Sammy Hagar: ‘I don’t want a Van Halen reunion’

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Sammy Hagar has revealed that he wouldn’t want to participate in a Van Halen reunion.

Speaking to Classic Rock, the former VH singer revealed that he has been reticent to contact his former bandmates Eddie and Alex Van Halen in case they thought he was trying to engineer a reunion.

“I’m afraid if I ever reached out and really tried to contact Ed and Al, they would think that I was trying to get back in the band or I was trying to do a reunion,” Hagar tells Classic Rock. “And I'm not. I am so content with [current band] The Circle – we play the Van Halen songs that I wrote with Ed as good as anybody, but I’m happy to have just five or six Van Halen songs in my set. It's almost like I don't want to be asked to do because i'd feel like I had to do it, but I don’t really want to. I'm sorry I don’t.”

Hagar formed The Circle in 2014 with guitarist Vic Johnson, drummer Jason Bonham and former Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony. They initially played songs from Hagar’s past bands and solo career, but recently released debut album, Space Between, which featured all-original material, including the single Trust Fund Baby.

“It’s about the division between good and bad,” says Hagar of the album. “All these big corporate guys that are billionaires to begin with ripping off their employees, people bombing churches, the right hating the left, the left hating the right, the blacks hating the whites. It used to be that you could go to hell, the devil was somewhere else. But the devil is at sea level now. The solution lies in the space between us – that handshake in the middle.”

Space Between is out now via BMG

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Dave Everley has been writing about and occasionally humming along to music since the early 90s. During that time, he has been Deputy Editor on Kerrang! and Classic Rock, Associate Editor on Q magazine and staff writer/tea boy on Raw, not necessarily in that order. He has written for Metal Hammer, Louder, Prog, the Observer, Select, Mojo, the Evening Standard and the totally legendary Ultrakill. He is still waiting for Billy Gibbons to send him a bottle of hot sauce he was promised several years ago.