Sammy Hagar: ‘This Is the Thank You Tour’ for Van Halen Fans

Sammy Hagar knows it can be frustrating being a Van Halen fan. That's why he's offering up this summer's Best of All Worlds trek as a reward for their patience.

"This is the 'thank you' tour, for all of the fans who followed us for all of those years and have been waiting 20 years for some other kind of a reunion -- my era, anyway, for sure," he tells UCR.

Hagar and his longtime Van Halen compadre, bassist Michael Anthony, are leading the charge with their Chickenfoot bandmate Joe Satriani taking on the monumental task of playing Eddie Van Halen's legendary riffs. Alex Van Halen was invited, but hearing no response, they enlisted one of his biggest fans, drummer Jason Bonham.

Keyboardist Rai Thistlethwayte completes the musical picture and he's a secret weapon in the lineup, adding additional vocals, percussion and even extra guitar on occasion, when necessary. "I hope the fans don't get pissed. Because a lot of my fans want me to play more guitar," Hagar explains.

But he makes it crystal clear why Rai's contributions in that department are important: "Eddie’s guitar parts are not vocal friendly. It’s not easy, in the sense that you can’t play those parts and sing what I sing at the same time. I mean, I’m sorry, Jimi Hendrix would have been saying, 'No, fuck this!'"

In conversation with the Red Rocker, it's clear that Van Halen fans are in for a real treat this summer. He dug into the forthcoming tour to share a few spoilers as far as what to expect when things kick off on Saturday night in West Palm Beach.

How many songs have you guys rehearsed for this tour?

Oh God, we’ve probably rehearsed about 30 songs. 90% of them were Van Halen songs that Mikey and I haven’t really been playing. You know, we’ve played a few here and there. Down in Cabo, we jam some of the songs that are easier to play, but not like “5150,” “Summer Nights” or shit like that. It takes some kind of education to be able to play those damn songs right. [Laughs] All of my songs, we know most of those and we’re playing about seven of them, including a Montrose tune and a Chickenfoot tune. We rehearsed that stuff a little bit. It took a little while to figure out which of my songs really work with this band. You know, Matt, the whole thing about this band, is that you don’t know what you’ve got until you get in there with it.

I’ve played with Joe before. Mikey and Joe and I have done a band before, but not with Jason. Then, having a keyboard player -- because we’re actually not playing to a track -- that’s really awesome. That’s the whole key now, it’s like, “Wow, we can play this song, instead of sitting there and playing to a track.” It’s like people who use teleprompters. You know, I don’t use those, because I don’t like to read the lyrics to the audience. That’s like playing to a track [for me], it’s the same kind of vibe. You have to pay attention, but when everything’s live, we’re just playing together. Man, it’s above my expectations. It’s just really good. We’re kind of taking on a sound of our own. I mean, it sounds like Van Halen. My old stuff sounds like my old stuff, but it’s [all] just got a little bit of a different thing about it. It’s certainly more fun to play this way, I’ll tell you that.

The structure for this tour seems like a lot to get into in one night, when you consider what you laid out there. Montrose, Van Halen, Chickenfoot, your own solo stuff and so on. If you’ve rehearsed 30 songs, will the set list be a little bit fluid from night to night?

Maybe. Until we get out there [I don’t think we’ll know that]. Right now, we’ve really honed it down. We’ve changed a couple of songs. You know, I made a must-play list, not in any order. We went in and learned all of those. Some songs just didn’t work with this band very well -- so we’d throw them out, put another one in, try this one, try that one. I changed about five of the Van Halen songs that I thought I was going to play into five other ones that I really wasn’t so sure about. But it’s just that the band plays it so good that, okay, fuck, let’s play that. What happens is as you’re rehearsing it, [the set list starts coming together].

Listen to Van Halen Perform 'Panama'

I start seeing, “Oh, that song doesn’t follow that song.” You know, it’s a building process. What we’re finished with right now is an unbelievable set of music. When we finish playing it, I feel like I’ve just done everything I can possibly do for ya. It’s like, “This is all I’ve got.” I mean, right down to playing a few Dave songs. The ones I like [from the David Lee Roth era of Van Halen], which I won’t tell you. You know, I’m not going to sing a song, just because it was a hit. I’m going to sing a song because I like to sing it and and it’s a fun song to play. That’s the way we’re approaching this whole thing and it’s really working. So I don’t know if we’re going to change songs or not. We’ve got plenty that we could put in, but if I took it out, that means it wasn’t as good as what’s in there. We’ve got a big production. I spent a fortune on a production that we built for this thing. The way the lights and everything are, it’s going to be a lot of automation, so things happen at a certain time to bring the magic. I usually don’t do that. I’ve been partying on stage since I left Van Halen. I haven’t had any structure, I haven’t had a set list, hardly at all. Mike and I just go out and we just fuckin’ party and the audience parties with us. That’s wonderful. We’re still going to do that, but we’re going to have to do a few things consistently. [Laughs] Because I spent a lot of money to make magic happen. You’ve got to make sure that lightning strikes at the right time.

I’m glad you said what you said about the material from the Dave era. There’s been a thought that during your time with Van Halen, you didn’t really enjoy performing material from the earlier catalog with Roth, so the way you talked about it just now helps it all make more sense.

Well, when I joined Van Halen, I was trying to make a statement. Hey, listen, this is a new band, we wrote new material -- and to get rid of that comparison thing, I didn’t want to……look, it wasn’t just me. This was Ed, Al, Mike, this was a unanimous vote. Nobody wanted to continue on with the old stuff. It was like, “Shit, we’re tired of playing that, man. Let’s play the new songs.” But now, it’s such a whole different thing. I’m not trying to make any kind of a statement, I’m just trying to play for the fans. This is for the people. This is the “thank you” tour, for all of the fans who followed us for all of those years and have been waiting 20 years for some other kind of a reunion -- my era, anyway, for sure. With Mike and I up there, singing those songs and playing them from our hearts, it’s easy to pick the ones [from the Roth era]. I love “Panama.” That’s a bad ass tune. The first time I heard “Panama,” it pissed me off. That’s how good it is. That’s the way we’re approaching it, by doing the songs that I really enjoy singing. I was watching a live Van Halen clip the other day, from ‘95. We were doing “Panama” and it was frickin’ great. You know, I was singing it and I was really singing it well. I wasn’t just trying to mimic Dave, I was singing the song. It’s a cool song.

You’ve been rehearsing "Judgement Day” and that’s a thrill. I’ll never forget hearing that song for the first time. It was like, “Van Halen’s going heavy.” I hadn’t ever heard the band in that way before.

Lyrically, I actually wrote that song and “The Dream is Over,” those two songs, on my own. I liked the lyrics, but my music is never as good as Eddie’s and I’ll be the first to admit it. So I said to him, “Look, I really like these songs and I just want to play ‘em for you, so you can hear the vibe of what I’m trying to say lyrically. Eddie goes, “Wow, wow, wow.” He started playing to “Judgement Day” and I’m going, “Hell yeah.” You know, it’s kind of the attitude of the world today. I think it’s relevant. It’s like, everybody just doesn’t give a fuck. And it’s not me talking, like I don’t give a fuck -- I give a fuck. [Laughs] But there’s a lot of people out there that don’t, so I’m singing about them and it’s kind of a dark, negative tune for Sammy Hagar.

Listen to Van Halen Perform 'Judgement Day'

We were going to open with it, but it’s so hard to sing, we couldn’t. Well, I couldn’t. Let’s put it like that. I couldn’t open with the damn thing. So we switched it out and put it later in the set. It’s [now in] another “opening” section of the show. In other words, you play a few songs, talk, have a couple of drinks and ask the audience how they’re doing. Go over and make sure Mikey is sober enough to play. [Laughs] Then, we start the show again. It’s like a “start of the show” area. But once I get on tour and my voice is good enough, we may do things like that -- we may switch and open up with that song and then put the other song somewhere else. We’ll rearrange the set every now and then. There’s going to be times we’re going to have to drop songs out of the set. We’ve got way too many songs and we’re playing too long. When we have a place with a curfew, we’ll have to trim it a little bit. The encore, I’ll tell you -- I’m not telling you what songs -- but it’s a five song medley. A Montrose tune, a Chickenfoot tune, a Van Halen song, a Sammy Hagar song and a Van Hagar song.

It’s my favorite part of the show. When we play that -- these songs are so important that we’re playing this time -- I almost feel like, “Wow, no one could ever ask for more.” It’s fucking exciting. I’m telling you, I’ve never felt that I have a better set list in my life. Ever. That’s a big statement. I’ve got a lot of songs. You know, there’s four or five hundred songs in my catalog and this is the best set list I’ve ever had. That’s due to so much Van Halen [being in there] -- that’s part of it, of course. But it’s also cherry-picking [from] my catalog. I mean, cherry-picking. It’s like, you could not play a show without playing this song. It’s one of those kind of things, for my songs. Van Halen, we’re going deep into the catalog. The Van Halen catalog, we cherry-picked it, but it’s not just the hits. We said, “No, we’ve got to play shit like ‘Judgement Day,’ ‘The Seventh Seal’. “Seventh Seal” and “5150,” I gotta say, might be my two favorite songs in the set. It’s the way we play ‘em.

When “Seventh Seal” is over, it’s a whole different vibe. Everything up to “Seventh Seal,” we’re fuckin’ rockin’ and we’re doing all of this crazy high energy shit. It’s frantic and there’s surprises and acrobatics all over the place. Then, all of the sudden we lay into “The Seventh Seal” and this vibe and it’s like, “Whoa.” When it’s over, you feel like you’ve been up there on stage much longer than you have. It’s like, wow, we just moved to another dimension. Then we slowly come back -- and go at it again. “5150” is the same way. When it’s finished, it’s such a piece, you just go, “Fuck! Okay, hold it, stop!” I play a lot of songs in a row and I always do three or four in a row without talking. After “5150,” it’s like, hold on here, we’ve got to regroup. [Laughs] That fuckin’ thing is a piece. It’s just a piece of music. The lyrics and melodies and the phrasing, it’s almost impossible how I weaved those things into that song. That song is a piece. It doesn’t need any vocals. It doesn’t need anything. It could totally be an instrumental. Joe [Satriani] comments every time, “How the fuck did you come up with that phrasing? How did you squeeze that in there?

Listen to Van Halen's '5150'