As he prepares to pay tribute to his old band with this summer’s Best of All Worlds Tour, Sammy Hagar says he’s over the PTSD from the 2004 Van Halen reunion trek — a nightmare experience that he documented in detail in his memoir Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock.
It was, in fact, the 20th anniversary of that outing — a commercially successful endeavor that played 80 shows over four legs between June and November of that year — that inspired this year’s tour. “Mike and I were in Cabo (Wabo), sitting the dressing room drinking some tequila, getting ready to go play some music,” Hagar tells UCR. “Some guy comes in and starts saying, ‘Well, it’s been 20 years since you guys did the reunion tour,’ and I’m going, ‘What the fuck…?’ Mike and I looked at each other and said, ‘Twenty years, wow. Let’s go do this.’ The light bulb just went off. We just high-fived, went on stage and didn’t say nothing to nobody, just started planning this tour, which would be a heavy Van Halen song tour.”
The 2004 tour was Van Halen’s first in six years and its first with Hagar since supporting the Balance album in 1995. Despite a strong box office and a new compilation — The Best of Both Worlds with three new songs — old tension surfaced, particularly over Eddie Van Halen’s substance abuse. Hagar described him in the book as “unkempt, hunched over, frighteningly skinny…It was horrible to know a person that was in that kind of shape.” There was occasional fighting backstage, and Hagar insisted he would not go to the stage to start the show until he knew Van Halen was there already. He and the Van Halen brothers continued to be at odds over Hagar’s promotion of his Cabo Wabo tequila, and it was also the tour when the brothers made bassist Michael Anthony a hired touring musician rather than the full-fledged band member he’d been since Van Halen’s formation; it was only at Hagar’s insistence that Anthony was part of the tour at all.
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Now, however, Hagar says that he’s “way over it — I don’t even remember it.” He and Eddie Van Halen had reconciled somewhat before the latter’s death in 2020, and Hagar now says that, “As a matter of fact, I miss Eddie so much I would go do that (2004) tour again, just to play with the guy again. I miss the guy. Our creativity when we were on was spectacular.” And he’s been reminded of that even more during rehearsals for the upcoming tour, which begins July 13 in West Palm Beach, Fla., with Anthony and drummer Jason Bonham, both from Hagar’s The Circle. Joe Satriani, who plays with Hagar and Anthony in Chickenfoot, is on guitar, with Rai Thistlethwayte adding keyboards and second guitar when needed.
Hagar Says Revisiting Old Van Halen Songs Has Been ‘Enlightening’
Hagar has documented the group’s rehearsals on social media, exciting fans with snippets of returning Van Halen songs such as “The Seventh Seal,” “Summer Nights,” “Judgement Day,” “5150” and others. The shows will also include favorites from Montrose, Chickenfoot and Hagar’s solo career. “Dissecting those (Van Halen) songs that we wrote together is such an enlightening experience,” Hagar says. “It’s like, ‘Omigod, we wrote these songs! These songs are classic! These songs are lifers.’ They’re just great stuff. A lot of people say, ‘Oh, this is a tribute to Eddie Van Halen.’ No, it’s a tribute to Eddie Van Halen, Sammy Hagar, David Lee Roth, Michael Anthony and Alex Van Halen’s music. That’s what it’s a tribute to — the music.”
Van Halen Lineup Changes
Three different singers and two different bassists joined the Van Halen brothers over the years.
