Earlier this month, former Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth took a swipe at his successor Sammy Hagar during a concert in New Hampshire. Hagar previously said that he was inspired by a dream to write a new tribute song to the late Edward Van Halen, “Encore, Thank You, Goodnight.”
“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!’”
Roth responded to the claim while on stage saying: “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.’”
Hagar apparently got wind Roth’s rant, but took it as an “olive branch moment.”
“I can’t believe social media is trying to make something out of this,” Hagar commented on a metal fanpage on Instagram. “This is the first compliment and real olive branch moment Dave and I have had in 100 years.”
Hagar thinks that Roth was actually telling a bit of truth when it came to Roth’s own dream story. “Dave’s a good storyteller, but there’s some truth in between the showmanship,” Hagar wrote. “All good with me. Keep it up Dave. These songs we both wrote with Eddie need to be carried on forever.”
