The former Van Halen vocalist Sammy Hagar recently released “Encore, Thank You, Goodnight,” which, according to him, was written with the help of Eddie Van Halen during a dream. He said that, in the dream, the late guitarist showed him a guitar “lick” that was eventually used in the track. Now during one of his live shows this week at Hampton Beach, the band’s original frontman David Lee Roth mocked that story, showing that Eddie’s ghost also visited him.
David Lee Roth mocks Hagar’s Eddie Van Halen ghost song
In the middle of the performance of Van Halen’s “Dance the Night Away” he said: “One of my esteemed colleagues, he’s a contemporary, he’s got a great voice, he’s got a great catalog. You all know Sammy Hagar, right? He’s got a great voice. Sammy, aloud, he described to the media about six weeks ago that the ghost of Eddie Van Halen visited him and graced him with a song that he memorized and then went home and recorded. It’s on the Internet.”
“I don’t know what the odds are, but last night the ghost of Eddie Van Halen visited me at the fucking hotel room. I was watching the weather report and he came in and he was laughing. His fucking ghost was laughing.”
“I said, ‘What did you do now?’ He said, ‘Dave, Dave…Dave, you know that song I gave Hagar?’ I said, ‘What now?’ He said, ‘It’s actually (Iron Butterfly’s) ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ backwards. Don’t fucking tell him'”.
Roth finished the story saying they shared a ghost cigaratte and “I hugged my brother Ed, and I said, ‘Man, do I fucking miss you.’ And he said, ‘I miss you too, Dave.’ He said, ‘But you know what? You should still go to hell.’ And I said, ‘Save me a seat,'” David Lee Roth said (Transcribed by Blabbermouth).
The Sammy and Roth solo tour
Back in 2002, when Sammy Hagar and David Lee Roth were out of Van Halen they got together to do a co-headlining tour across North America. Even though the tour was a financial success, the things didn’t end so well between the two Rock Stars. Hagar accused Roth of cancelling a scheduled show in Long Island, because he insisted that he would only play in Madison Square Garden and only if he could be the headliner there, even knowing that it wasn’t his turn.
In an interview with Eddie Trunk back in 2020, Hagar recalled the tour saying (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage): “You know, I’ve been an advocate of doing the Sammy and Dave tour”. The musician continued saying that the idea of that tour he did with Lee Roth in 2002 was to get “the brothers” (Eddie and Alex Van Halen) “attention to do the reunion way back then and do it again, again and again. I mean, give the fans what they want and the cool thing about it would be if I came out and did two songs, I leave the stage, Dave come out and do two songs. Not like one guys has to open the show for the first hour and then the other guy comes for the second hour.”