Classic Rock
Eddie Van Halen helped Sammy Hagar to write new song in a dream
The former Montrose and Van Halen vocalist Sammy Hagar will release, next April 28, a new song called “Encore, Thank You, Goodnight,” which according to him the late Eddie Van Halen helped him to write in a dream. It all began in 2022 as he told Ultimate Classic Rock at the time:
“(…) I had this dream and Eddie came. We were in a room like this, a bunch of people around. It was just like he’d been gone. It was not like he was passed, but he had just been out of my life and we hadn’t seen each other for a while. He’s going, ‘Man, let’s write some music!’ I said, ‘Yeah, fuck it, man. Here, let’s go!’”
“(We) went over into a corner, in this room. He had a guitar and he played me this thing. It was like this lick – the last lick that Eddie Van Halen showed me, when I went back for the (2004) reunion tour and when he was a mess. I said, ‘Eddie, show me your newest shit,’ because every time I’d be around him I’d say, ‘Show me your newest shit.’ He’d say, ‘Oh, check this out!’”
“He did this harmonic thing and he slid it up to a chord, like a slide guitar. We wrote a song with that lick. I remembered it. I got up in the morning and I wrote the song.”
Besides Hagar, were also part of the song the guitarist Joe Satriani, the bassist Michael Anthony and the drummer Kenny Aronoff. That’s the line-up that is currently touring with Hagar.
Read Sammy Hagar’s official statement about the new song
In an official statement about the track, Sammy said: “This song is my final bow to that part of my life. It’s not meant to be anything more than a ‘thank you’ — with love, with respect, and with one hell of a guitar solo.”
“Joe (Satriani) was the perfect partner to help me shape the sound — he brought in that big, emotional, guitar-driven energy that feels like Eddie’s spirit but is entirely of Joe’s creation. With Michael Anthony’s thundering bass and stellar Van Halen-esque background vocals and Kenny Aronoff’s relentlessly powerful driving rhythms, the song really came together on all levels,” Sammy Hagar said.
