“I think the best stuff was yet to come”: Sammy Hagar claims Eddie Van Halen was “always held back by the record companies and the people around him”
Despite their turbulent relationship, Sammy Hagar has “no regrets” about his time as the lead singer of Van Halen, even if he and Eddie Van Halen never got to realise their full musical potential together.
In a new interview with Detroit’s WRIF radio station, the former Van Halen frontman reflects on his creative chemistry with Eddie, praising the late guitarist’s musical ambition and hinting at what might have been had the band stayed together. He claims that their best music was still ahead of them and says Eddie’s growth as a musician was stifled by outside forces.
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“Oh, hell no. Oh, no regrets whatsoever,” Hagar says when asked if he had any [via Blabbermouth]. “I regret that we broke up, just to see what else we could have done. I would’ve loved to have made another record or two with Eddie writing.”
“Eddie and I wrote some great songs together, and I think the best stuff was yet to come; it could have been yet to come, because Eddie was really reaching out on instruments,” he adds.
“Last time I talked to Eddie before he passed, I said, ‘Man, what are you playing?’ He said, ‘Oh, man, I’ve really been playing a lot of cello.’ And I’m going, ‘Cello? Holy shit.’ [Laughs] ‘Play me something, dude. I’m ready to write a song with you on cello.’”
According to Hagar, Eddie’s artistic growth was long stifled by industry pressures – and even by his own bandmates.
“As artists, Eddie and I were really capable of doing a lot of stuff that he couldn’t do before me because the other guy didn’t want keyboards,” he says, seemingly referencing original VH frontman David Lee Roth.
“And when I walked in the room with Eddie, he showed me two guitar songs when I joined, on [the] 5150 [album] – he showed me Good Enough and he showed me Summer Nights. Those are two riffs he had. And then what did he do? He went and sat down at the piano and he started playing all this stuff,” Hagar recalls.
“And I’m going, Whoa. What? He starts playing the riff to Dreams. He’s sitting there playing Love Walks In. He’s just playing all these things on keyboards, and I’m going, ‘Whoa, I had no idea he was that good of a keyboard player.’ So, he really wanted to expand as a musician.”
The singer argues that Eddie’s full musical vision never got the chance it deserved: “To me, I think that’s what his dream would’ve been,” says Hagar. “And it was always held back by the record companies and the people around him. I think we would’ve broken out of that within a year and started doing some really crazy stuff.”
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