Although Sammy Hagar will undoubtedly be plenty busy with the Circle once the pandemic cools down and the road opens back up to bands — he's still got his eye on Van Halen. The “Red Rocker,” whose summer tour with the Circle and Night Ranger has been scrapped, spoke to Rolling Stone and mapped out how he would ultimately like to see the mighty Van Halen come back on the scene, saying, “My dream tour is the Sam and Dave (Lee Roth) tour with Ed, Al (Van Halen), and Mike (Anthony). Let Wolfie (Van Halen) put his band together and open. I have a son, Andrew Hagar, who makes great music. Let Andrew open, let Wolfie play with his band in the middle and then have the Sam and Dave tour where we do an hour each. An hour with Dave songs and an hour with me.”
Hagar, who played an ill-fated, but successful, double-bill tour with Roth back in 2002, went on to say, “If Dave wants to come out together, we can do that. But of course he wouldn’t want to do that, so I couldn’t care less if I even saw the guy. . . I foresee it happening. I’m not trying to plant a seed like I know something is happening. I know nothing. I just know what I know in my heart and my head, which is that it has to happen. Whether it’s Sam and Dave or not, I don’t know that either. But I know that Eddie and I are not done. If enough water goes under the bridge before we die, it’ll happen. It has to. God is going to slap us both around if he has to.”
Hagar said that he had been approached about a Van Halen tour last year, revealing, “I was asked through other people in my management to see if that would happen. The camps talked about it and Live Nation asked about it. It came and went because Ed got sick. I don’t know exactly what happened to him, but I think he had back surgery.”
Although the true extent of Eddie Van Halen's maladies remain a mystery to the general public, Hagar did say: “Eddie had a lot of health issues, but I heard he got it together. I pray for the guy and I love the guy.”
Regarding Van Halen, Hagar explained, “Until Ed or Alex Van Halen die, they’re not finished. Those are two great musicians that can friggin’ do as good as most people at half-mast. As a drummer and as a guitarist and creative person, Eddie, I can’t see them ever being finished. I wish they were more active, but I think Van Halen will never be finished. If they want to get it together, they just have to call Dave or have to call Sammy. They can go out with Wolfie as a trio, but that’s not the legacy of Van Halen. I think they know that. I’m not predicting what’s going to happen, but I would tell you if there’s concerts next year, Van Halen will probably be on tour next year.”
Sammy Hagar has long been a proponent of a five-man Van Halen tour and admitted to us he would be willing to dive back into the drama just to get the band back on the road: “I would love to see a Sam and Dave reunion with Michael, Alex, and Eddie. I think the fans would die and go to heaven on that one, y'know? That, I would sit across the table (to discuss). And I would go through negotiations. Ed and Al are brothers and they're really tight and they're hard to deal with because they're not straight up all time, so, they'll tell you one thing and the next day, you look at what they said you said and you say, (laughs) 'Wait a minute, that's not what I understood,' and then you go back and forth. But for that, I would put in the effort and roll up my sleeves if everybody was interested, because that, that. . . c'mon, it would be awesome.”
