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Norway's Metal Express recently conducted an interview with Sammy Hagar. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:
On the VAN HALEN 2004 reunion tour and whether there was a chance of it coming to Europe:
"The tour was worthwhile for everyone, but it was a really expensive ticket price in America, and I think that if we would have come to Europe, it would have been twice that much. And I wasn't down with that. And we signed on a contract… which sounds kind of business-like, but it really became that. By the end of the tour, if it wasn't for the business, I probably would have stopped at 40 shows. But we signed on for 80, we did 80 shows, and at the end of that, I think it was better to let that go for awhile. I'm not saying that we would never do it again, but some people would have to change, including maybe myself — maybe I'm the first guy that should change. But we would have to change. We couldn't just do it the way it was being done. It was falling apart."
On the possibility of a new VAN HALEN album:
"We tried to do an album. We only got three songs done. It took four months to do three songs. So I was saying, 'Let's go out and play for the people before this whole thing ends.' 'Cause if you remember right, they tried to do an album with Gary Cherone — the second record — and that didn't finish. Then they tried to do a record with Dave [Lee Roth] three times, and they never got it done. So I was seeing that coming. As a person who wanted to go out and play for the people, I said, 'Let's stop recording, and let's go out on the road while we still can.' And I think it was a smart move. The management was into that as well. We had shows on sale. We pretty much had to go out and do some shows. That's why we only did three songs."
On the last show of the VAN HALEN reunion tour:
"The last show with VAN HALEN was a disaster — it was a horrible experience. We had to be pushed off the stage separately, and me taking this way, and Eddie [Van Halen] taking this way, and Alex [Van Halen] and Michael [Anthony] down the middle, because we were ready to go to blows — it was that bad. So that was horrible. The rest of the tour wasn't that bad. But at the end… I don't know. Something got crazy."
Listen to Sammy Hagar's four-minute interview with Metal Express at this location (Windows Media).
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