Sammy Called Alex on his Birthday and Dave for a Car Show

[Terry]

Why is Sam even bothering to call Dave? Sam's said the '02 tour didn't go well as he thought Dave was a prick on that tour and in general. They're not friends. Is it really that surprising Dave didn't want to hang out and "jam"? If somebody who I didn't like and wasn't a friend called and left a message about partying and hanging out, I ain't returning that call, especially if there is a lot of negative history like Sam and Dave have.

As far as the Van Halens go, they said repeatedly and adamantly over the years that they would never do anything with Dave again and look how that played out. Stick with those High Hopes Sam! If they can reunite with the devil himself, then maybe, just maybe, you'll get your chance to whip up another batch of Poundcake!

As a mental exercise, if Ed told Sam that he'd reunite for a tour on one condition, no MA, does Sam throw Mike under the bus and accept, even if Mike gave his blessing on that arrangement?

If Mike gave his blessing to him, I think Sammy would do it. Because Sammy is in no position to negotiate otherwise: it's not 2003, where the 2nd attempt to reunite with Roth failed and the Van Halens had no other viable option. Mostly because now I tend to doubt the Van Halens give much of a shit one way or the other if they tour again. That could change, obviously, if they needed the money and Roth wasn't available.

I mean, I suppose Sammy could stick to his guns and insist Mike Anthony is part of the deal, but another - perhaps more pertinent - mental exercise would be to ponder if Mike Anthony would actually tour with Van Halen under ANY circumstances if asked. Mike's blessing to Sammy could well be along the lines of "if you want to hit the road with those assholes, I honestly hope you have a good tour, but count me out...after years of sitting back and letting them whittle away my share of the profits while I stayed loyal, Ed getting rid of me was the best thing that could have happened to me: [Ed] did me a favor, even though the way it went down sucked."

[Terry]

Probably just so he could have something to say in his next set of interviews.

That literally may well be the case: "I reached out to the Van Halens and Roth, but nobody called me back!! I'm not the bad guy, here!"

Um...was anybody out there HOPING Van Halen would reunite with Hagar? Or hoping Roth would jam with Hagar at one of his solo shows?

It's like Sammy's setting himself up to give an answer to a question that nobody outside of shit-stirring interviewers was even asking.

Unless there is some massive interest in Hagar getting back together with Van Halen that I'm unaware of. There didn't really seem to be THAT much interest in it 15 years ago, if the half-filled halls were any indication.

[Nitro Express]

That literally may well be the case: "I reached out to the Van Halens and Roth, but nobody called me back!! I'm not the bad guy, here!"

Um...was anybody out there HOPING Van Halen would reunite with Hagar? Or hoping Roth would jam with Hagar at one of his solo shows?

It's like Sammy's setting himself up to give an answer to a question that nobody outside of shit-stirring interviewers was even asking.

Unless there is some massive interest in Hagar getting back together with Van Halen that I'm unaware of. There didn't really seem to be THAT much interest in it 15 years ago, if the half-filled halls were any indication.

Oh come on. We are all itching to hear Up for Breakfast live. I would pay $400 a ticket to see it.

[Nitro Express]

Actually. I want to see Ed completely lose it Billy Joel style and watch him beat Sammy to a pulp with his guitar. Then throw the remains of Sammy into the audience and watch the crowd eat him.

[FORD]

Oh come on. We are all itching to hear Up for Breakfast live. I would pay $400 a ticket to see it.

You sure about that??

Not even Sobolewski's backing vocals can save that turd.

[Seshmeister]

He's 71 in a few months - they could rework it as 'Up for prostate'

[Nitro Express]

She fondles my berries and I want her cherries but I got to find my Viagra. Memory is shit but I want tits, got to find my Viagra. Her tunnel of love is open but I need viagra for my banana. I ate her oysters and sucked her clams but it ain't Flintstone vitamins I need. I need the blue pill to get a thrill. Until then it's just a dream, to shoot my creme all over her melons.

[Grit]

Sam had a few songs with decent lyrics but many, many more were just pathetically awful just like this stinky turd.

[chuckjitsu]

If Mike gave his blessing to him, I think Sammy would do it. Because Sammy is in no position to negotiate otherwise: it's not 2003, where the 2nd attempt to reunite with Roth failed and the Van Halens had no other viable option. Mostly because now I tend to doubt the Van Halens give much of a shit one way or the other if they tour again. That could change, obviously, if they needed the money and Roth wasn't available.

I mean, I suppose Sammy could stick to his guns and insist Mike Anthony is part of the deal, but another - perhaps more pertinent - mental exercise would be to ponder if Mike Anthony would actually tour with Van Halen under ANY circumstances if asked. Mike's blessing to Sammy could well be along the lines of "if you want to hit the road with those assholes, I honestly hope you have a good tour, but count me out...after years of sitting back and letting them whittle away my share of the profits while I stayed loyal, Ed getting rid of me was the best thing that could have happened to me: [Ed] did me a favor, even though the way it went down sucked."

Honestly, I think MA would tour with VH again if asked, for no other reason than doing it for the fans, which he's expressed as his main/primary rationale for past tours. I find it sadly ironic that the guy who cares most about the fans isn't even in the band! I certainly wouldn't blame him if he told the Van Halens to go piss up a rope if he was asked to tour.

[Terry]

Honestly, I think MA would tour with VH again if asked, for no other reason than doing it for the fans, which he's expressed as his main/primary rationale for past tours. I find it sadly ironic that the guy who cares most about the fans isn't even in the band! I certainly wouldn't blame him if he told the Van Halens to go piss up a rope if he was asked to tour.

I think Mike would tour with Van Halen if asked, as you said, doing it strictly for the fans. I think the thing with that is that the Van Halens more likely than not wouldn't ask him. It would have to be something along the lines of 2004, when Sammy insisted Mike was part of the band: I think if Ed could have gotten away in 2004 with having Wolfie in the band THEN, he would have.

And it was clear from the public remarks he made a few years ago that Ed hasn't grown to appreciate Anthony's skills more since Anthony was fired.

I mean, were I in Anthony's shoes, I'd need a sit-down with the Van Halens and Roth to get some shit straight prior to a CVH reunion. Shit about money and common courtesy/respect. As in, you will give me what I am due in both those areas, or you can fuck yourselves. However, I'd like to believe I think enough of myself not to have let myself be treated the way Anthony allowed the Van Halens and Roth to treat him, so I suppose I would have never been in Anthony's shoes in the first place.

[Jetstream]

Sammy wants to be 'friends' only for the agenda of then convincing the brothers to have one more tour with him and Hagar probably would also want one last album with Van Halen, even better if he could share the stage and the album with Dave and Van Halen because then it legitimizes to an extent their classic catalog with him. It's simple. Yes, it's not the money and it's not to be friends because they really are not, but to secure his legacy as a legit part of Van Halen which trumps anything else he ever did in his career and that notoriety has evaporated a long time ago. They simply do not play Van Hagar much on the radio, the songs are not consider classic. Popular music is fickle and short lived to an extent, even when you are considered 'legendary'. Really does not matter how shitty Dave sings now, if he remains the lead singer even in a retired band, Hagar will be forgotten and Roth becomes the only lead singer in retrospect... Dave knows this, and surely does Hagar who has to list his nickname 'the Red Rocker' on his social media because unlike a true nickname, he has to remind people of this while Dave ends up being the diamond which lasts forever

[Terry]

Sammy wants to be 'friends' only for the agenda of then convincing the brothers to have one more tour with him and Hagar probably would also want one last album with Van Halen, even better if he could share the stage and the album with Dave and Van Halen because then it legitimizes to an extent their classic catalog with him. It's simple. Yes, it's not the money and it's not to be friends because they really are not, but to secure his legacy as a legit part of Van Halen which trumps anything else he ever did in his career and that notoriety has evaporated a long time ago. They simply do not play Van Hagar much on the radio, the songs are not consider classic. Popular music is fickle and short lived to an extent, even when you are considered 'legendary'. Really does not matter how shitty Dave sings now, if he remains the lead singer even in a retired band, Hagar will be forgotten and Roth becomes the only lead singer in retrospect... Dave knows this, and surely does Hagar who has to list his nickname 'the Red Rocker' on his social media because unlike a true nickname, he has to remind people of this while Dave ends up being the diamond which lasts forever

Everything you said...it honestly feels that way on Sammy's part.

I don't want to believe it, not because I think Hagar is beneath that type of mindset. but...fuck, the dude is 70 years old now? Or thereabouts? And still, despites his decades-long bravado of claiming how his version of Van Halen had all those #1 albums and more top 40 hits than CVH, it clearly bugs him that in terms of popular consensus David Lee Roth was probably considered the definitive lead singer of Van Halen.

And it's funny, because financially Hagar is better off than the Van Halens or Roth. So, in that respect, he "won"...okay, great! Be happy with that!! And you're totally right about that Hagar-floated scenario about Sammy and Dave both touring with the band, each doing a set. It is Hagar's fear that Van Halen will conclude or retire with Roth at the helm before Sammy can get in one last tour with the band. So Hagar has no compunctions about doing another co-headlining tour with Roth. Much the same way Hagar had no compunctions about showing up at the RnRHoF VH induction with Michael Anthony in tow, even when it was clear that neither Roth nor the Van Halens were going to be there: I'm gonna make sure the public remembers I was a part of Van Halen, even if I look ridiculous doing so. Why else would Hagar want Roth to show up at one of Hagar's solo gigs now? Because he knows that Roth is basically washed up now.

And while there is some Van Hagar still played on the radio, it's not nearly the amount of what radio is still playing re: CVH. And the Van Hagar that still IS played on the radio is that cheesy 80s synth pop top 40 drivel Van Hagar specialized in. And that is probably another thing that Hagar is afraid of, that the version of Van Halen HE was in will always be known as primarily a bunch of synth pop rock balladry. And he's right to worry about that - now - because in the long run the hard rock tunes Van Hagar did simply don't stack up against what CVH did.

If Hagar was told through management that the Van Halens were interested in burying whatever misgivings exist between the Van Halens and Hagar and refraining from making unfriendly public comments (and I don't think the Van Halens really have any misgivings toward Hagar so much as the guy just doesn't enter their calculations in any way these days: I haven't heard Ed or Al say a word about the guy since 2005) going forward, but that the Van Halens weren't interested in touring/recording/working/hanging out with Hagar, does anybody think Hagar would be fine with that? I mean, if Hagar's sole interest were establishing a friendly relationship with the Van Halens for altruistic reasons that didn't have anything to do with a future Van Hagar tour, I'm sure Hagar could find a way to reach out to the Van Halens. Or, Hagar could just stop talking about the Van Halens in interviews. When asked, Hagar could say "hey, you know, clearly there were points when I was in the band where me and Eddie didn't get along...and that stuff has been told and retold a million times...I'm not interested in rehashing whatever private squabbles I had with the Van Halens 15 or 25 years ago...I've done enough of that through the years when asked in interviews, mostly because I was angry with those guys...and I have nothing new to say on that topic anyway, and I'd like to think me and those guys could become friendly again...none of us are getting any younger, and none of us need this bullshit publicly aired for the millionth time, because it serves no positive purpose...I haven't closed the door on playing with those guys again, and I think they know that, and if it happens, great...if not, I'll still value the time I did spend with the band."

Hagar just seems frightened. Frightened because his name hasn't so much as been mentioned by Roth or the Van Halens publicly in over a decade. Frightened because when Ed slammed Mike Anthony a few years ago and Hagar stood up for Mike, Ed's response was...silence. Nothing a troll hates worse than failing to get a reaction.

And I will agree that in terms of the "Red Rocker" self-named moniker, I've never, EVER heard anyone call Sammy that. Nobody outside of Sammy himself and mtv vjs or vh1 vjs who were interviewing him. And this is after, what, 35 years of him promoting himself as the Red Rocker?

[Kristy]

Long live Chickenfoot.

[chuckjitsu]

Seems to me that mentally Sam is where Dave was from the early 1990s to like 2006- not particularly relevant and realizing that his best work was with VH while having a whiff of desperation about the whole thing. And let's face it, nobody is clamoring for another chickenfoot/circle/sammy solo album. hell, nobody's clamoring for another vh album with sam, but i'm guessing it would sell better than that other stuff. I think a tour with Sam Halen would sell ok. And Sam might pretend otherwise, but you can bet your ass that he'd rather being playing sheds/arenas with VH than the Piss Ant Room at Harvey's in Tahoe or the Cabo Wabo Cantina.

I think that '04 for Sam was like 96' and the early 2000s for Dave- high hopes of claiming past vh glory that crashed and burned in bitterness and acrimony, some of which was self inflicted. The difference is that Dave got back in while Sam was left holding his dick. Oh well. Maybe you shouldn't have burned those bridges in your book there chief.

As for MA, my personal opinion is that you can only take the high road so many times before a strong response is required. The Van Halens (basically Ed) have attacked his time in VH on basically all fronts: his musical contributions (or lack there of), his backing vocals (Ed claiming that his backing vocals were as much of that classic sound as MA), his skill as a bass player (the infamous/bogus Ed videotaping the bass parts for MA stuff), etc. I get that he doesn't want to get in to "mudslinging", but MA, there's a time when bullshit needs to be vigorously called out. Is fan appreciation of him being there enough when two guys don't really want him there and the third guy may want him there, but not enough to rock the boat/support him when it actually matters?

[Terry]

Seems to me that mentally Sam is where Dave was from the early 1990s to like 2006- not particularly relevant and realizing that his best work was with VH while having a whiff of desperation about the whole thing. And let's face it, nobody is clamoring for another chickenfoot/circle/sammy solo album. hell, nobody's clamoring for another vh album with sam, but i'm guessing it would sell better than that other stuff. I think a tour with Sam Halen would sell ok. And Sam might pretend otherwise, but you can bet your ass that he'd rather being playing sheds/arenas with VH than the Piss Ant Room at Harvey's in Tahoe or the Cabo Wabo Cantina.

I think that '04 for Sam was like 96' and the early 2000s for Dave- high hopes of claiming past vh glory that crashed and burned in bitterness and acrimony, some of which was self inflicted. The difference is that Dave got back in while Sam was left holding his dick. Oh well. Maybe you shouldn't have burned those bridges in your book there chief.

As for MA, my personal opinion is that you can only take the high road so many times before a strong response is required. The Van Halens (basically Ed) have attacked his time in VH on basically all fronts: his musical contributions (or lack there of), his backing vocals (Ed claiming that his backing vocals were as much of that classic sound as MA), his skill as a bass player (the infamous/bogus Ed videotaping the bass parts for MA stuff), etc. I get that he doesn't want to get in to "mudslinging", but MA, there's a time when bullshit needs to be vigorously called out. Is fan appreciation of him being there enough when two guys don't really want him there and the third guy may want him there, but not enough to rock the boat/support him when it actually matters?

Clearly, nobody was clamoring for another Roth solo album from 1996 to...well, now (and probably beyond). And when Roth was on the outs with Van Halen from 1985 through 2006, he was - much like Hagar - never shy about saying what he thought about them in interviews. Doubtless, Roth would have preferred to have been fronting Van Halen rather than opening for Bad Company as a solo act, or teaming up with Hagar in 2002. The difference, as you say, being that Roth (eventually) got back in the band ("got back" probably being defined as embarking on a series of tour by tour contracts). I do remember Roth being somewhat generous to Hagar in a 1996 Howard Stern interview that aired on the same day Roth and the Van Halens released their statements as to why a full-fledged tour wasn't going to happen. So, I'm assuming the actual Stern interview took place at least a day before (if not earlier) Roth's Open Letter was released. Roth said something along the lines of nobody knowing better than himself as to exactly what Hagar was going through at the moment re: being chucked out of the group. And I'm sure Roth knows exactly where Sammy is (and has been) career-wise these days as a solo act, in that (like Roth) Sammy's career high water mark was Van Halen, and (again, like Roth) what Sammy has done post-Van Halen hasn't exactly set the world on fire.

I do think that unlike the early 2000s for Dave, Sammy is now bumping up against the edge of his own mortality in terms of his physical ability in actually being able to perform a full set. As in, perhaps Hagar is thinking there may not be too many years left that he will actually be ABLE to front Van Halen. From what I've seen and heard, ROTH is at times only barely able to still do what is required (to my ears, anyway) vocal-wise, live. Add in Eddie and HIS health issues over the years...clearly, Hagar realizes the clock is ticking, and the time to do it is sooner than later. Maybe that explains the desperation.

Mike Anthony and his public attitude toward all of it is a mystery to me, in that from appearances the guy was never appreciated going way back, stayed loyal anyway and got chucked out and replaced by Ed's kid. I mean, perhaps one thing to get replaced by a Billy Sheehan, but a teenager of no distinguishable skills on bass? Yet Anthony stays silent about all of it. Does Anthony think he was just plain lucky to have been in the band in the first place? Does Anthony, through years of having his pride and percentage whittled down, to a degree buy into the dubious claims Eddie makes about him? Is Anthony simply more content hanging with Hagar, who genuinely seems to enjoy his company and what he brings to a group, and thus glad he doesn't have to be back in a reformed Van Halen with David Lee Roth now? At least when Hagar was in the band, Anthony had an ally: if Anthony rejoined the band now, well...he already knows what the Van Halens think about him, and he has no relationship with Roth to speak of. I try to imagine being in a band where nobody else in the band particularly cared if I was there - or even really wanted me there - and going onstage and playing with them every night. I can't imagine it, unless there was a hefty payday involved.