Sammy Hagar thinks Alex Van Halen is “angry” because he’s still “out doing it” – and Alex can’t
Sammy Hagar has claimed that the reason Alex Van Halen hasn’t spoken to him in over two decades comes down to one thing: bitterness.
Back in 2022, the former Van Halen frontman shared that Alex had pretty much cut him off (“Alex has got a stick up his ass about something with me still,” Hagar said at the time). The drummer’s latest memoir Brothers, also ends its timeline with David Lee Roth’s departure – skipping over Hagar’s massively successful run with the band altogether.
In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Hagar suggests that the drummer may still be holding onto old grudges and struggling with watching his former bandmates continue without him.
READ MORE: Sammy Hagar claims Eddie Van Halen wanted to tour with him before passing: “He said ‘Next year, we’re gonna get together… Don’t even talk to Alex about this’”
“I hate to say it, but I dreamt about Alex the other night, man,” he says. “It was crazy. And it was so friggin’ real. I was saying, ‘What are you pissed off at me about, man? What the fuck? Now just tell me what your problem is. What did I do? Just tell me.’”
When the interviewer suggests Hagar’s 2011 memoir, Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock – which painted a rough portrait of Eddie Van Halen’s personal struggles – might be to blame, Hagar disagrees.
“I don’t think that’s it,” he says. “And I’ve had this conversation with a few people, including [former Van Halen manager] Irving Azoff.”
“I’ve asked him, ‘What’s the problem?’ And some people have said to me, ‘Oh, Cabo Wabo. At one time, Van Halen, when you built it, you guys were all partners in that,’” Hagar recalls. “And then they didn’t want it anymore when it was losing money, and they gave it to you, and you turned it around and made hundreds of millions of dollars on it. And they’re angry. Alex is angry about that.’”
“To that I said, ‘How the fuck could they be angry about that? They gave me the damn thing, they walked out on me, left me with it. And they made me indemnify them in case I got sued and lost everything. They made me sign off big time.’ And I’m going, ‘I hope it’s not that.’”
But more than anything, Hagar suspects the root of Alex’s silence may lie in frustration over what he can no longer do.
“I think Al’s angry because I’m out doing it, and Mike [Anthony] and I are out doing it, and he can’t,” he argues. “He’s not a singer. He’s not a guitar player. He is not really a band leader. And he seems like he doesn’t want to play drums or can’t play drums anymore, and he can’t go write a new record.”
“Alex wasn’t the songwriter in the band. He was the drummer,” Hagar continues. “Eddie and I wrote the songs. Dave and Eddie wrote the songs, and so we can go out and do them. And I think that really bothers him that Mike and I are still out there doing it. I would feel bad. If I put myself in his shoes, I would feel terrible if I couldn’t do it anymore.”
“But I’m the happiest guy out of all of them. That pisses people off in itself. Being too happy, people don’t like that.”
Meanwhile, Hagar recently released his new single Encore, Thank You, Goodnight, which features a guitar lick the late Eddie Van Halen ‘showed him’ in a dream.
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
