Rock legend Sammy Hagar has enjoyed a long and hugely successful career – but his last tour as frontman for Van Halen in 2004 ranks as one of the biggest disappointments of his professional life.
Hagar recently announced a UK tour for summer 2026 on which he will be joined by guitarist Joe Satriani, drummer Kenny Aronoff and another former member of Van Halen, bassist Michael Anthony.
With this band behind him, Hagar’s shows in 2025 have been packed with classic Van Halen songs – including Why Can’t This Be Love, Right Now, Poundcake, Top Of The World, Love Walks In and 5150.
These performances have also included a couple of Van Halen songs from the era when David Lee Roth fronted the band – Panama and Runnin’ With The Devil.
But Hagar has admitted that his final tour as a member of Van Halen was a grim experience.
In the singer’s 2011 autobiography Red: My Uncensored Life In Rock, he claimed that on the band’s 2004 US tour guitarist Eddie Van Halen was something akin to a functioning alcoholic.
And in a 2013 interview with Classic Rock, Hagar doubled down on those comments.
“Eddie definitely wasn’t functioning very well during the Van Halen reunion tour in 2004,” Hagar said. “It was one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had in my life. It was horrible to know a person that was in that kind of shape.”
Hagar maintained that his autobiography painted a true picture of Eddie and his brother Alex Van Halen.
“I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true,” he said. “Also, I think they know that I was being kind to Eddie in my book, believe it or not. There’s some worse shit than that.”
Hagar talked about his sadness over his split from the band.
“Not keeping Van Halen together – that was a failure to me,” he said. "It would have been great for us all to have kept going and stayed in the art while we were so creative.
“I think in my headspace today I probably could have made that happen, but at the time I was just as big an asshole as they were. I was kind of horny to make a solo album, and those guys are so insecure that it freaked them out and they threw me out.
“If we had at least split up on good terms it would have been okay. But to lose friends, that’s a failure.”
Hagar also told Classic Rock about his long-running beef with David Lee Roth.
“He’s from another planet,” Hagar said of Roth. “The only thing he and I have in common is that we were both lead singers in Van Halen. That is it. You can stop right there and don’t even try to put us into any kind of a nutshell.”
Despite the animosity between them, Hagar and Roth toured together in 2002, but as Hagar recalled of that experience: “I thought that tour would be really cool, and it wasn’t. He [Roth] was so pompous and demanding.
“He’s a strange guy. He’s so ‘pretend rock star’ and so protective of his image. When you see it day after day it’s really kind of disheartening.
“When you see this guy for real, it’s like he’s living two different lives. He’s projecting one thing and he’s something else, man. It was just weird to me.
“Who is he? What is he? He must be really miserable because he can’t be himself.
“I’m not that kind of guy,” Hagar concluded. “I’m for real.”
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