In a new interview with The Arizona Republic, Sammy Hagar reflected on making peace with Eddie Van Halen before he passed away.
“Well, I can’t speak for Ed, but we had some really emotional moments on the phone, being very happy to be friends again,” the Red Rocker said when asked how it felt to make things right. “For me, I can only speak for myself, it was so important that we had closure before he passed because otherwise, I don’t know how I’d feel about it.”
Hagar continued, “I’d be waking up in the middle of the night once in a while going ‘Man, I wish we could’ve fixed that.’ Now, I don’t have to do that. Now, I just go, ‘Hey, I miss Ed.’ I miss the music. It’s a wonderful thing to not take anything to your grave. That’s always been my philosophy. I like to make friends, not enemies, No. 1. No. 2, I’m not interested in taking any anger or anything to my grave.”
“And I don’t want any enemy to take it to their grave. I will reach out and do whatever I can to prevent that from happening,” the singer noted. “That’s what I did with Ed. When I heard he was really sick, I got on it. I was kind of waiting for him to call me. I thought, ‘He owes me the phone call.’ But when I heard he was really in bad shape, I reached out immediately. That’s the way you’ve got to do it.”
“I fell apart,” Sammy previously told in an appearance on Celebrity Sleepover about his last conversations with Eddie. “It just was such a miracle that he and I hooked up about four months, five months before that. Eddie and I went really into some soul talking about doing something next year.”
Sammy and Eddie hadn’t talked to each other after the Van Halen reunion tour finished in 2004. There was tension between them during the tour due to the late guitarist’s substance abuse.