A few years back, former Van Halen singer Sammy Hagar released the song, “Encore, Thank You, Goodnight” as a tribute to the late, great Edward Van Halen. He explained to Ultimate Classic Rock that the inspiration for the song came to him in a dream.
“About two months ago, I had this dream and Eddie came,” Hagar said. “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, f*ck it, man. Here, let’s go!'”
Original Van Halen singer David Lee Roth responded to Hagar’s claim while performing earlier this month in New Hampshire. Roth 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. And 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.”
Roth continued: “I don’t know what the odds are, but last night the ghost of Eddie Van Halen visited me at the f*cking hotel room. I was watching the weather report and he came in and he was laughing. His f*cking ghost was laughing. I said, ‘What did you do now?’ He said, ‘Dave, Dave…’ Actually, you want me to do his accent? ‘Hey, Dave.’ He said, ‘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 f*cking tell him.’ This all stays in this room, right? I laughed. We shared a ghost cigarette, a ghost Marlboro. Not one of those p*ssy-ass white ones, but the Marlboro Reds. And I hugged my brother Ed, and I said, ‘Man, do I f*cking 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.'”
Roth’s stage rant can be viewed below.
