like a laid
back guy, but he actually had a pretty bitter fight
with Van Halen after he left the band and then

(03:29):
when he left the band again. So I'm excited to
get into it. So without further ado, let's get into
this mess. So there's an alternate universe where Sammy Hagar
was actually always part of Van Halen, which, you know,
mind blown there. When the band recording their first record
in nineteen seventy seven, the producer Ted Templeman came into

(03:50):
the studio with an album he produced by Sammy's former
band Montrose, and effectively said, you know, we're gonna make
an album like this. He wanted to give van Halen's
record that big rock candy sound, and Eddie was totally
cool with this. He was a huge Montrose fan, so
he thought it was fine as a blueprint. And it's
interesting to hear that Sammy was sort of was a
decade older than the guys in Van Halen, so he's

(04:11):
kind of part of the generation that inspired the band.
And and like I said, Eddie was heavily influenced by
Ronnie Montrose as a guitarist, particularly the use of big
open cores, a big crunchy guitar chord sounds that Van
Halen used. So Templeman went even further to suggest that
they hire Sammy, who by that point was thrown out
of Montrose. And it doesn't seem likely that the band
ever seriously considered this, but it's definitely an alternate universe

(04:35):
thing I like to consider from time to time. Yeah,
it would have been interesting if Hagar was in the
band originally. I don't think they would have been van Halen.
I don't think they would have been as successful as
they ultimately were with Roth. Of course, will never know.
But I mean we talked about this last week, just
the magic that Roth and Eddie Van Halen had together
that was really kind of based on diametrically opposed personalities

(04:55):
and it just created this tension that put out sparks
and created this kind of special elk me that resulted
in the Van Hillen that we all know and love
on those first six albums. While Van Hillen is like
rising to you know, being one of the biggest bands
in America, Sammy Hagar is actually taking like a much
I guess more workman like path through his career. He's
known as this guy who's like never like the most

(05:15):
popular person on the radio. He's not often like the
headliner at his shows, but he's a worker. He's someone
that like puts in the time, uh to entertain the audience.
In a way, he's as much of a showman as
David Lee Roth. But whereas David Lee Roth is very
much like the rock star in the gilded cage, you know,
like the the exacted bird type rock star, Sammy Hagar

(05:35):
is like the everyman rock star. He's the guy that
you look on stage and you think, oh, I could
be that guy, and he's also someone who's really good schmoozing,
you know, program directors at radio stations and tour promoters,
and he becomes this person that is like really popular
in the industry that people want to give him a chance.
So by the mid eighties he's actually achieving like the
greatest success of his career. He puts out that song

(05:56):
I Can't Drive fifty five. It's a big hit. It's
the song I think that's still most associated with him
as a solo artist. And he puts out his first
platinum record, which is called v o A, which is
short for Voice of America. Have you ever heard that album?
By the way, my only frame of reference for that album,
aside from I Can't Drove fifty five is Dick in
the Dirt because my father's name is Dick. So I

(06:18):
got endless amusement from that track. Oh man, well, I
would think that your dad, you know, due respect to
your dad, if you if you're called Dick, there's like
lots of other references that you could also make to
that name, I would think. So it's not just on
Sammy Hagar that you were tortured for that. But yeah,
Dick in the Dirt is from v O A and
that album. It is this mix of like patriotic songs,

(06:38):
like on the cover of the album, Sammy Hagar is
parachuting onto the lawn in front of the Capitol Building
in Washington, d C. Because like Sammy Hagar is, like
I think he was. I don't understand even what that
idea was. Like, you know, there was like a lot
of like sort of anti Russian sentiment at the time.
I think that he was like like a like a
soldier rocker type thing, and he was a big fan
of Ronald Reagan, like, and Sammy Hagar generally has been

(07:00):
known to be leaning on the politically conservative side of
the spectrum. And so yeah, he's writing hiss like sort
of like patriotic songs, or he's writing like really dumb
sex songs, and this is going to be something that
he will of course eventually take to Van Halen where
I always feel like that's the difference between him and
David Lee Roth. We talked about this a little bit
last week, where I feel like David Lee Roth he

(07:21):
could write these dumb sex songs, but there was always
like a wink and a nod in there where again
you felt like he was in on his own joke,
like he was acknowledging the seediness of it, the ridiculousness
of it. Whereas Sammy Hagar writes a song like Dick
in the Dirt and it's an earnest song. He's actually
serious about his dick being in the dirt. I mean,
that is the difference between those two guys, like a

(07:42):
smart guy who acts dumb in the case of David
Lee Roth, and a guy who maybe just is kind
of dumb but likable in the case of Sammy Hagar.
So we get to the mid eighties, Sammy Hagar is
writing High as a solo act. Meanwhile, Van Halen they
need a new lead singer after David the Roth exits
the band to become a movie star, which of course
never happens, and they go through a couple of different singers.
They go to Patty Smythe the singer from Scandal who

(08:04):
had a big hit at the time called The Warrior
that was like a big radio hit in the mid eighties.
She said no. Apparently, they approached Darryl Hall of Hall
of Notates to be the lead singer of Van Halen,
which just seems insane. Darryl Hall is a great singer,
but more of a blue eyed soul type singer. I
don't really see him being the frontman of Van Halen.
Of course he didn't either. He said no. There's actually

(08:26):
a story recently that Steve Perry from the band Journey
was approached by Eddie van Halen about possibly being a
singer in the band, which I think is interesting given
the direction that Van Halen was going in, which I
think was more akin to Journey than the early records
of van Halen War. They were moving in more of
that kind of middle of the road direction. But Steve
Perry said no, he was already in a successful band.

(08:47):
So then he gets hooked up with Sammy Hagar because
the mechanic for his Lamborghini suggested Sammy Hagar, which is
the most mid eighties rock dude thing ever. It's like
the Lamborghini mechanic, right, I mean, Sammy brought his card
and because he's like, hey, I can't I can't drive
fifty five. Can you fix this please? Like I need
you need someone to fix this car exactly. I mean, yeah,

(09:09):
that's amazing. But I guess Eddie took his mechanics suggestion
and they put in a call to UH to Sammy
and they arranged an audition at h at Eddie's studio
at his house fifty Studios and UH. It was basically
something approaching love at first sight. I guess the song
Summer Nights came out of their first jam session, and
in his memoir, Sammy compared the sound to his favorite

(09:31):
band Cream. He said, this was something about this sound
of slow, confident, almost majestic. My rock had always been
more intense, but they relaxed into this groove thing, even
if it was up tempo. I decided I was in.
And the band loved Sammy because he could provide rhythm guitar,
which Dave hadn't been able to do. But moreover, they
felt he was a better singer. And Alex would even say,

(09:52):
it's like driving a Porsche after years of owning a Volkswagen.
Oh man, it's brutal. Yeah, Like it's the most colorful
and high kicking Volkswagen of all time if it is
a Volkswagen. I don't think that's a real affair comparison.
Alex van Halen. I think another thing that's important too,
is that Eddie Van Halen and Sammy Hagar became fast friends.

(10:14):
They actually genuinely liked each other personally. I think they
lived like on the same stretch of beach in Malibu,
like they had beach houses, like it was like one
over from each other. So I think in the early days,
like Eddie and Helen would be playing guitar in his
porch and he would like walk over to Sammy Hagar's
house and they would write songs that way, which is
never a relationship they had that existed between Davidie Roth

(10:35):
and Eddie van Halen. Those guys were never close, So
I think there was like a genuine sort of personal
bond there. But of course, no matter how good they
might have felt about each other at the time, it
was risky for Van Halen to bring in a new
lead singer. And you know you said this earlier. They
were thinking about maybe changing the name. There was just
concerned that this was going to blow up in everyone's faces.
But when the record company heard the songs that they
were working on a fifty, I think, especially the song

(10:57):
why Can't This Be Loved? The head of the band's label,
Moe Austin, said, I smell money. What's the quote? When
he heard that song, which again extremely mid eighties, just
like a sleazy like record label thing to say, even
though Mo Austin is held in pretty high esteem in
the record industry, but just the idea, like they heard
this song and they're like, oh yeah, like this band
is going to be huge. And of course that song

(11:19):
ended up being a huge hit from the record. I
think it was like a top five song on the
pop charts, and of course went through the roof when
it was released, and you know, you listen to and
I think a lot of fans like that, you know,
love the Roth era. They were really turned off because
it did have this sort of corporate rock sound like
I likened them the Journey earlier. The producer of that

(11:41):
record is this guy Mick Jones, who played in the
band Foreigner, so it has again like it feels more
like Journey Foreigner, you know, Ario Speedwagon, like bands of
that ilk then like the hard charging party band of
old But again I have to say that, like I mean,
Sammy Hagar is certainly a part of that, but I
think he's somewhat of a scapegoat out here because the
fact of the matter is that Eddie van Hillen was

(12:02):
writing this music like he wanted to move in this direction,
and I think obviously, like with the success of Jump,
that proved that putting synths on a Van Haillen song
would be very commercial, and I think there's a pretty
natural progression from that to fifty, which is like pretty
heavy on the sense. Yeah, absolutely, I mean all the
way back to diver Down. I mean it's something that
it seems like Dave was the one who was primarily

(12:24):
against it. With him gone, he could really indulge in that.
And also Sammy was a guitarist too, so on stage
for all the songs that you know needed guitar parts,
Sammy could play that, and then it would allow free
Eddie up to play more of those parts too. So
I think it definitely allowed him to expand further down
that route too, because not only were people not objecting
to it anymore, but also just from a practical standpoint

(12:45):
on stage, he was able to do that more and
allow that to be more part of the band's live sound.
I have to do a quick sidebar on the song
Love Walks in which I think is like one of
the better power Baldy songs from Sammy. Haggard wrote that
song about aliens and he's written like a bunch of
songs about Aliens and like, I don't know if you've
read like his memoir Read, which came out I think

(13:06):
about ten years ago. It's like an underrated memoir. People
don't talk about it and like when they talk about
the great memoirs of recent years. But there's some haunting
lines in that I have to say, especially later on
about with any Yeah, yeah, the stuff about Evan Halan
is great, but like just Sammy Hagar is like such
a weirdo, like and he's a fascinating guy. Actually interviewed
him when he put that book out, and he was

(13:27):
a great interview I think we talked for like almost
ninety minutes. Like he man like he is, this guy
is a good storyteller and he's just like this eccentric dude.
And he writes in his book about how he actually
like met aliens when he was a kid. Like there's
this passage in the book he says, I was laing
in bed one night, dreaming. I saw a ship and

(13:48):
two creatures inside of the ship. I couldn't see their faces.
I just knew that there were two intelligent creatures sitting
up in a craft in the little Creek Forest area
at about twelve miles away in the foothills above Fontana.
He's talking about Northern all Fourni here and they were
connected to me, tapped into my mind through some sort
of mysterious wireless connection. They downloaded his thoughts. That's like

(14:08):
what it is. It's amazing. And I think that the
implication here too, is that like the aliens helped to
set him on this path toward rock and roll greatness. Yeah,
he say in interviews, like they taught me some things
that really helped me in life. Was that he would
always say that he learned from them, and he named
his publishing company after them. He said that they were
from the ninth dimension and he named his music publishing

(14:29):
nine Music in their honor. And he actually said that
like he wanted to write more about aliens in his book,
but his co author Joel Selvin was like, no one
wants to hear about the aliens. Do exactly, And he
was like, I could write a whole book about aliens,
and I was like he should please do that. That
would be amazing because like, honestly, the mantro stuff it's
kind of interesting, but like aliens downloading thoughts into your

(14:51):
brain with a wireless connection, you know, many decades before
the Internet. I'm into that. So you know, the song
Love Walks In is about that. Did he talk more
about that to you? We delved in into it a
little bit, not as much as I would like. I
think again, like he's sort of into talking about it,
but also feels like maybe I should be promoting my book, right,
not this transcendent experience I had with extraterrestrials. That's more

(15:13):
in line with his brand. I guess you're right. So
that's that is. Sammy brings a lot to the band.
He brings his guitar playing, he brings his alien experiences,
and of course he brings his voice, which you know,
I don't think anyone could argue, even though I'm more
pro Roth than pro Hagar, much stronger voice than Roth.
I mean, he's a real singer. I mean no disrespect
to Roth, but he, as you said in the last episode,

(15:34):
is more of like like a scat singing kind of
proto rapper or kind of He's not a singer, you know.
And I think that with having Sammy there and he
was able to write expand his range even greater. Not
only the keyboard realm, but write the kind of songs
that David would never really be able to sing. Yeah,
and again I go back to that story about Steve
Perry being approached by Eddie Van Hallen about and and

(15:54):
and Steve Perry has said that, like, I'm not clear
on whether he was inviting me to join the band
or if he just wanted to jam. But when you
look at Steve Perry or Patti Smith or Daryl Hall
these other singers that came up as possible replacements, they
are all just sort of classically like great singers, Like
you would look at them and say like, oh, yeah,
those people can sing anything. And it does seem that,
like Eddie Van Halen, that was something that he wanted

(16:16):
at the time, and it seems like it was more
in tune again with the music that he was writing. Again,
I think that if you don't like Van Hagar, to
define the band purely by him, I think for Eddie
Van Halen would would be offensive. Because we talked about
this last week that he didn't like it when people
split the band into different eras according to the lead singer,
because to him, it's like I'm the common denominator. I'm

(16:37):
the tour of this band, it's all van Halen music.
These guys are just sort of coming in and out
of the band, And I think if you look at
the band that way, which is I don't think most
people look at it that way. They look at the
singers as being almost like the protagonists in Van Halen.
But if you look at it as Eddie van Halen
being the protagonist, it's pretty clear that he makes this
progression from the party rock of the late seventies two

(16:58):
more of this again corporate rock, adult contemporary sound into
the late eighties. And as much as I think we
all prefer the Roth era, I think it does make
sense in a commercial sense and also an aesthetic sense
that they would make that evolution, because if if you
still have davidly Roth in the band and or five,

(17:18):
that would have been a pretty dated band. I think
it would have been harder for them to do what
Van Helen did, which was be one of the only
bands of their era to continue to be successful, you know,
into the late eighties and then into the alternative rock
era of the nineties. And Sammy Hagar certainly wasn't hip
and they were not an alternative band, but I think
there was maybe something a little bit more shall we say,

(17:40):
dignified about this era van Halen, like as weird as
it is to say that about them, but like they
just seemed more like an older band with him in
the band, and maybe that was more appropriate for this era. Yeah,
it allowed them sort of instantly mature. I mean, not
only for their own reputation and you can't be pushing
forty and doing the kind of things that David Lee
Roth was, but also their sound too. Mean, the sound
of rock from the late eighties to early nineties is

(18:03):
such a massive shift from like the tail end of
hair metal, which was basically people trying to be van
Halen but to the nth degree, to stuff like grunge,
which leads you to their album Balance, which I always
thought was kind of van Halen's take on doing a
grunge album. Yeah, definitely feels that way. Like there's that
the lead single, Don't Tell Me What Love Can Do,
which which was supposedly inspired by kurk Obain's suicide, and

(18:27):
you listen to the guitar and it does feel I
guess grungy. It feels so strange to apply that adjective
to Eddie van Halen's guitar tone, because I just think
of his guitar tone as just being inherently bright and hot.
You know, it's not sludgy really um, and it's not
really sluedge you on that song. But I think like
in the realm of Van Halen Um, this was like

(18:48):
like a relatively like angry moody record. And this record
comes out, and it was a four year gap between
this album and the previous record, which was for Unlawful
Cornel Knowledge that came out the Spring of ninety one,
comes out really before grunge has become a big thing,
like never Mind and Ten are going to come out
a little bit later in ninety one, so Van Halen
kind of got onto the wire there, and again, like Balance,

(19:10):
it ended up debuting at number one, so it's their
fourth consecutive number one record. But I know, like for me,
like as someone again, I was buying Van Hagar tapes
as like a ten eleven year old, you know, I
had dropped out of Van Halen by the time of
Balance Um because they just maybe didn't seem quite like
they were of the era, and it also seemed like
Van Halen was valling apart a little bit. Like I

(19:32):
don't know if you've seen like clips of them performing
at this time, but like they look pretty beat up.
Like this was around the time that Alex van Halen
was like playing with a neck brace on stage all
the time, which like I hate to laugh because he
was in pain at the time. But like, whenever I
see the neck brace, I always think of like those
legal shows, like where the person is pretending to be
injured and then we're in the neck brace, and then

(19:53):
like they take it off and like you know, play
a drum solo. Yeah, they take it off. It's proven
that they're faking it or something. It's always like this.
I was associate neck braces with comedy, I guess, so
to see him on the stage with the neck brace,
it's just so bizarre. And of course Eddie van Halen
was having his issues with his hip where it was
hard for him to move around on stage, so they're
following apart physically, and then of course they're also starting

(20:14):
to have tension finally with Sammy Hagar again, like him
and Eddie were legitimate friends for a long time, but
it seems like around this time the tension that derived
from the relationship seemed to be that, like Eddie Van
Halen was like a workaholic, always in his home studio
fifty one fifty recording, where Sammy Hagar again, He's drinking
tequila all day long. He's got the flip flops on,
he's got the baggy shorts, the Oakley's glasses. He's like

(20:37):
becoming the Jimmy Buffett of heavy metal essentially at this time.
And he's just a much more easy going guy. And
it seemed like maybe Eddie looked at Sammy as being lazy, right,
I mean, also, it sounds like there was a lot
of musical differences during the recessions for balance to I mean,
he would say that this was the era when when
Sammy would say, you know, because that was the record
where if I said black, Eddie said white, and if

(20:57):
I said okay, white, he'd said, no, I want black.
Then he'd say, okay, well I want to black to
begin with, and then Eddie would go, well, I don't
know what I want, but let you know when I do.
He just wanted the opposite with Sammy wanted. That's what
he said in years later too, So it's definitely spilled
over into into the creative realm too, all right hand,
We'll be right back with more rivals. And then things

(21:24):
really come to a head weirdly enough, Uh during sessions
for the Twister soundtrack, which you know, there was chaos
going on screen and also chaos behind the scenes apparently,
well yeah, becaucause the band's longtime manager who joined right
when Sammy joined, had just died and uh, and they
got a new manager who was also Alex's brother in law,

(21:45):
and he was doing what a manager did, which come
up with a lot of ways to make a lot
of money very quickly. Someone called these schemes canny, others
would call them kind of crass and cheap. And one
of his plans was to do a song for the
Twister soundtrack, but it was supposed to be done when
the bay him, we're on a break. I was supposed
to be after their Balance tour in in and everybody
really needed some downtime, especially Sammy, who had just gotten

(22:08):
married and his wife is about to have a baby
and he wanted to go be with her, and I
guess they were planning to have the baby out in
in Hawaii, have a natural birth out in Hawaii, and
so he got roped back in to do these sessions
for Twister, And not only did he have to go work,
he had to go fly across the Pacific back to
Eddie's house. So it's not bad enough they had to

(22:28):
like move, Eddie just has to go into his backyard.
Sammy has to fly across the Pacific to leave his wife,
his pregnant wife, to go do these songs. And the
sessions were really tense. They were trying to write multiple
songs and they weren't coming together, so they just did
one song called I think it's called Human Beings, which
I have to say I played once. It's not called

(22:51):
human beings. It's called humans being, which is a terrible title.
I don't understand it's called humans being because human beings
makes sense. That's why you thought it was called that.
It was called humans being for which I don't know
what that has to do with with tornadoes. But apparently
when there's a certainato in the vicinity, you can't properly

(23:13):
title a song like that's something that just causes your
brain to blank out. But yeah, they're trying to write
multiple songs, but that was the only one that they
could finish, right, And then so they finish it. He
goes back to Hawaii and then they can call from Eddie,
oh man, we actually gotta do a second one. Can
you come back? And Sam He's like, no, my wife's
about to have a baby. I'm not. So they end
up putting an instrumental on the album to fulfill their

(23:36):
their commitment for a second song on there too. But
that's really a major line in the sand for them.
Is ironically the Twister soundtrack, which I believe I could
be wrong, is what brought Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks
back together in the right Yeah. Oh man, So this
Twister soundtrack bringing people together also tearing them apart. This
is like the moment, like the most momentous classic rock

(23:58):
related album of the night these I thought oral history
on the Twister soundtrack. So there's issues over the Twister soundtrack.
Sammy Hagar, I think with justification, felt like I don't
really have time for this. You know again, my wife
is having a difficult uh birth. I want to be
with her. But Eddie and Alex are looking at him
as not being a team player. Essentially, they don't feel
like he's contributing his fair share to the band, and

(24:19):
this gets compounded when the Greatest Hits album for Van
Halen comes up, and this has ends up being tense
for multiple reasons because not only are the Van Halen
Brothers trying to get Sammy in the studio to record
a couple of new songs for this Greatest Hits album,
but they're also working with David Lee Roth and they
haven't told Sammy Hagar that they're working with David E.
Roth on these songs, and when he hears about this,

(24:40):
of course he's going to hit the roof. So that
is a big issue in the band. But from the
Van Halen Brothers perspective, they were really feeling out of
frustration because they were having trouble getting Sammy to work
on these songs. Meanwhile, two years before this, Sammy Hagar
had put out his own greatest Hits record called Unboxed, which,
by the way, who's buying a Sammy Hagar Greatest Sets album?
Was buying this? You you need more songs than I

(25:03):
can't drive fifty five that's all you need. I guess.
This was the nineties and you couldn't download songs, you
couldn't stream songs, so people were like, I love I
can't Drive fifty five so much I'm gonna spend on
a Sammy Hagar Greatest Hits record. Maybe you end up
stuff on there. I am not familiar with the Sammy
Hagar Greatest Hits record, I must say, I guess I'm

(25:25):
hoping maybe Dick and the Dirt is on that record.
All apologies to your father, of course. But the Van
Hallin Brothers look at this, and Sammy Hagar had recorded
a couple of extra songs for that album, essentially because
the record company was going to give him extra money
for that, and he was getting divorced at the time,
and he just like took that money and gave it
to his ex wife. So it was just a pure
sort of like divorce settlement type thing. Shades of here,

(25:48):
my dear, I guess, only now instead of a masterpiece,
it's a shitty Sammy Hagar Greatest Hits album. But the
Van Halin Brothers look at this and they just see
Sammy Hagar again not being a team player and also
being a bit of a hypocrite because you did it
for your greatest Hits record. This is for a Van
Hill and Greatest Its record that people actually care about,
and you're not contributing and Sammy would say like this

(26:10):
project is where the all the bad blood really started.
And the details of their final split are disputed, but
it's apparently it ended with a phone call on Father's Day,
which is very fitting considering the issues of Sammy wanted
to be there for for his wife's birth on Father's Day,
and in Eddie's version, he called Sammy and basically read
on the riot act like, you know, if you want

(26:30):
to make another record, do another tour, you have to
be a team player. Dan Halen is a band, not
the Sammy Hagar show. And uh, Sammy apparently responded by saying,
you know, I'm frustrated. I want to go back to
being a solo artist and and he said all right,
well fine, like thank you for being honest, And his
version of story at least said, you know, with minimal fury,
said well go go back and go do that, and

(26:52):
we're gonna do our own things. So uh, according to Eddie,
Sammy quitting an egotistical huff because he wanted to go
do his own thing rather than several made his artistic
vision with Van Halen. Uh. Sammy, as you might expect,
disputes this version. He basically says that he was fired
and then you know, adding insult to injury. They turned
around really quickly and got Dave back into the mix too,
which for him, he said that was worse than sleeping

(27:14):
with the enemy. We bumped heads and the next thing
I know, Eddie calls and David Lee Roth is back,
and that's uh, that's the end of it. Seems like
there's like a some timeline confusion here because I've heard
stories that Van Halen were working with David Lee Roth
on these tracks for the Greatest Hits album again, because
the idea was that they were going to record a
couple songs with him and a couple of songs with
Sammy Hagar to represent both eras at the band. But

(27:37):
Sammy Hagar makes it sound like they contacted Roth after
Hagar left and then maybe they kept it from him
for fear of him like freaking out. So it's not
really clear. I mean to me, like what this really
speaks to is for all the success that Van Hagar had,
I feel like Sammy Hagar always had a bit of
insecurity about David Lee Roth and that really manifested itself
in their concerts because he wouldn't perform David Lee Roth's

(28:00):
songs in the show, and I think his idea was that,
you know, this is a new band. I want to,
you know, stay true to this era. I want to
stay true to our songs. Obviously, Van Hagar was very successful,
so you know, they had hits of their own, they
didn't necessarily have to play the older songs. But I
feel like that might have backfired on him because you know, look,

(28:20):
if you love Van Halen, you want to hear Running
with the Double, You want to hear a talking about love,
you want to hear Panama. And the fact that like
they never played those songs with Hagar, I think it
just created like a mythology about that period that like
made people really pine for that. Like what if Hagar
had just sung those songs and like people thought, Wow,
like these songs sound even better with Sammy Hagar, or

(28:42):
they sound as good with Sammy Hagar. I just think
that at some point maybe people wouldn't have felt so
much affection for the Roth era if Hagar had sort
of like blocked it out or tried to block it
out so completely from his years in Van Halen. Does
that make sense? Yeah, it didn't rock, do the same
thing too, but people basic he said, like he just
didn't have the chops to sing Hagar songs. But I

(29:02):
feel like Roth sort of did the same thing and
refused to sing the Hagar Era's different with him, though.
I think that, like, if you're going to see like
the Roth Era van Halen, you just want to hear that.
I don't want to hear David Ross sing you want
to pretend it's nineteen. I don't want to hear him
singing love walks in and talking about aliens. That's like
the Sammy Hagar alien song. I want to hear David
Lee Roth do the rath Era stuff. I think the

(29:24):
onus was on Hagar to like plant his flag in
the rath Era and say, hey, I can perform these
songs as well as he can, which I don't think,
by the way, he could have. I think their styles
are so different that like hearing Sammy Hagar do like
the David Lee Roth stick, you know, like you know,
he's the seat back that whole Panama rapped. You know,
that would have been weird. You know, he wouldn't have

(29:45):
done it as well. But I just feel like that
he did that. I think so people wouldn't compare the
two versions of the band, but I think in the
way he sort of like inadvertently exacerbated it. I wonder
how much Eddie was involved with that though, too, Like
I wonder if he said, you know what, no new era, like,
we're gonna do mine new songs, like I wonder, like
whose decision that fully well possible. I just feel like
he probably would have done it. And I remember I

(30:06):
read Ian Christie's book Everybody Wants Some, which is a
great biography of Van Halen, and the sense I got
from that book is that, especially towards the end of
Van Hagar, that like he was itching to play some
of those songs again because they're great songs, and he
I'm sure he knew that if he played ain't talking
about love that like he's gonna burn down any arena
in the world, you know, like people are going to
be so excited to hear that. But it doesn't. May

(30:28):
Hagar leaves the band, I think kind of hastily. You know,
this exit to me doesn't make as much sense as
Roth leaving. Like they're arguing about the Greatest Hits album
and the Twister soundtrack. It seems very petty to me,
like whereas I feel like Roth was clearly growing apart
from van Halen, but like Hagar again, Hagar and van
Halen were actually pales and to blow up the band
over this, it just seems sort of silly to me.

(30:50):
Maybe he seemed to have a lot of remorse and
regret over it all, Like not that long after he said,
you know, if I knew that my making the greatest
hits album, the unboxed album was gonna do is the band,
I wouldn't be in van Halen anymore. I never would
have done it. Like he seems genuinely sad about all this,
which I don't think Dave ever was. Throughout the eighties.
I mean, Dave was in the wings kind of like
a w w F fighter, trash Chalk and Sammy every

(31:12):
chance he could in the press, and like, you know,
there's a singer, Sammy, Hagar is a singer, but I'm
the singer. I think one of his great quotes, So, like,
you know, Dave never really had that kind of regret.
I don't think where Sammy seemed very quickly, like very
sad about all this in the short run, though he
did take some shots at the van Hillen brothers, and
of course, like his book read is like brutal to

(31:35):
uh to both of them, but especially Eddie van Halen.
But in the short run he puts up the solo
record called Marching to Mars, which is another alien reference,
I guess, And the album kicks off with a song
called Little White Lie, which is him basically just like
venting about what he sees again as the van Halen
brothers stabbing him in the back, you know, sleeping with
the enemy, as it were, by working with David Lee Roth.

(31:56):
Also like that album, it ends with a song called
Both Sides Now, which is not the Joni Mitchell song,
although it'd be hilarious were if he's saying the Joy
Mitchell song. But like that song is, you know, it's
like he vented his spleen on the first track, but
now he's like a little bit more reflective. And there's
the line of the song where he says, yeah, we
gotta learn how to listen before we learn how to talk.

(32:17):
We gotta learn how to crawl before we learn to walk.
If you want a little piece, sometimes you gotta fight.
We gotta walk through the darkness before we stand in
the light. Oh, yeah, that's about this philosophical as uh
Sammy Hagar gets in his lyrics. You can feel like
that regret. I think a little bit there that Okay,
maybe you know, we could have talked this out, like
we had a great thing going, maybe just take a
breather and then come back, but instead we've just blown

(32:39):
up this hugely profitable band. My favorite part about that
album too, is that he gets Slash into play. I
think it was on a Little White Lie actually, the
song where he's venting his spleen, and I always thought
that was a message, like you know what, because this
was when Slash was on the outs with Axel and
I thought, Okay, I'm gonna get my own guitar god
Eddie and my own guitar god who hates his lead singer,
And like, you know, see, I feel like that was

(32:59):
just him like sort of openly replacing him in a
in a small way on that song, like look like
we can David Rock try the same thing when he
brought in Steve I on his early solo records and like, yeah,
everyone is always just trying to replace Eddie van Halen,
which of course you cannot do. Like Evan Helen is
Eddy van Helen, and I gotta say to that, Like
the Van Hagar records, you know, even if like Sammy

(33:20):
Hagar isn't your cup of tea, there is still like
some pretty great Edie van Halen guitar and Alex van
Halen drums on those records. Like I was listening to
oh You eight one two, which is an album as
dumb as that album title basically, but like if you
just listen to the instrumental tracks, there's like some hot
playing on that record. Same with Foreign level Kernel knowledge,
Like there's some like terrible lyrics like the song Sucker

(33:43):
and a three piece from oh U eight one two
so stupid, or black and Blue, which you know you
can just tell from the title that's just like a
gross sex song. But you know those guys could play
and they and they could elevate even like terrible lyrics,
whereas like I'm marching to Mars I don't know Slash
can like elevate Sammy Hagar's terrible lyrics in the same

(34:03):
way that Eddie Van Halen ken No yeah, I mean
also even mentioned powder Kick Yet, which is one of
my favorite songs in the Van Hagar Our bound Cake
Pound Cakes Yeah, pound cake exactly pound cake. Stupid stupid title,
stupid lyrics, but pretty like rock and music. So you know,
that was always the case. I think with Van Hagar
much more than with David the rock where I think,

(34:25):
like the lyrics and the music, we're working more in
concert with each other. We talked about this last week,
But there was the Sammy Hagar and David the Rock
tour that occurred in the early odds, which was during
this period was post the Gary Sharone era where you know,
they put up Van Halen three, that record just tanks
and Van Halen goes on yatis for an extended period

(34:45):
of time. Eddie van Halen really kind of lapses into
a dark period of alcoholism in the early odds, and
the idea again like for this Hagar davidly rock tour
was that, Like, I think it was partly to troll
the van Halen brothers, but I think also I think,
certainly from Sammy hag Our perspective, it was also to
kind of goad them back into touring again. Yeah, I
can't tell if he knew that. I mean, he openly

(35:08):
said like this was the pist off Alex and Eddie,
So I know, I feel like almost that was at
least it right there that that's my gut. It would
be nice to think if that actually was responsible for
the two thousand four reunion, although when we get to
the two thousand four reunion with such a disaster that
I'm sure you'd probably be crab. I think like in
the Ian Christie book, there's a bit and there about
how I think Sammy Hagar felt like, oh, if I

(35:29):
can just show them how many fans still want to
hear this music, that it will inspire them maybe to
like get out of whatever funk they're in and get
the band back together again. And as much of a
train wreck in a lot of ways is that Sammy
Hagar and David Lee Ross tour was. It was like
pretty successful, like they played large venues, they sold a
lot of tickets, and you know, whether it was directly

(35:51):
responsible or not for the reunion, Sammy Hagar did end
up back in the Fold in two thousand four. And
this era is so dark, but it began with uh
with some good feelings like that they taught became was
a phone call between Sammy and Alex van Halen and
they encouraged him to stop by and Uh and jam

(36:12):
a little bit and just kind of, you know, see
if they could get the old magic back. And Uh.
In Sammy's memoir he describes it's like it's too bleak
to even quote this, like really dark scene with Eddie
really descended an alcoholism. And he's walking around with like
you know, rope for a belt and like boots with
like gaffer tape over him to cover the holes, and
he's he's drinking wine out of a bottle and it's

(36:35):
just rough, but he can still He's still Eddie van
Halen and Uh, Eddie and Alex start playing some music
that they've been working on, and he said it just
sounded great. He was really inspired by it. So they decided,
you want, we're gonna start fresh. We're gonna do this,
We're gonna rise above it. And they decided to make
a new album and it was supposed to be a
full length album. It was gonna be called the Best
of both Worlds and Uh. They recorded some songs and

(37:00):
they were in a couple of weeks they recorded I
think almost the full album's worth, and they were waiting
for Eddie to put his guitar solos on it and
Corn to Sammy at least Eddie was just in no
state to do it, and it was just taken months
to get these solos on and it was just taken
way too long. So instead they decided to put out
a Van Halen or Van Hagar I guess era Greatest

(37:21):
Hits album and put these new songs on it. Uh
and tour. I love that. Like Sammy Hagar in his
book Read describes Eddie van Halen as quote the weirdest
funck I've ever seen. I mean, yeah, that's what he
wasn't that air? I guess? Yeah, he's just in rough shape.
There's this terrible story that he tells in the book
about how, you know, they were getting ready to go

(37:42):
on the road, you know for and by the way, yeah,
like those tracks that they recorded, I don't think they've
ever been released, have they. I mean that I don't
think that's this time, and that's probably for the best.
But there's this terrible story about how they were getting
ready for the tour and like Eddie van Halen was
not in good shape. He was drinking a lot and
he says, according to Sammy Hagar, at one point he says,
I will kill the first motherfucker that tries to take

(38:02):
this bottle away from me. I left my family for
this ship. You think I'm gonna do it for you guys,
which is just that is the darkest behind the music
moment ever. But it just it speaks to like, how
you know, they're trying to get back on the road again.
This is a very profitable brand, and I remember that
the expectations for this tour, even though it wasn't rough,
I mean, the Van Hager, I think Erro was already

(38:24):
kind of like had receded in a steam by this time.
But people were still excited. I mean they were still
playing arenas, and I think there were a lot of
there's a lot of excitement at least initially, but yeah,
they just could not really get their act together behind
the scenes. Yeah, I mean they went on the road,
they just they decided to put the album on ice permanently,
and uh and Eddie was just in a bad way
throughout this tour, I mean, flooding solos and forgetting songs

(38:47):
and at one show he kept tripping over his guitar
cable and I'm plugging it in some so some hapless
guitar tech. At the following around the whole show, just
to make sure he's plugged in. Bad bad vibes all around.
I guess after one show there was nearly a full
scale brawl backstage. In in Sammy's memoirs a lot of
really horrific backstage stories about Eddie flipping out on him,
and I guess after one show, Sammy decided to take

(39:09):
a shower before heading to their private plane, and when
he got on the plane, Eddie was waiting for him
and basically, don't you ever make me fucking wait for
you again. Without me, You're nothing. You need me. You'll
see at the end of this tour, you guys will
have nothing. You're gonna have to call me if you
ever want to tour again. Which is quite a thing
to say to somebody for taking a shower and making
you wait a little bit. Uh So, yeah, bad bad

(39:31):
vibes on this tour all around. But I know you
saw this tour. How was that? This is the only
time I saw Van Halen who was on the tour
where Eddie van Hillen was fall down drunk and Sammy
Hagar was hitting everyone in the band like that was
the only time I saw them. My memory of it
is that it was like pretty good, like I enjoyed it.
I think my standards were probably pretty low because you know,
I listened to Van Halen since I was like a

(39:53):
little kid, and I was just excited see any incarnation
of them. A notable thing about this tour as far
as Sammy Hagar goes, is that he did say some
roth era songs on this tour. I remember he did
jump and he might have done like some songs from
the first record, so he had definitely loosened up on
that by this time. But yeah, you read about this

(40:13):
tour and like you have to laugh, even though it
is again depressing because Eddie van Halen is such a
great musician and this was like a low point for him.
There's that story I think they're playing in Chicago where
he was in the middle of a solo and he
stops playing and he says, sorry, folks, I've run out
of gas. Like he just stopped like that, which is
just incredible. And you know, again he's just drinking a lot,

(40:35):
and it sounds like, you know, either because he was
drunk or because he was just sick of Sammy Hagar.
He was like just openly disrespectful. The Sammy Hagar. There's
that other story where, like I guess backstage at a
show like this was towards the end of the tour,
he pointed at Sammy's Kabbo Wabo tattoo and he said,
that thing ain't gonna last. And then he pointed to
like his own Van Halen tattoo and he said, see

(40:55):
that that's better. That's that's going to last longer. Now,
should be noted that Sammy Hagar he sold like a
share of his tequila company, the Kabbo Wabbo Tequila uh company,
for like eighty million dollars. Like he made a ton
of money from his tequila company. So like the Cobba
Wabbo tattoo, Eddie Van Halen, you maybe pay some respect
to that, to the Kabbo wob because Sammy Hagar made

(41:18):
that happen Jimmy Buffett style. But yeah, this tour was
a disaster, and I think again, like I think Alex
van Halen was still holding out hope that like, oh
maybe we can salvage the album. Oh yeah, I mean
they were barely talking to each other. Sammy and the
Van Halen's had separate jets, separate hotels, separate limos, even
separate security. I mean, it was just completely that they
were They were not on speaking terms at this point,

(41:40):
and Sammy just went down to uh down the Cabo
to become a liquor baron basically and make his music
with the robber Rita's Yes, a tequila magnate. Now, another
notable thing about the two thousand four tour is that
it was the final tour with Michael Anthony, who, again
we've barely talked about Michael Anthony in our van Halen

(42:01):
episodes because he has rivals with no one. He's he's
a nice guy. He's like the nicest guy in Van Halen,
and yet he got treated very poorly by the van
Halen brothers. I don't think there's any other way to
put it, and he ends up getting kicked out of
the band in favor of Wolfgang and evan Halen's son,
who joins the band on the two thousand seven tour
that they ended up doing with David E. Roth and
Wolfgang van Halen. He's like, what like thirteen fourteen years

(42:23):
old at this time, so talented kid, but somewhat of
an insult to Michael Anthony. A charter member of this band,
someone who I don't think anyone would call a bass
playing virtuoso, but his vocal is backing vocals on Van
Halen songs are such a signature part of their sound,
and also just his presence on stage. He's always smiling
playing the Jack Daniels bass. For as much darkness and

(42:45):
rancor that has existed in this band, it seems like
Michael Anthony in a way is like the most sort
of genuinely party hardy guy in the band. Like he's
the one that you would want to hang out with
the most, I would think. But and evan Halen like
really like went after him in interviews like and kind
of took away any recognition that he might have had
from people. Like he talked about how like he basically
would either like tell Michael Anthony want to play or

(43:06):
like play bass himself on a lot of songs. And
he even like said that like, you know those backing
vocals you're on Van Halen records, it's like I'm singing
to like that's as much me as him. So like
even like the backing vocal thing, he couldn't let Michael
Anthony have that, He said, he sounds like a piccolo.
It's so sad to me. Yeah exactly. He said he's
got a high voice, basically saying that, like he has
like a piccolo like voice, and I'm like the conductor

(43:29):
who's like using his voice in a very specific way
because that's all it can do. But it's like he's
not really a great singer, Like I'm as good of
a singer as him. It's like, Eddie, come on, man,
like you already have the name in the band and
you're a guitar playing genius. We all recognize that. Let
Michael Anthony have his backing vocal, DAP have his one thing. Yeah,
I mean, and you really you wonder what actually started

(43:49):
this between them, because apparently it was that Eddie was
mad that he was stayed friends with Sammy after the split,
which is really weird. Like when they were going on
there two thousand a reunion tour with Sammy, they didn't
want Michael back in the band, and it was part
of Sammy's conditions for joinings. We gotta got Mike Anthony back.
But it makes no sense, like if you're gonna bring

(44:09):
Sammy back, why are you still mad at this guy
for being friends with Sammy? I don't know, it's just
it's the whole like Van Halen Brothers almost like mafia
style US and them like you're on the outside kind
of thing. But I think with Michael was really cruel,
and all those interviews that Eddie gave where he said,
like Michael would would bring a cam qorder over and
film Eddie playing bass parts so that he could go

(44:30):
home on work on him like a bass tutorial privately
is sad and Sammy took a lot of offense to
that too, and he went on his Facebook page and
had some video I think right after when Eddie's interviews
where he was slacking off Michael basically saying like that's
the biggest load of horseshit ever. And also Michael is
a great guy, which I don't think I've ever heard
anyone say anything bad about Michael. Throut the entire Van

(44:54):
Halen saga which is filled with bad behavior, and you
go back to when he joined the band. David Lee
Roth joined the band because he rented them a p
A set. Michael Anthony joined the band because he gave
them a p A set one night when their p
A broke down. I think that just shows like what
a good heart this guy has. And this, you know,
in a group that you know isn't really known for

(45:14):
for showing a hell of a lot of loyalty. Uh yeah,
A big fan of Michael Anthony. He didn't deserve any
of that. Yeah, And the biggest bummer for fans is
that they were robbed of like a genuine Van Halen reunion,
Like when David Lee Roth came back in the band
Wolfgang was the bass player, and you know, look, I
can appreciate Eddie van Helen loving his son, wanting to
play with his son, and I'm sure it was great

(45:35):
for the van Halen brothers to have like the next
generation playing in the band in much the same way
that like their own father, Jan van Halen would play
with his kids. And it was like, Okay, we're passing
on this heritage to the next generation. But like you
reconcile with Sammy Hagar for a while and Michael Anthony
was there and it was great. Then you finally get
David the Roth back in the band, but it's like, oh,
it's still not a full fledged reunion. We're not going

(45:56):
to see the four guys that we remember from the
late seventies. And early eighties because this kid is there
and it's just so sad that like they couldn't really
do that calculus in their head that would say, like, Okay, well,
Wolfgang is young, He's gonna have other opportunities. Let's at
least do one tour where it's like the four original members.
Like how amazing would that have been. It sounds like

(46:16):
too that like that might have been in the works,
like towards the end of Eddie Van Hillen's life, Like
I think there were rumors in that they were going
to maybe do a tour with Michael Anthony and then
of course Eddie van Hillen got sick and they couldn't
make it happen. Yeah, they might confirm that. He said
that Irving as Off called and tried to gauge his
interest in doing a big summer tour, but yeah, Eddie,
Eddie's health was on with the client then and it

(46:37):
it never happened. But that reunion was so close that
would have been incredible. So I mean, if the Van
Hillen brothers are on the outs with with Michael Anthony,
the nicest man in rock, you know that it was
going to be a hard road for them to reconcile
with Sammy Hagar, especially after that two thousand four reunion tour,
and of course then they subsequently get back together with
David E. Roth And it just seems like really up

(46:58):
until shortly before Van Halen died, that there was a
fair amount of rancor between Sammy Hagar and the Van
Halen camp. Yeah, especially when the Roth album A Different
Kind of Truth came out. He gave an interview and
Rolling Stone where he basically said that Edie couldn't write
songs anymore. He was using old demos from the seventies
and eighties. Uh for this new album. He said, well,
those aren't really songs. And he said, it was always

(47:20):
really easy for me to write songs with ed He
had all these parts, and I had all these ideas.
But it wasn't like he wrote instrumentals and I just
had the right lyrics over him, he said, like Sammy said,
I was an integral part to the writing process in
the later years of of Van Hagar too, so uh.
And obviously Eddie was not happy to hear that he
could no longer write songs. Uh. So they fought in

(47:40):
interviews for the next few years until until and that
was the year that Prince died, Bowie died, Glenn Fry died,
and um, and Sammy said, you know, I really don't
want to carry this around with me anymore. So he
started sort of tentatively reaching out to try to repair
his relationship. I guess, like he tweeted at Eddie van

(48:01):
Halen like happy Birthday, and Eddie wrote back, thanks, Sammy,
hope you're well too, you know, not exactly overflowing with
warmth there, cordial. It's cordial, you know. And I guess
Sammy he went on Oprah that summer and he was
like talking again about like he wants to patch things
up with Eddie van Helen and he wants to be
friends and not even almost kind of putting like the

(48:22):
personal relationship first. Really like in the way he was
talking about it, clearly I think he would have loved
to have done more musically with Eddie van Halen. But again,
these guys were actually like bros for like a decade,
like when they were together. It wasn't like the David
Lee Roth thing, which which was purely just kind of
like a business relationship. Like I think he felt like, oh,
this was a guy I was actually once pretty close

(48:42):
to and now, you know, we've had all this bad
blood for a while. And after Eddie van Halen died,
Sammy Hagar talked about how in the final months of
Edie van Halen's life that they were texting each other
on a weekly basis, and it sounds like like towards
the end that they were finally able to kind of
achieve some measure of reconciliation. It sounds like, you know,
they weren't as close as they maybe had once been,

(49:03):
but they could you know, text regularly the way you
went with an old friend and reconnect and and hopefully
you know, tell each other what they meant to each other,
you know before Eddie passed. Yeah, that's really wonderful that
they had that. We're gonna take a quick break and
get a word from our sponsor before we get to
more rivals. All right, Well now, which is part of

(49:27):
the episode where we give the pro side of each
part of the rivalry. Let's talk about Sammy Hagar first. Um,
you know I said this before I interviewed Sammy Hagar one.
So this is like in two thousand eleven, and I
thought he was like a really nice, gregarious guy, and
it seems like, anecdotally that for the people who know him,
like that's a common takeaway with Sammy Hagar. He's just
like this big puppy who wears swift flops and drinks tequila,

(49:50):
you know, like the Spuds Mackenzie of singers, and uh,
you know, as a singer and songwriter, he is the
opposite of like a subtle and artful artist. But he
does get the I'm done And you can't discount how
difficult it was to follow someone like David Lee Roth
and how Sammy pulled it off. I mean, just look
at the guy who followed Sammy Hagar, Gary Sharon. I
mean they crashed into the side of a mountain with

(50:11):
Van Halen three, So I mean, I think that speaks
to how difficult it was for Sammy Hagar to pull
that off. So I feel like when people talk about
Van Hagar and they talk about them being this kind
of lame, synthy, power ballady adult contemporary band, Hagar ends
up being the scapegoat, which I don't think it's totally fair.
I mean, obviously, I think his vocal style suited that
kind of music more than the party jams of the

(50:34):
David Lee Roth era. But again, like this was music
that Eddie van Halen was writing, and I think it
was a direction that he wanted to go into. So
if you don't like those Van Hagar records, Eddie van
Halen must bear the brunt of that responsibility as much
as Sammy Hagar. But it must be said, just for
the record, that the four albums that they made together
all debuted at number one, and they were able to
be successful in an era where many bands of their

(50:57):
generation had either faded away or broken up. So Sammy
Hagar really gave this band a new lease on life
and extended their career, maybe even doubled their career, you know,
because he was able to make that transition so successfully. Yeah,
I mean it was that definitely the toughest time in
a band's life when they're sort of too young to
be classic or a legacy band, but too old to
be cutting edge. And like you said, yeah, I think

(51:18):
that it gave a built in excuse for Eddie to
sort of rebuild the sound from the ground up. And
now you've got songs like Don't Tell Me in Pleasure
Dome and seven Seal that you know, it's interesting, even
if I prefer the earlier Rath stuff. I definitely really
appreciate stuff like, you know, even right now. I really
like the sort of the more almost prog rocky journey
style stuff that they did do. I don't like it

(51:39):
as much as Roth, but it definitely it's It's something
that I'm grateful exists. And I do feel bad for him,
just as like nobody ever likes the replacement dude, and
especially as somebody's amiables him and as talented as him too.
I mean, I think that his voice and his musical
skills were a real asset to the group. Now, if
we go over to the pro Van Halen's side, I mean,
look in terms of his relationship with Sammy Hagar. Deep

(51:59):
down he must have known that the David Lee Rothiers
were more popular. I mean, Van Halen has two Diamond
selling records and they're both from the Roth era, the
self titled debut in you know. And while Dan Hagar
did have those four consecutive number one records, the David
the Rothiers they sold a lot more albums overall. So
when it came time when the possibility to reunite with

(52:20):
David Lee Roth arose, and really when they were at
the point where they weren't making hits anymore, and they
kind of transitioned into that era where they were just
going to be a nostalgia act. It made obvious sense
to stick with David the Rother over Sammy Hagar. And again, also,
I don't think Sammy Hagar helped himself by not singing
those David the Roth hits earlier in their career. I
think that if he could have put his own stamp

(52:40):
on those songs and at least convinced part of their
fan base that like, oh yeah, he can sing jump
better than David the Roth, or he can sing unchained
better than David the Roth, I think it would have
been harder for Van Halen to pivot back to them.
But because he didn't sing those songs, it almost created
a scarcity effect where after ten years of hearing you
know best of both worlds and you know when it's

(53:00):
love and all these power ballots people were just hungry
for like the Van Hellen of old and David Lee
Roth was ready to step in. So I think when
you look at this band overall, Sammy Hagar he deserves
some credit for helping shepherd Van Halen into this new era.
But again This is ultimately Eddie Van Halen's band, and
he knew that Sammy Hagar would work for that late
eighties early nineties era, and then he also knew when

(53:21):
to go back to the original guy when it was
advantageous to do that. Yeah, I mean, the fact that
he was able just through sheer force of will to
push the band through the split with their lead singer
is amazing enough. But then also doing doing that while
navigating the tremendous musical shift of the late elies in
early nineties, that was all Eddie's doing, And I uh, yeah,

(53:42):
I think that's really where his uh he shines in
the Van Hagar Eras that you said, it basically doubled
the band's career by doing that, by creating a whole
new sound. So if you look at these two together again,
I think we've hit upon this that ed Evan Helen
was able to strike gold again with a much different
lead singer. And you know, as much as you know
people want to compare Sammy Hagar to David the Roth,
I actually think it's a good thing that they hired

(54:03):
a guy much different than David the Roth. If they
had hired another like motor Mouth, like crazy showman type singer.
They would have inevitably fallen short of David Lee Roth.
But with a guy like Sammy Hagar, there's really no
point in comparing him to Davidle Roth because they're doing
two completely different things and it allowed Van Halen to
really become a different band. Like when I listened to

(54:23):
Van Halen, I really do think of them as two
different bands, and I think the Roth era it's the
one I prefer. But there's certain attributes to the Hagar
era that don't exist in the Roth era. And I'll
say I have a lot of guilty pleasures in the
Van Hagar era that I still turn to when I
am looking for inspirational synth rock power, balady goodness. Oh yeah,

(54:45):
I mean Dreams is like, you know, I feel like
everything I hear that, I feel like I'm in like
an eighties movie with like a like a montage of
like working out and like moving towards something. It's definitely Yeah. Now, again,
two different bands. Vastly prefer the Roth, but Van Hagar
has some great moments too. So this concludes our Van
Halen series. We've talked about the Van Halens with David

(55:05):
Lee Roth. We talked about the Van Halens with Sammy Hagar.
At the end, you might just be thinking, why can't
this be love between all these people? But I think
by the end it was. Would you say it was
a dream it was or multiple dreams because those two
different bands, I think it is safe to say that.
So thank you all for listening to this episode. We
will be back with more beefs and feuds and long

(55:26):
swimming resentments next week. Rivals is a production of I
Heart Radio. The executive producers are Shawn Titone and Noel Brown.
The supervising producers are Taylor Kin and Tristan McNeil. The
producer is Joel hat Stat. I'm Jordan's run Talk and
I'm Stephen Hyden. If you like what you heard, please

(55:47):
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