Sammy Hagar has talked at length about his failed attempts to get in contact with his former bandmate Alex Van Halen. Now he thinks he may know why the drummer is ghosting him.
Speaking to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Hagar, who’s currently out on his Best of Both Worlds Tour, says, “I reached out to Alex a dozen times, before this tour was announced, and got no response. I mean, I’ve asked him to meet me under any conditions, any circumstances, anytime, anyplace, anywhere. It’s not like, ‘Well, let me think about it.’ It’s like, no answer. Zero.”
According to Hagar, he wants to offer Alex a spotlight during the tour to “just play a couple of songs” or, if he wants to, “be the drummer the whole night” — or, he laughs, “be the executive producer. What do you want to do?”
But Sammy is now floating the idea that Alex is ignoring him because he’s going to put out his autobiography, called Brothers, this fall.
“I’m sure when he made his book deal, they said, ‘You cannot talk to Dave [Lee Roth], and you cannot talk to Hagar,” says the Red Rocker. “I guarantee you, that that was part of the deal.”
Still, Sammy is soldiering on with his current lineup: Joe Satriani on guitar, Jason Bonham on drums, Van Halen‘s Michael Anthony on bass and keyboardist Rai Thistlethwayte.
“The idea of putting together guys who maybe have not played together before — Joe and Mike and I have not played together with Jason before — is a revelation,” says Hagar.
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