Sammy Hagar shares key to Van Halen’s success, reveals if he’d ever reconcile with David Lee Roth

Sammy Hagar reflected on the key to Van Halen’s massive success during his years with the rock band.

The 75-year-old singer joined guitarist Eddie Van Halen, Eddie’s brother and drummer Alex Van Halen and bassist/vocalist Michael Anthony in 1985. At the time, Van Halen, co-founded by the Van Halen brothers in 1974, was already one of the biggest rock bands in the world.

Hagar rose to fame in the early 1970s as the lead singer of the hard rock band Montrose and later established himself as a successful solo act before becoming a member of Van Halen. In an interview with Fox News Digital, the Red Rocker explained how the musical partnership he formed with Eddie after he replaced David Lee Roth as lead vocalist took the band to the next level.

“When I joined Van Halen, they were already big, and they were a great band. And I was already a solo artist with platinum albums and selling out arenas all over the world. So, the thing that made Van Halen great — stay great — when I joined the band is that Eddie and I, as musicians and as human beings, we connected real strong,” Hagar said.

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“I mean, real strong. I connect with Alex, too, and Mike. He’s still my dearest friend in the world. But Eddie and I found this bond because Eddie was a frustrated musician because the former singer didn’t have a range and a type of voice that could sing a lot of music that Eddie could write.

“So Eddie was always stuck with, you know, playing these guitar riffs,” Hagar added. “And when I walked in, it was like, he starts playing a piano part and I start singing. He goes, ‘Whoa!’ So the second he said, ‘You can do that?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ I’m going, ‘You can do that?’ I had no idea he played keyboards that good.

“And so that’s what made us a better band. We elevated. We just went, ‘Whoa, you can do that? Oh, yeah, I can do that! Well, I can do that. You can do that!’ And we just went [raises hand up to the ceiling] and the music got really, really sophisticated.”

After Hagar joined Van Halen, the band scored its first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart with the 1986 release “5150,” which became certified six-times platinum by the RIAA. Over the next 10 years with Hagar as the lead singer, Van Halen released three consecutive No. 1, multi-platinum albums, including 1988’s “OU812,” 1991’s “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge” and 1995’s “Balance.”

While recording “Balance,” Sammy and Eddie began to clash over creative differences. Tensions escalated further when Van Halen began recording songs for the soundtrack of the 1996 disaster movie “Twister.”

Hagar parted ways with the band after an explosive argument during a phone call with Eddie on Father’s Day in 1996. The two had differing accounts of how Hagar’s departure unfolded. Eddie said that the singer quit the band, while Hagar has maintained he was fired. 

After a brief reunion with Roth in 1996, Van Halen replaced Hagar with Gary Cherone, the former frontman of Extreme. Their release with Cherone, 1998’s “Van Halen III,” was a commercial disappointment, and the singer subsequently exited the band.

In 1999, Van Halen went on a four-year hiatus before Hagar returned in 2003. Hagar recorded new tracks for Van Halen’s second greatest hits album, 2004’s “The Best of Both Worlds,” and the band embarked on the successful Summer Tour 2004.

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However, relations between Sammy and Eddie began to sour once again, and the singer left the band again after the tour wrapped up. Hagar’s second departure led to an estrangement from Eddie that lasted for years. In 2007, Roth returned to the band, and Van Halen set off on its 2007-2008 North American tour, which became its best-selling tour.

In October 2020, Eddie died at the age of 65 after a battle with throat cancer. Shortly after Eddie’s death, Hagar revealed they had reconciled a few months earlier.

In his interview with Fox News Digital, Hagar expressed gratitude he and his former bandmate were able to mend their relationship before Eddie died.

“To be able to have talked to Eddie and have a wonderful rapport with him on text, it means everything to me,” Hagar shared. “If he would have died and we would have not ever said, ‘I love you’ to each other, I would have felt really bad.

“I wouldn’t be able to talk to you about it. So that means a lot to me. And it means a lot, I think, for me to feel good about talking about being in Van Halen now. Because I feel like we buried the hatchet. Otherwise, I’d be saying, ‘Well, those guys.’ Because, you know, I was mad. I was hurt. And it’s very important that we connected.”

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While Hagar was able to make peace with Eddie, he told Fox News Digital chances are slim he and Roth will ever reconcile. As both singers fronted Van Halen during different eras, they maintained a rivalry for decades. However, the two teamed up in 2002 when they co-headlined the “Song For Song, The Heavyweight Champs Of Rock And Roll” tour.

However, the two clashed behind the scenes and in the media. Hagar noted that their relationship hasn’t improved much in the past two decades.

“David is a strange person for me. We’re oil and water,” the California native said. “We just don’t gel. I mean, I’ve tried. I thought it would be really cool if him and I were friends. It would be really cool if him and I went out with a great band and did all those great Van Halen songs together, but he’s just not user-friendly.

“And I just really think he’s kind of past his prime of being able to do his stuff the way I would like it to be done if we were going to do something together. I don’t think he cares enough about his voice. But, other than that, I would be happy to be friends with him, but I just don’t think it can ever happen. He’s not my kind of person, and I’m not his kind of person.”

Since his stints with Van Halen, Hagar has continued releasing new music and performing both as a solo act with the backing band The Waboritas and as a member of the supergroups Chickenfoot and Sammy Hagar and the Circle. 

He formed the latter supergroup with former Van Halen bandmate and fellow Hall of Famer Michael Anthony, guitarist Vic Johnson and drummer Jason Bonham in 2014. Last year, Sammy Hagar and the Circle released their second album, “Crazy Times,” Hagar’s 28th studio album. 

Yet, Hagar told Fox News Digital his years with Van Halen were “absolutely” the pinnacle of his career.

“I don’t think I could ever accomplish what we accomplished on my own,” he said. “I can do a more personal version of who and what I am, like on my new records that I’ve done, the two I recorded in the last five or six years.

“But I think my last record, “Crazy Times,” really is the best work I’ve ever done by myself. But I have a great band again. So, it’s kind of like I feel like I can try something and that the guys can stand up.

“A lot of times when you’re messing with some experimental thing and you have musicians that aren’t quite competent, you go, ‘Oh, well, it’s just not working, and you blow it out.’ My band, I can go, ‘Let’s try this and that. Whoa, here it is.’ So they’re really good. They just don’t have the kind of genius creativity — nobody did— that Eddie Van Halen had. So, I just think that was just the peak of my musical thing.”

The Grammy Award winner told Fox News Digital there is “no secret” to how he has been able to continue making music for over five decades.

“You have to love doing it,” he said. “If you love doing it, you can do it. If you take care of yourself, take care of your voice, then you can sing, play guitar as long as you want. And I don’t see why anyone would not want to play music.

“I play all day,” Hagar continued. “I sit around when I’m doing nothing, even when I’m on the phone sometimes. I’m sitting with the guitar in my hand, noodling around, keeping my fingers loose. It’s something you can do your whole life.

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“So, I think the secret is just staying in love. Same thing, just like a marriage, you know? I mean, the secret to keeping a marriage together is stay in love. Stay sexually attracted to each other and get experimental about your lives and try things you’ve never tried and all that. You know, it’s important. So, the only thing that will allow you to do that is the love for the other person.”

In addition to his music career, Hagar has also enjoyed massive success as an entrepreneur. He is the founder of the Cabo Wabo Beach Club restaurant chain and its signature tequila brand Cabo Wabo Tequila. In 2008, the musician sold the Cabo Wabo Tequila brand for $100 million. He currently owns Santo Spirits, Sammy’s Beach Bar Rum and Sammy’s Beach Bar Cocktail Co.

Hagar opened his restaurant franchise’s newest location, the Cabo Wabo Beach Club & Bar at Huntington Beach’s Waterfront Resort, in February. The recording artist will donate his personal net proceeds from the restaurant to Children’s Hospital of Orange County.

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Donations to CHOC will be facilitated through The Hagar Family Foundation, a dedicated fund that Hagar and his wife of 27 years, Kari Hagar, founded in 2008. CHOC will continue to receive the donations regularly as long as the restaurant remains open.

Hagar attributes his dedication to philanthropy as well as his career drive to his impoverished upbringing. Hagar and his three siblings lived in a labor camp with their parents Bobby and Gladys Hagar in Salinas, California. The family later moved to Fontana, California, when Bobby found a job at a steel mill.

“I was poor and had an alcoholic father, a really bad situation,” he recalled. “But I had a very loving parent. My mother was just a mother hen with the four kids. I was the youngest. And I had an older sister that used to help her as if she was her assistant when she had to work and do things. My oldest sister would pick up the slack and keep an eye on me and my brother.

“And my father was extremely loving. He just was so troubled and such a bad alcoholic who was always in trouble, in and out of jail. So that combination, I think, gave me the the the ability to have done what I do.

“After I became successful with music, it brought me to the philanthropy side because of being poor. I wanted to go back and help poor people. So the whole thing is all just one little ball that made me what I am. I wanted to be somebody because I was poor and I was nobody.”

The hitmaker remembered dating girls whose parents would sometimes ban him from their homes due to his father’s frequent bar fights.

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“Those kind of things, the little bit of humiliation made me want to be somebody,” he said. “That was where I get my drive from. Everything seemed to come together properly. But I also knew the meaning of love, unconditional love, because I felt it from my parents and from my family. So I know how to love. So I’m not bitter about being poor.

“I think everything that has molded me to this point was all necessary to get me to this point today,” Hagar added. “And I’m happy with where I’m at.”