While on a one-week tour of Europe to perform and promote “Chickenfoot III,” singer Sammy Hagar speaks out on his former band, Van Halen, including his thoughts on their new single, “Tattoo.”
“I personally don’t think that what they have just released, what I have seen and heard, is great at all,” Sammy tells Cack Blabbath in Manchester. “It should be better than it is but hey, it is what it is and at least they got together and at least they came out with something, that’s all I can say, you know. God bless them but I was expecting a lot more.”
Hagar was asked if the VH reunion with David Lee Roth was motivated more by music or money.
“Well, I’m not going to speculate why anyone does anything, but I’ll tell you what, they waited so long and they’re so not fan friendly, and as big as Van Halen was in the past…,” Sammy began.
“That’s what we used to argue about when I was in the band, I got thrown out because I didn’t want to do a Greatest Hits record. I said ‘Why the f**k, we’re the biggest band in the world, every album we’ve done since I’ve been in the band has been at number 1, we’ve sold out every arena on the planet, now why would you want to sell them the same old record again and give them two new tracks? Why do you want to do that to the fans?’ And we got into it. They wanted to do it at that time for the money, a new manager came in and he thought we could make a whole bunch of money for doing nothing, and I’m going ‘We’ve got a whole bunch of money, so why are we doing this?’ you know. We really didn’t need to do it and it really caused problems in the band.”
As for the VH/Roth reunion, Hagar adds, “Why they’re doing it now I have no idea, but I think it’s about time.”
While the majority of the interview is based on Chickenfoot, there are plenty of references to Van Halen throughout, but the above comments were based on the only VH-specific question presented to the singer.
Read more with Sammy at Cack Blabbath here.
Van Halen’s new album, “A Different Kind Of Truth,” will be released on February 7.
Tattoo - Single - Van Halen Van Halen – Tattoo
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