In a conversation with Ultimate Classic Rock, Sammy Hagar opened up about his time with Van Halen. The singer revealed that his bandmates Alex Van Halen and the late Eddie Van Halen were sick of playing the band’s David Lee Roth-era songs.
After revealing that he wouldn’t sing a song just because it was a hit and fans liked it, Hagar explained what he meant to do when he first joined the band:
“Well, when I joined Van Halen, I was trying to make a statement. Hey, listen, this is a new band, we wrote new material — and to get rid of that comparison thing, I didn’t want to… look, it wasn’t just me.”
Scared that it might look like he was the only one who didn’t want to play the Roth-era tracks, he corrected himself and continued:
“This was Ed, Al, Mike, this was a unanimous vote. Nobody wanted to continue on with the old stuff. It was like, ‘Sh*t, we’re tired of playing that, man. Let’s play the new songs.’ But now, it’s such a whole different thing. I’m not trying to make any kind of a statement, I’m just trying to play for the fans. This is for the people. This is the ‘thank you’ tour, for all of the fans who followed us for all of those years and have been waiting 20 years for some other kind of a reunion — my era, anyway, for sure.”
Though he doesn’t want to particularly pick songs from the Roth-era, there is a track that Hagar still loves to perform:
“With Mike and I up there, singing those songs and playing them from our hearts, it’s easy to pick the ones [from the Roth era]. I love ‘Panama.’ That’s a badass tune. The first time I heard ‘Panama,’ it pissed me off. That’s how good it is. That’s the way we’re approaching it, by doing the songs that I really enjoy singing. I was watching a live Van Halen clip the other day, from ‘95. We were doing ‘Panama’ and it was frickin’ great. I was singing it and I was really singing it well. I wasn’t just trying to mimic Dave, I was singing the song. It’s a cool song.”
‘Roth Can’t Sing’
Though Hagar got along well with the band, his time lasted about as long as Roth’s before he left after feeling unhappy during the recording of ‘Humans Being.’
Although later he reunited for tours with the original lineup and alongside Roth, Hagar never returned to record another album with the band. Their album ‘A Different Kind of Truth’ was the end of their studio work with Roth back in charge.
In an interview, Hagar didn’t hold Roth’s singing skills in high regard. Hagar was happy with the way Roth ‘performed’ on stage, but he felt most of his strengths were in his performance rather than his vocal ability:
“He doesn’t care about singing. If he did, he’d take care of his voice, or he’d take voice lessons and get warmed up and do something. Because the guy sang so badly the last time he was doing shows, it was embarrassing. But he’s a showman. Everything’s show, show, show, and he doesn’t care about his voice, which drives me nuts, man.”
Roth Claimed VH Stole Songs From Him
Before Roth left Van Halen in 1985, the band had started working on their seventh album. They were writing songs for the follow-up to their album ‘1984.’ However, conflicts over Roth’s 1985 covers EP ‘Crazy From the Heat’ made Roth leave the band.
After Roth left, Van Halen brought in Hagar and they worked on their next album, ‘5150,’ their first album with him. Roth claimed Van Halen used some of his earlier work for the album. He said he had written melodies and vocal parts for half of the album, recorded on demo tapes.
Roth didn’t specify which songs he contributed to. However, he had started work on three post-1984 tracks, including an unreleased original song called ‘Eat They Neighbor.’ There’s also talk of an alternate version of ‘Summer Nights’ with lyrics by Roth, and Eddie had begun writing ‘Dreams’ around the time Roth left the band.
But in Eddie’s words, Hagar had never heard the songs before but adapted very quickly. He said in a February 1986 interview with Musician:
“[Sammy] never heard it before. He listened to each song a couple times, not even that, and he just came in and sang it.”