Sammy Hagar believes Alex Van Halen is not giving his brother Edward’s musical legacy the justice it deserves by ignoring the Hagar era of Van Halen.
Hagar’s comments came after he posted a picture of himself and Edward from 1991 on Instagram. One fan posted: “My dad always said the Roth days were about the party; the Sammy days were about the music.” Another follower wrote: “No disrespect to Alex but it’s ok to like VH with Sammy, even if he doesn’t anymore.” A third poster stated: “Most purists believe VH ended with DLR.” That prompted Hagar to defend his era of the band.
“It could have [ended], my friend, but instead we went on to sell over 50 million records for [a] No. 1 album [then] sold out every building and stadium in the world for a whole decade,” posted Hagar. “That never happened again.”
Hagar added: “Alex is not doing his brother’s musical legacy justice by not acknowledging all the No. 1 albums and some great music Eddie and I wrote together – not Alex – but Eddie and I wrote together. To not acknowledge [those] 10 years of music is blasphemy to his brother’s musicianship, songwriting and legacy.”
Alex’s book Brothers makes no mention of the Hagar years, instead ending just before David Lee Roth’s departure in 1985. In the subsequent interviews to promote the book, Alex remained focused on the Roth years. He later explained the absence of the Hagar years in an interview with Billboard.
“What happened after Dave left is not the same band. … The magic was in the first years,” he said, “when we didn’t know what we were doing; when we were willing to try anything.”
In a more recent interview with the “Bringing It Back to The Beatles” podcast, Alex maintained that “the original band was the driving force.”
“That’s why the book ends in 1984, because that was true rock and roll,” Alex said. “After that, it became much more — I don’t know; I can’t explain it. But it’s not to say that it was not any good. We always did our best at whatever we were doing, but it wasn’t the same.”