When Alex Van Halen called him a “complete idiot” earlier this month, Sammy Hagar answered with two sentences and moved on. A week later he had a great deal more to say, and the insult was the smallest part of it.
Speaking on the September 17 episode of SiriusXM‘s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk“, Hagar asked the Van Halen drummer to state publicly what his objection actually is, and said the real damage is not being done to him but to Eddie Van Halen‘s catalogue.
The remark that set it off came in issue 293 of Brazilian magazine Roadie Crew, in an interview conducted by journalist Marcelo Vieira, who translated Alex‘s memoir Brothers into Portuguese. Alex, who is 73, was asked about the autobiographies written by both of Van Halen‘s best-known singers.
On David Lee Roth‘s 1997 book “Crazy From The Heat“, Alex said: “It’s quite fun and accurately reflects [David‘s] sense of humor. Although the text is somewhat abstract and loses its train of thought at times, it’s still a very interesting perspective on that era.”
On Hagar‘s “Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock“, he was blunter: “I don’t know what he wrote, and I don’t wanna know. In my opinion, Sammy Hagar is a complete idiot.”
Hagar‘s immediate reply came in an Instagram comment: “This comment and post is so unnecessary at this time in our lives, but I guess the truth hurts sometimes. Peace already,”
Asked on Trunk‘s show to expand, he started with the book.
“I don’t know what Alex‘s problem is. If I wanted to get into a tug-of-war again, but there’s so much clickbait going around now, it turns on you every time. And I’m always honest — I tell the truth. And I’d never lied in my book. None of those were lies. Those are all truth. All those things happened, whether or not anyone’s happy about some of the stuff that they did that, that I’d brought up to the people in the book,” he said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
Asked whether “Red” is the root of the problem, Hagar turned to what he says has been written out of the record.
“I don’t know. This is what I’m saying, this is what I was getting to, is that my only question is…” he continued. “I wanna call Alex out and say, dude, we all know you act like there was never a Sammy Hagar. You act like there was never a Van Hagar [Van Halen with Sammy Hagar]. We sold 40-something million records, four No. 1 albums, and you just scratch that off of your brother’s [Eddie Van Halen] legacy, saying, ‘No, that never happened.’ You don’t even wanna acknowledge it. That’s deep. That’s weird. That’s not right for Eddie, for me, for Mike [Anthony], for anybody. All the things he does, it’s, like, why? So I’m asking Alex, like, why? Come clean. What’s your problem? Just come out and say it. Is it the book? Say it. If it’s Cabo Wabo, say it. Maybe if I knew what the problem was, I could fix it. But right now he just acts like there’s not a problem. It just never happened. It’s almost like… You remember when Wolfie [Wolfgang Van Halen] joined the band, Alex took all the old catalog, all the records, all the photos that were on their web site, and Photoshopped Wolfie in and took Mikey out. He did that for about two weeks, and then the people gave him so much s**t, he fixed it. This is as stupid as that, to me. It’s, like, dude, don’t pretend like something never happened.”
Wolfgang Van Halen, Eddie‘s son, joined the band in 2006 in place of Michael Anthony. The website episode Hagar describes is his own account of that period.
He then widened the complaint to how the band’s archive is being handled since Eddie‘s death.
“Something’s wrong,” Hagar added. “Like I said, it’s deeper. It shouldn’t be, that’s all. It just shouldn’t be. Like, just tell me why. So this is my thing… At least we can [try to] dig down and find out the real reason. And Alex needs to say it. Not from the fans. The fans got all kinds of reasons. Every time I get into that… It’s awesome, though. A lot of people say the right thing, a lot of people do know that it’s not right. But I’m not trying to cause a conflict; I’m trying to fix something. Whether Alex wants to play drums ever again is his business, whether he wants to just keep releasing all this old stuff with these photographs and all this stuff and charging people for old pictures that you can find on the Internet and stuff, even if they’re just his. It’s, like, he should be putting them out there for free. To me, he’s doing a lot of stuff wrong for the legacy of Van Halen, and the one that is my business is I just wanna know why. Just come clean. Tell the people. Tell me, make a public statement why, and then we can figure out whether you’re right or wrong, and whether we can fix it or not. And if we can’t fix it, then just go about my business. It’s all good. It’s not changing my life. And it doesn’t really even bother me anymore, ’cause I think the fans really know it’s wrong. They’re starting to… I see a lot of negative stuff on what he’s doing.”
Asked whether he still wants to settle things with Alex while both men are alive, Hagar said he has stopped trying.
“Oh, I’ve given up. I don’t really care anymore. If he doesn’t wanna do it — he’s the one that has a problem. I don’t have a problem with it. I go out. I’m capable of singing all those songs, and I do it, and Mikey‘s with me, and we got a great band. I mean, you can’t put a better version of Van Halen together than what we got, other than having Alex play drums, and we know that’s not gonna happen. So when I give up on that, that’s when I just say, ‘No, I’m just gonna go about my business, carry on as long as I can, carry on with the songs I’ve written.’ These are songs I wrote with Eddie. Eddie and I wrote these songs,” he explained.
Hagar replaced Roth in Van Halen in 1985 and made four studio albums with the band, 5150, OU812, For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge and Balance, every one of which reached No. 1 in the United States. He left in 1996 and returned for a summer tour in 2004, the last time he, Eddie, Alex and Anthony worked together. Anthony reportedly agreed to a pay cut and signed away his rights to the band name and logo in order to take part.
“Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock” followed in 2011 and set the feud in motion. The book documented Eddie‘s alcoholism and described his physical condition during the 2004 tour in unsparing terms. Eddie Van Halen died on October 6, 2020. Hagar apologised in 2021 for the way he had written about him, while maintaining that what he wrote was accurate, a position he restated on Trunk‘s show.
Alex‘s Brothe”rs, published in 2024, ends in 1984 with Roth‘s first departure. It covers neither Hagar‘s eleven years in the band nor the 2007 reunion with Roth.
The drummer also turned down an invitation to join Hagar and Anthony on their 2024 “Best Of All Worlds” tour, telling Billboard at the time: “I’m not interested. They’re not doing the band justice. They can do what they want to do. That’s not my business.”
Hagar offered his own theory to Rolling Stone last year: “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’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. Eddie and I wrote the songs. Dave [Lee Roth] 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.”
The two men have not spoken in roughly 25 years.
Hagar is currently working through another run of his “Best Of All Worlds” residency in Las Vegas, backed by Anthony, guitarist Joe Satriani and drummer Kenny Aronoff. Alex Van Halen has not responded to the latest comments.
