It feels like Sammy Hagar has been in the mood for rebuilding bridges in recent months, and so he’s refused to bite back after Alex Van Halen called him a “complete idiot”.
The Red Rocker, who fronted Van Halen for four albums, has replied to his former bandmate’s comments, but sought to douse, rather than fan, the flames amid their latest dispute.
Speaking in an interview with Brazil’s Roadie Crew magazine, Alex Van Halen gave a scathing review of Hagar’s 2011 autobiography, Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock. The catch is, he hasn’t even read it.
“I don’t know what he wrote,” he confessed. “And I don’t want to know. In my opinion, Sammy Hagar is a complete idiot.”
Read it or not, the book did cause a stir upon its release, given that Hagar had given a frank and rather unsettling account of Eddie Van Halen’s alcohol issues and interpersonal friction within the band. The book’s tell-all nature even led one woman to file a defamation lawsuit against him, claiming his words broke a legal agreement dating back to the 1980s.
Naturally, the story flooded news feeds. It didn’t take long for the drummer’s comments to reach a man he played alongside for 13 years, across two spells, but Hagar has remained level-headed. He soon weighed in on the story, commenting on an Instagram post from Rock Celebrities.
“This comment and post are so unnecessary at this time in our lives,” he wrote. “But I guess the truth hurts sometimes. Peace already.”
Hagar has been shut out of all things Van Halen since his second tenure ended in 2005. In 2022, he blamed Alex for stopping a tribute tour for the late Eddie Van Halen– although the drummer has since turned the blame on David Lee Roth.
That prompted him to form his own tribute tour, the Best of All Worlds, with longtime bass player Michael Anthony and Joe Satriani, whom DLR actually tried to poach for his own Van Halen tribute band in the ‘90s.
Notably, neither Hagar nor David Lee Roth is playing a part in the final Van Halen record that Alex Van Halen and Steve Lukather are working on together.
Usually, bitterness shared between Hagar and Alex Van Halen isn’t all that surprising, but both seem to have been burying the hatchet of late. Hagar made a heartfelt post following David Lee Roth’s sudden tour cancellation in July, and Alex shocked everyone by appearing on a TED Talk with Roth that same month. It had been 11 years since they last shared a stage.
Them again, Alex recently said the band did their best work with Roth at the helm, so it’s clear not every hatchet is on his ‘to bury’ list.
Lukather, meanwhile, can’t believe the unreleased Van Halen songs he’s currently working on haven’t seen the light of day sooner, given their quality. He’s also assured fans that the record is far from a throwaway cash grab. Steve Vai, in turn, has vouched for the reams of genius that decorate the late virtuoso’s archive.
