In a new chat with The Bogus Otis Show: 9 Degrees Of Sammy Hagar podcast, Sammy Hagar talked about why it is hard to make money from records nowadays.
“Yes. I guarantee it,” the singer replied when asked if his current The Best of All Worlds touring band might write and record new songs. “I mean, it’s, like, I don’t know when and why, because records don’t sell.”
He continued, “I’ve made a couple of my best records of my life, my last two solo records, and I’m lucky to sell 50 or 60,000 records. You go and make a record nowadays just to lose a couple hundred thousand bucks. It’s all good. But I need a tax write-off, so it really helps. ‘I made too many this year. Let’s go make a record.’”
Last month, Hagar also said he’d be happy to work on Eddie Van Halen’s tapes, but Alex Van Halen is tough to convince. The Red Rocker noted, “I don’t think Alex is user-friendly. I don’t know why, but he’s just not. If Al were user-friendly, I would get with Al, and Wolfie and go in there, go through it, pick the pieces I could make a song out of, and write the lyrics and melody and make a song out of it, and piece it together.”
The vocalist stated, “And yeah, get Mikey on board and go in there and we can have a Van Halen record. I guarantee you Eddie’s got a ton of stuff.” He also added, “But Alex would have to be involved. And of course, Wolfie would be user-friendly; Wolfie’s got no angst against nobody. He should be the happiest kid in the world right now, I’m so happy for him right now I can’t tell ya.”
For The Best of All Worlds tour, Michael Anthony, Jason Bonham, guitarist Joe Satriani, and multi-instrumentalist Rai Thistlethwayte join Hagar. The setlist mostly features Van Halen songs, plus some of Satriani’s and Hagar’s solo hits. The tour, produced by Live Nation, has 28 shows and ends on August 31 in St. Louis, Missouri.