In a new interview with Billboard today, Sammy Hagar talks about attending his first South By Southwest conference this week in Austin, Texas, where he plans to do some filming for his Rock & Roll Road Trip show on AXS.
Hagar was asked if Chickenfoot will be making any music soon, but he doesn’t think anything is likely soon.
“I love the band. I love those guys,” he says. “But the commitment it takes to go in and make a great record is six months, for me to shut my world down for that is hard, as much as I love it.”
Here’s the Van Halen segment:
About the only thing not on Hagar’s plate at the moment is anything with Van Halen. Fans were heartened when he exchanged pleasantries with Eddie Van Halen around the guitarist’s birthday in January, though things never went any further.
“Let’s put it like this — when it came to my birthday, I didn’t get a message,” Hagar notes, “so obviously that camp, him and Al, still have some kind of trip against me. I’m certainly not looking to get back in that band when I’ve got Chickenfoot sitting in my lap and I’m scared to grab the reigns of that one. Van Halen would be twice the nightmare of the workload and the anxieties about getting along or being worried about being stabbed in the back again or something. I don’t want to put myself in that situation, that’s for sure.”
Hagar then adds a quick, “but you never know” and throws out the idea of going on the road with the original Van Halen, including David Lee Roth and Anthony back on bass, with the two singers trading off songs they recorded with the group. “That’s really the only way I would be interested in a Van Halen reunion,” Hagar says.
“Everybody’s saying, ‘Well, what would it take?'” Hagar says. “For me, no money, man. I don’t need money. I would do that for the fans and give the money to food banks or something. I’m not sure anybody else would agree with me, but that would interest me enough to sit down across the table from everybody and work that one out.”