Sammy Hagar is getting ready to release the new single “Encore, Thank You, Good Night” on Friday, and he tells the Los Angeles Times the track is simply “a thank-you to Eddie Van Halen.”
“I miss the guy so much. Thank God we connected towards the end, otherwise I’d be heartbroken. I am anyway,” Sammy shares.
Sammy says that when they did reconnect, Eddie sounded optimistic about future plans.
“Eddie said to me, ‘Don’t tell anyone about us talking because I don’t want to be answering questions about rumors of a reunion.’ But he said, ‘Next year, we’re gonna get together — we’re gonna make some noise. Let me beat this s***, and let’s do it,'” Sammy says, noting Eddie even kept his plans from his brother, Alex Van Halen.
“He goes, ‘Please don’t talk to anyone — not even Al.’ I’ve never said that to anyone, and I bet you Al is gonna have a f****** fit,” Sammy says. “But Eddie said, ‘Don’t even talk to Al about this.’ I said, ‘Ed, I don’t talk to Al.’
Sammy adds he misses having “hope” that one day he and Eddie would play together again, and misses the “creativity and the energy” he had with him.
“He brought something out of me that just ain’t the same without him,” he says. “At my age, you sit there and wonder: If Eddie was alive, could I reach that again? Now that dream is gone.”
Next up, Hagar will headline the Stagecoach Festival’s Palomino Stage on Sunday and then kick off his Las Vegas residency, The Best of All Worlds Tour Stays in Vegas – The Residency, on April 30 at Dolby Live at Park MGM. A complete list of dates can be found at RedRocker.com.
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