Sami Hagar He suggested he would “never play” with Alex Van Halen again for over 20 years After they finished their last tour together.
“I’m a huge Pink Floyd fan. I see David Gilmour say, ‘I’ll never play with Roger Waters again,’ and I know what he means,” the 78-year-old told the classic rocker in a recent interview. “I feel that way about Alex Van Halen. They’re negative people.”
Hagar told Rolling Stone last year that he and his former Van Halen bandmate had not spoken in 21 years.
“I hate to say it, but I dreamed about Alex that night, man,” he told the magazine in April. “It was crazy. It was so real. I was like, ‘What’s got you mad at me, man?’ What is this? Now, just tell me what your problem is. What did you do? Just tell me.”
Alex Van Halen didn’t even mention Hagar by name in his 2024 memoir “Brothers,” about his relationship with Van Halen co-founder Eddie Van Halen, who died in 2020.
While the interviewer assumed that Alex was hurt by Hagar writing about Eddie’s personal struggles in his private memoir, the red rocker disagreed.
“I’ve had this conversation with a few people, including [former VH manager] “Irving Azoff,” he said at the time, “I asked him, ‘What’s the problem?’ Some people have said to me: Oh, Kapo Wapo. At one point, Van Halen, when I built it, you were all in on it.
“And then they didn’t want it anymore when they were losing money, and they gave it to you. And you flipped it and made hundreds of millions of dollars on it. And they’re angry. Alex is angry about that.”
He said his answer was: “How could they be mad about that? They gave me the damn thing, walked out on me, left me with it. They made me pay them back in case I got sued and lost everything. They made me sign a big vacation. And I’m like, ‘I hope it’s not like that.'”
The “I Can’t Drive 55” singer told Rolling Stone magazine that he thinks Alex is upset with him “because I’m out doing this, and Mike [Anthony] I’m out doing it, and he can’t. He’s not a singer. He’s not a guitar player. He’s not really a band leader. And it seems like he doesn’t want to play the drums or he can’t play the drums anymore, and he can’t go write a new record.
“Alex wasn’t the songwriter in the band,” he continued.
“He was the drummer. Eddie and I wrote the songs. Dave.” [Lee Roth] And Eddie wrote the songs, so we could go out and do them. And I think it really bothers him because Mike and I still do it. I will feel bad. If I put myself in his shoes, I would feel bad if I couldn’t do it anymore.
Hagar, who replaced Roth as Van Halen’s lead singer in 1985, told Classic Rock in his interview this week that he treasures his time with the band more.
“Since Eddie died and since Alex sold his drum kit, I feel more comfortable leaning back into my Van Halen era and even playing some of the older songs,” he said. “Because Mike Anthony was in the band, I felt good about playing a lot of Van Halen songs, because no one would ever hear them again. That was the biggest part of my career, and everyone’s career, for God’s sake. It was the biggest band in the world.”
Hagar had previously feuded with Eddie as well, but the former bandmates reconciled before the Van Halen co-founder died in 2020 of a stroke following a battle with cancer.
“Eddie was the sweetest person I ever met when I first joined that band,” Hagar told Classic Rock.
“He was a star. There wasn’t anyone who didn’t look at him and say, ‘Wow, Eddie Van Halen.’ But it never got to his head. He drank a lot. He had an addictive personality. I guess you could say the drugs and alcohol and fame and fortune got to him, but it took a long time.”
The Red Rocker told Fox News Digital that he reconciled with Eddie months before his death.
“To be able to talk to Eddie and have a great relationship with him via text means everything to me,” Hager said.
“If he had died and we never would have said, ‘I love you,’ to each other, I would have felt really bad.
“I’m not going to be able to talk to you about it. So, it means a lot to me. And I think it means a lot to me to feel good about talking about being in Van Halen now. Because I feel like we’ve buried the hatchet. Otherwise, I would have been like, ‘Okay, these guys.’ Because, you know, I was crazy. I was hurt. And it’s so important that we’re connected.”
Hager also told Fox News Digital about his difficulties with Roth.
“David is a stranger to me,” he said. “We’re oil and water. We just don’t stick together. I mean, I tried. I thought it would be really cool if he and I were friends. It would be really cool if he and I went out with a great band and did all the great Van Halen songs together, but he’s not user-friendly.”